The largest and deadliest concentration camp of the Third Reich was Auschwitz, and it was
a huge complex in which over 1 million people were imprisoned. The crimes of the camp were
endless and still today are being uncovered, and the guards of Auschwitz were known for
their immense brutality. Of the thousands of SS guards that worked there, only a very
small number would ever be brought to justice, and the former commandant Rudolf Hoess would
later be executed on a specially built gallows inside the camp he once oversaw. But amongst
the guard staff were a number of women, or Aufsehrinnen who exhibited such brutality
and evil at Auschwitz, and they then went to work at other site too. A number of women
were executed at the end of the war for their work at Auschwitz, and their antics there
condemned thousands of women to death inside of the gas chambers. Join us today as we look
at the evil female guards of Auschwitz, and as always to support our channel, please make
sure to subscribe.
As Auschwitz grew to become a huge and colossal complex, 1.3 million people were sent there.
This included hundreds of thousands of women and children who would suffer greatly. Once
the prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, selections would take place in which SS guards would
send people to their deaths. Women and children often suffered greater as they had less of
a chance of being admitted into the camp, as they were considered not as able to conduct
back breaking work as men were. Because of this thousands of women were sent to their
deaths with their children as soon as they arrived at Auschwitz, and many of these were
selected by the female guards. The Aufseherin were a collection of around 5000 women that
worked at the concentration camps, and in 1942 the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz.
They were often trained at Ravensbruck which was an all female camp, and they learned under
brutal women such as Maria Mandl, who would be executed at the end of the war. As mass
deportations continued, there was a need to send female guards to Auschwitz as the female
camp was filling up. It’s believed that around 200 women worked at Auschwitz, and
they were some of the most sadistic guards. A number of these were in cahoots with SS
guards, and would become known for their sadism.
Around 30% of the registered inmates of Auschwitz were women, and the first mass transport from
Ravensbruck consisted of 999 non Jewish German women. These women were classed as criminals,
and political prisoners and they were considered the founders of the women’s camp. But along
with the women from Ravensbruck came a large number of female guards. The commandant Rudolf
Hoss wrote, ‘it was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over
whom they exercised power, Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them.’ That same
day another 1000 women arrived from Slovakia, and it was led by Adolf Eichmann, and over
the next few days more women arrived at Auschwitz. They were held in blocks 1-10 at Auschwitz
I, but then from the 6th August 1942 13,000 women were transferred to the new women’s
camp in Auschwitz II Birkenau, the main extermination site. One inmate wrote of the shame and humiliation
of their arrival at the camp, she said ‘...They told us to get undressed and they shaved us.
They shaved my beautiful blonde hair and my two sisters' hair and we were standing naked
before the soldiers and for me it was a shock because I was a religious girl. I never was
undressed in front of a man and they made all kind[s] of dirty jokes about our bodies
and they looked at us and I was standing there shivering, naked, without hair on my body,
and I was exposed. I felt like an animal... and the way they treated us already there
was so terrible.’
This had 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks, and it was later extended, but conditions
at the women’s camp were horrific. They were often considered worse than the male
prison, and one former inmate of the women’s camp said, ‘There was one latrine for thirty
to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day.
We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered
from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes,
which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible
smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks
thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched
on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another.’
For the women prisoners of Auschwitz, the day would begin earlier for the men, when
the female block leaders would sound a gong and then drive the prisoners from their beds
with sticks to make them wash and use the toilet quickly. The sanitation of the camp
was shocking, and there were few latrines and a lack of water, and each washhouse had
to serve thousands of inmates. They were forced to work very hard, and if they could not then
they would be shot. A number of women were also then sent for medical experiments inside
of Block 10 at Auschwitz I, under the gaze of evil doctors such as Joseph Mengele. But
who were the guards who worked there and staffed the female camps? One of the most infamous
female guards of Auschwitz was Johanna Bormann, a woman who became known as the weasel or
the woman with the dogs. She was a brute who would patrol Auschwitz with her large dogs
and she would then encourage these animals to attack and maim prisoners. These animals
did kill the women and Bormann was later executed for her crimes. One of the most senior women
to work there was Maria Mandel who it was believed was responsible for the deaths of
over 500,000 prisoners. Mandel was known as The Beast, and she took part in the selections
of prisoners who were sent to the gas chambers. Even if a prisoner looked at her she would
then take them straight to the gas chambers, or they were executed straight away. She also
signed inmate lists and signed off on those people who were executed in the gas chambers.
