When the Allies liberated the concentration camps, they came across scores of war crimes
that needed punishing.
Inside camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau thousands of prisoners were suffering from
disease, starvation and ultimate the conditions that were upheld by evil guards.
But when Bergen-Belsen was liberated, the British discovered a number of female guards,
and many around the world were shocked to see how many of these young women had inflicted
such evil onto other people.
Of the 50,000 guards who served inside of Nazi concentration camps, around 5,000 of
them were women and they were responsible for upholding law and order in the women’s
camps.
Many of these had grown up with the Nazi race laws and sought to serve Hitler in his plan
to exterminate certain races from the face of Europe.
Many of these became Aufseherins, and many were also conscripted into the concentration
camp system.
But what is the story.
Behind the terrifying female guards of the concentration camps?
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In terms of recruitment, the Nazis targeted female guards from mostly the lower or middle
classes.
The majority of these women had no relevant experience in working in prisons or other
areas similar.
They came from all walks of life, from hairdressers to women who worked on tram cars, former teachers,
nurses and one guard was even an opera singer.
Many women joined the SS retinue because of the financial incentives offered and the fact
they could earn more money working as a guard than they were doing in their normal jobs.
They responded to adverts in newspapers in which women were asked to display their love
for the German Reich and to join the SS Retinue, a support organisation for women of the SS.
As mentioned others were conscripted and were forced into being guards and a number of female
criminals were also recruited and were offered freedom if they served in the camps.
The women were often not treated as fully fledged SS women, and some believed they were
and many belonged to the Waffen SS of the SS-Helferinnen Corp.
In term son tanks, female guards were known mostly as ‘SS Helferin,’ or SS Helper
Women,’ and there were different ranks available.
The highest was the Chief Senior OVerseerr, and the second was a Camp Leader or Lagerfuhrerin.
Next was the Senior Overseer, then a First Guard, Report Leader, Work Recording Leader,
Block Leader and the an Overseer was considered the 11th highest rank.
Many women were considered overseers of Aufeseherin.
There was a lower rank known as the Arrestfuhrerin, or the Arrested Overseer for former convicts.
Whilst inside the camps, many women were known for having relations with other SS men which
was encouraged and Himmler told SS men to regard the women as equals.
A number of women also had relations with prisoners and this was frowned upon and if
this had been discovered then the women were likely to have lost their jobs, pay and also
found themselves imprisoned as they broke the race laws.
Guards such as Irma Grese were known for sleeping with SS men and Wilhelm Derr the Commandant
of the Helmbrechts sub camp was known for having a relationship with the head female
overseer Herta Haase Breitmann Schmidt.
There was also a number of illegal activities committed by many female guards.
A number of them were known for murder and killing prisoners through beatings, but one
example of corruption was Ilse Koch who was known as ‘The Witch of Buchenwald.’
She was married to Karl Koch the Commandant of Buchenwald, and was arrested as she was
charged with embezzling and stealing millions of Reichsmarks from the prisoners.
This confiscated wealth was supposed to be property of Hitler and the Nazi Party, but
the pair had huge building projects built at their camp for their own personal gain.
Ilse Koch was later convicted of war crimes by the Americans.
Ravensbruck Concentration Camp was known for being an all female camp in which 132,000
women passed through the barbed wire fences.
It was here where many women were sent to learn how to become guards, and they were
taught by experienced members of staff such as Maria Mandel how to inflict a reign of
terror onto the inmates.
Ravensbruck did have a number of male guards and members of staff, but over 4000 female
overseers were trained there the women stayed here before they were then sent to other camps.
Many of those trained at Ravensbruck went on to senior positions elsewhere, and many
of the women became block overseers who would patrol with their dogs and whips and would
oversee the living quarters.
Ravensbruck in particular was very tough, and one guard was known as ‘The Beast of
Ravensbruck’ for her terrifying treatment.
One inmate summed up the treatment there saying, ‘They didn't shoot the women.
We were to die of misery, hunger and exhaustion...when we arrived at Ravensbrück, it was the worst.
The first thing I saw was a cart with all the dead piled on it.
Their arms and legs hanging out, and mouths and eyes wide open.
