One of the most shocking and dispicable concentration camps of the Second World War was Bergen-Belsen.
When the British liberators went inside of the camp they discovered a scene of true hell
on earth.
Around the camp were thousands of dying prisoners, and a huge amount of corpses which had not
even been buried.
The inmates there were dying and suffering from the huge problems with disease and starvation
that were running rampant, but throughout its time in operation 70,000 people at least
were killed at Belsen.
Despite not having Gas chambers, it was considered one of the deadliest camps and a placer where
the conditions killed so many people.
But the British when they liberated Belsen also found a large number of SS guards who
worked there, including a number of female guards who were notorious for their evil treatment
of inmates.
They were a bunch of brute sadists who regularly beat prisoners so badly that they never recovered.
But what is the story of the disgusting crimes of the female guards of Bergen Belsen?
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Bergen-Belsen began life as a camp for the Wehrmacht and as a military facility, but
it quickly fell into disuse.
Following the German invasion of Poland, the huts there began to be used as a place to
house prisoners of war, and in June 1940 Belgian and French POWs were housed there.
But as the war continued it became an independent camp known as Stalag 11-C and it was intended
to hold up to 20,000 Soviet POWs in a number of areas.
However by the end of March 1942, 41,000 Soviet POWs had died in the three camps on the site
of Belsen and had been killed by starvation, disease and exhaustion being forced to work.
But as time went on the death toll rose.
But in 1943, Belsen was taken over by the SS Economic Administration Main Office, and
it was here where it then became ran by the SS.
As the war continued further large transports of prisoners were sent there, and in August
1944 a new part of Belsen became designated as the Women’s Camp of Belsen.
In the following months huge transports of women were sent there, including 9000 in November
1944.
Many of those who were able to work stayed for a short period, before they were then
sent to other sites, but at Belsen it quickly became a site of pure death and depravity.
As more prisoners were sent to the camp, the rate of death accelerated to the point where
hundreds were dying each day from the typhus epidemics and other pestilences being found
there.
The amount of food the inmates were given was very insufficient, and because of this
people were starving.
Anne Frank and her sister Margot succumbed at Belsen, with the female guards overseeing
what happened there.
But along with transports of women, many female SS guards arrived at Bergen Belsen.
These were Aufseherin’s or female guards who many have become known for their pure
evil.
Many worked at other camps such as Auschwitz, and were transferred away from the front lines
to Belsen which was closer to the German heartlands.
But these female guards continued to oversee the harsh treatment of prisoners, and violently
beat inmates at Belsen despite the war coming to an end when many were sent to the camp.
One woman who was arrested at Belsen was Irma Grese, who was known as the Hyena of Auschwitz.
Grese was known for being a complete brute, and she was responsible for selecting inmates
at Auschwitz to go to the gas chambers.
She also wore heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol, and she was known for using
physical and emotional methods to torture camp inmates, and she also was known for shooting
prisoners in cold blood.
She sometimes also beat women to death with her whip, and she seemed to take great pleasure
in doing this.
She as mentioned was one who accompanied a prisoner evacuation transport to Belsen from
Ravensbruck, and was later sentenced to death and was executed for her crimes.
Elisabeth Volkenrath, was also arrested at Belsen and she had a long list of crimes.
She was known for beating prisoners so severely that she hospitalised them, and also took
part in selections.
It was said at Belsen hat she threw an old woman down the steps of a workshop and following
this she died immediately because of Volkenrath’s brutality.
She also took food and water from prisoners depriving them of basic necessities, and she
also was known for beatings with other female guards.
She also oversaw the women who were tasked with collecting wood, and would drive them
to work harder.
During roll calls she also forced people to exercise so hard that they collapsed, and
was known for being a real brute of a woman, and she was executed.
Known as the Woman with the Dogs, or the Weasel, Johanna Bormann was different to Grese and
Volkenrath in the fact she was much older than them.