One inmate said of her evil that, ‘During these selections, defendant Mandl tortured
the prisoners in a cruel way, beating the women, the men and the children with a whip
and kicking them blindly.
She would tear the children from the arms of their mothers, and when the mothers tried
to come near the children and defend them, Mandl would beat the mothers horribly and
kick them. I saw – right next to me – a young, 20-year-old mother, who tried to go
near her two-year-old child thrown onto the car, and Mandl kicked and beat her so cruelly
that she didn't get up any more. I held my four-year-old child by the hand. The defendant
Mandl approached me, tore my child away from me and threw the child onto a still empty
car so that the child got wounded in the face and began to cry and call me, but I was put
aside to the group that wasn't loaded onto the cars. When I tried to reach the child,
crying on the car, Mandl began to beat me so cruelly that I fell. Mandl continued to
kick me although I was lying on the ground, and she knocked out almost all of my teeth
with her shoe.’ Another inmate continued with the descriptions of her evil treatment,
and they said, ‘In my block [Block 15], 700 women were chosen out of 1,000; in the
whole camp (that is, in lager A, where we stayed in the so-called quarantine), Mandl
selected several thousand women, and all of them – naked – were crammed into one block
no. 25,[4] where they stayed for seven days and nights without food or water. On the night
of 27 September, they were transported to the crematorium. For the period of these seven
days, we heard horrible screams and groans issuing from that block, and when the women
were taken to the crematorium, the block elder, a Slovakian woman named Cyla (who had already
been tried in Czechoslovakia), told us that after those seven days there were more corpses
than living people in that block, and that almost all of them had bitten fingers and
breasts and plucked out eyes. During these seven days, if any prisoner wanted to carry
water or some food to that block, she was arrested there and perished along with the
rest. The above-described selection was carried by the defendant Mandl in person, with the
help from kapos: Stenia, Leo and Maria, all of them cruel and used to torturing the
prisoners in a horrible manner.’
Irma Grese was considered the Beautiful Beast, of the Hyena of Auschwitz. She was a young
woman who at the age of 22 would go to her execution inside of Hamelin Prison. She became
the youngest woman to die in the 20th century under British law, but she was known for being
an evil young woman who would sadistically murder and kill. She would guard the women
and men with her pistol, and she would shoot indiscriminately a them whilst holding her
large dog. She also took part in the selections for the inmates at Auschwitz who went to the
gas chambers. Elisabeth Volkenrath was also just 26 when she went to her death and execution,
and she was despite her age rather senior at Auschwitz, and she would sent many people
in selections to their deaths. She was promoted and she was considered one of the most senior
women of the concentration camp system and she oversaw all of the women at Auschwitz.
Margot Dreschel was also rather senior, and she was the head of all camp offices in Auschwitz.
One prisoners stated of her appearance, ‘camp leader DReschel was there, her buck teeth
sticking out, even when her mouth is closed.’ Other inmates described her ugly looks, and
they testified about her beatings. She would disguise herself as a doctor wearing a white
coat and gloves, and carry out selections. It was said of her crimes, ‘Once Mrs Drechaler
came, with her huge bloodhound, undressed everybody, took away even our shoes, and we
had to stand for hours completely naked, none of us were thinking of life any more, the
gas chamber seemed unavoidable.’
There were many more women who worked at Dachau and became notorious for their evil. But most
of those who were executed at the end of the war were women who had taken part actively
in the selections, and they would have been the ones who condemned others to death. IT
was this that was the nail in the coffin for these women, for example Elizabeth Lukpa beat
women and children and also condemned many, and she was later 3 years after the war came
to an end condemned. But there were dozens more who were never brought to justice for
their crimes of Auschwitz, many women never saw the inside of a court room for their evil
crimes at the camp, and their stories and activities inside the largest concentration
camp went with them to the grave. As the camp was being liberated, many women fled and also
many women saw themselves sent to other concentration camps, for example Grese, Bormann and Volkenrath
would end up at Bergen-Belsen, and for them before the hangman got them, their justice
was to also help clean up the evils of the camp. But the horrific truth of the female
guards of Aushcwitz is that many of them sent prisoners to their deaths each day without
a care, and they were complicit in the executions and murders of over 1 million people.
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