They reduced us to nothing.
We didn't even feel like we had the value of cattle.
You worked and you died.’
At the end of the Second World War, many women were transferred from work forces in factories
in the German Labour Exchange and were trained as guards.
Training also took place at camps such as Asuchwitz, Flossenburg, Gross Rosen, Stutthof
and Mauthausen.
They were sent to these camps to learn from all over Germany, but as the Second World
War was coming to an end a number of these were arrested by liberators.
Those who had only just come to the camps were often treated more leniently by the courts
and escaped any severe punishment for crimes, but along with these women were a number of
horrific and savage former guards who were known for great evil.
Many of these were sentenced to death at the post war trials and were executed.
When Bergen Belsen was liberated, the British arrested Irma Grese who was known as ‘the
beautiful beast’ and she would regularly patrol with her dog and encourage her dog
to attack prisoners.
Grese was also known for her evil in terms of murdering prisoners with her whip and pistol,
and she also was known for having affairs with a number of other guards.
They also at Belsen arrested Johanna Bormann who was known as the Woman with the Dogs or
the Weasel, and she was considered one of the most hated guards in the concentration
camp system.
Many of the women who were executed in the Belsen Trials were sentenced to death for
their murderous antics at not just Belsen, but also at Asuchwitz.
One terrifying female guard was Hermine Braunsteiner who should probably have been sentenced to
death for her murders and crimes of the Holocaust.
She never faced execution, despite it being proven that she was a murderer.
Braunsteiner was known as the Stomping Mare, and was known to have beaten many prisoners
to death, and also have thrown children onto trucks to the gas chambers by their hair.
She was also known for hanging and executing young prisoners, and she once stomped an old
prisoner to death with her jackboots.
It was said of one whipping that, ‘"I watched her administer twenty-five lashes with a riding
crop to a young Russian girl suspected of having tried sabotage.
Her back was full of lashes, but I was not allowed to treat her immediately.’
She involved herself also in selections and sent many women and children to their deaths
in the gas chambers, and she also whipped a number of women to death.
Another woman who worked with Braunsteiner was Getrud Heise, and she was in charge of
500 Hungarian and 300 Polish women at Bremen Obernheide and there was a very high rate
of deaths, with many women being beaten regularly and also many were starved and denied food.
She was later sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for her crimes.
Emma Zimmer was another guard who worked at Auschwitz and she was involved in the selections
of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers.
It was said that she was very feared, and one former prisoner said, ‘"Our supervisor
was an old and mean SS-woman called Emma Zimmer.
She was vicious and dangerous and frightening us constantly with threats, proclaiming in
a sadistic voice, "I will report you and then you will go away, you know where?
Just one way-up the chimney."
We hated her and were scared of her.”
Following the war many women were executed for their involvement in the concentration
camps and the murder and killing process.
At Stutthof many female guards worked, and a number of these including Jenny Wanda Barkmann
was executed on huge gallows in Gdansk in front of a huge crowd.
Lots were executed in public, but more were executed inside of prisons such as Hamelin
and Landsberg.
Those women who were found guilty of murdering or taking part in the selections were usually
sentenced to death, and killed and also those who worked at Auschwitz and did this were
usually killed.
But after the war and in the following decades, women were still being brought to court accused
of being guards and participants in the killings.
After the war, Herta Bothe told her story to the world, and she had been imprisoned
for a number of years.
She was interviewed in 1999 and when asked if she regretted her involvement in the camps
she replied with, ‘"What do you mean?
... I made a mistake, no...
The mistake was that it was a concentration camp, but I had to go to it—otherwise I
would have been put into it myself, that was my mistake."
But many of the women who worked inside the concentration camps were as brutal and as
savage as their male counterparts.
They were known for being murderers, killers and war criminals and were considered some
of the most evil Nazis of the Second World War.
Despite a number being conscripted and forced to work, many of these women wished to further
Hitler’s ideology and wishes for Europe and they were ardent Nazis who saw their work
as fulfilling and also necessary.
Still today there are a number of women who are being searched for and looked for after
they were involved in the concentration camps, and still today a number in their 90s are
sought after.
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