She was a guard who would regularly patrol with her dog, and at times was known for encouraging
it to maul women and at times her actions resulted in the deaths of women.
She was transferred to Belsen where she served under Josef Kramer, and she was given the
job of looking after the pig sty.
Here she ensured the pigs were fed better than the inmates, and it was noted that she
was seen beating women prisoners on a number of occasions who had been taking vegetables.
What was disturbing was that her dog which had been with her at Auschwitz and had been
trained to kill remained with her at Belsen.
She kept it within Belsen and when she was arrested it was found inside of her room,
but she too was later executed.
Herta Ehlert had previously worked at Majdanek, and she later claimed that she’d been moved
as she was too nice to prisoners.
But this was not the case, and she’d moved camps for more money.
She worked at Auschwitz overseeing slave labour groups, but then she was sent to Belsen where
she worked as a deputy wardress.
She had been seen conducting severe beatings and it was alleged that she was even witnessed
murdering a prisoner, and she denied everything.
She was also accused of stealing jewellery.
Ehlert was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and she actually served only around 6 of these.
Initially conscripted into the SS late into the conflict, Ilse Forster was involved in
accompanying a transport to Belsen.
She regularly hit prisoners with her hands and a stick if they tried to steal food, and
she prevented many from getting the nutrition they needed.
She was stern and was seen beating prisoners with a thick stick at Belsen, but her actions
ultimately led to many people starving to death.
There were a number of other female guards including Herta Bothe, Irene Haschke, Gertrud
Sauer and Anne Hempel who conducted further evil acts at Belsen.
The women who worked at Belsen had been schooled in how to instigate a reign of terror.
The women were known for being brutal in their nature, and they denied the inmates medical
treatment and also food and water.
They were the ones who were responsible for the conditions and the disease also that tore
throughout the camp.
In March 1945, at least 18000 inmates died at Belsen in the deadliest month there.
But as the allies approached the camp, many SS members and women did try to flee, but
some like those mentioned did remain to try and uphold law and order.
There were many other women who worked there but were not tried during the Belsen trials.
What greeted the liberators was described as, ‘.Here over an acre of ground lay dead
and dying people.
You could not see which was which...
The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly
procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable
to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies
had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed
at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms,
then ran off, crying terribly.
He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.’
Over the time in which Belsen operated as a concentration camp, there were at least
480 people that worked there including at least 45 women.
They were in control of the women’s camp, and one British leftenant said of it, ‘It
was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very
large quantity of lipstick arrived.
This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands
of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick.
I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated
brilliance.
I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick.
Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering
about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips.
I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick.
At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone,
no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm.
At last they could take an interest in their appearance.
That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.’
There were so many dead bodies and corpses around that were disease ridden that the guards
who worked there were forced to help clean up.
The captured female guards were forced to help, and they were involved in carting the
bodies and corpses into the mass graves.
Many were pictured on board the carts where the bodies were taken from, and a number of
the female guards caught typhus from cleaning up the camp.
But this was seen as a significant degree of punishment themselves, however the clean
up operation took days.
The captured female guards of Belsen were brought to trial, and a number were acquitted
of crimes as they were said to have arrived too late to Belsen or their guilt in war crimes
and crimes against humanity could not have been established.
Some others were given sentences in prison, but were then released early around 1952.
But there were three women who were executed for their crimes at not just Belsen but also
Auschwitz.
The women who worked at Auschwitz previously received harsher punishment due to the selections
and gas chambers that were there, and some women like Herta Bothe was spared as she was
convicted of crimes just at Belsen and not at Auschwitz, as Belsen did not have gas chambers.
But the female guards of Belsen were considered some of the most brutal and loyal SS staff
of the concentration camp system.
They were sent with many transports of prisoners to make sure they got to their final destination
and Belsen without any rebellion or escape.
They were responsible for the horrific conditions there, but also for violent acts that caused
the deaths of many too.
What happened inside of Bergen-Belsen scarred many of the survivors and the liberators until
the day they died.
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