In the winter of 1947, the Polish tribunal tried the former staff of Auschwitz concentration
camp - the largest German extermination camp located in Poland. Out of 41 defendants,
36 were men and 5 were women. Gruesome testimonies revealed that female guards were often even
more sadistic than their male colleagues. One of such guards was Hildegard Lächert.
Hildegard Lächert was born on 20 January 1920 in Berlin and she was a nurse by profession.
She was 22 and a mother of two children when she started her infamous career as a guard in
Majdanek concentration camp in October 1942. In Majdanek, Lächert was known as the “ bloody
Brigitte “ because she used to beat the prisoners until blood appeared.
She was a sadist who beat the prisoners for no reason,
and she drank a lot. And the more she drank, the more sadistic her behavior became.
Hildegard Lächert. was accused of incredible atrocities.
On one occasion Lächert found a female prisoner with cigarette. She beat the prisoner so much
that the poor woman was covered in bruises and her whole head was swollen. The only reason
Lächert did not kill her was because one of her SS colleagues came and made her stop.
On other occasion Lächert was seen putting a stick in the woman’s vagina because she
was looking for hidden valuables. This happened outside in the camp’s garden and the poor woman
was screaming so horribly that other inmates ran away because they could not stand to watch.
The poor Jewish woman was left lying covered in blood.
When one inmate who had tried to escape was being hanged during the roll-call, Lächert was seen
laughing all the time and when the prisoners turned their heads away, Lächert turned their
faces in the direction of the execution site. She also once beat the prisoner so badly that
a poor woman was left with a permanent scar where hair could not properly grow anymore.
On one other occasion Lächert was seen beating a camp inmate using her whip with an iron ball
in the end and kicking him with her iron-shod boots until the victim no longer looked human.
When she saw two young Greek women cleaning toilets, Lächert threw them inside and laughed
as they drowned in feces as they swallowed it. Another time, in front of other female prisoners,
Lächert sent her furious hungry dog on a pregnant Polish girl whom the dog tore apart.
Lächert did everything possible to make the life of the prisoners
in the camp as miserable as possible. In March 1943 when it was freezing cold,
she ordered the prisoners working in the garden to take off their sweaters
even though the camp authorities had allowed them to wear them.
Among her numerous victims some were even small children.
At first, Lächert acted kindly to them offering them candy with a sweet voice.
Then she would throw them on a truck going into gas chamber without remorse.
Lächert also participated in selections of female prisoners for gas chambers.
In August 1943 she left Majdanek and later worked in Płaszów and
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.
After the war, Hildegard Lächert was captured and tried at the Auschwitz trial where she
finally faced justice for her inhuman crimes but unlike her colleagues such as Maria Mandl,
she was not sentenced to death but 15 years imprisonment.
Her 15 years imprisonment lasted only 10 years as she was released from prison in
1957 and allegedly became a cleaning lady in a brothel. Her dark past never stopped haunting her.
Alongside Alice Orlowski and Hermine Braunsteiner, Lächert faced the Third
Majdanek trial held between 1975 and 1981 for the crimes she had committed during the war.
She was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, but she never had to serve this sentence as her 10
years imprisonment in Poland and 5 years she spent in custody awaiting the trial were allowed for.
She died in Berlin in 1995 of natural causes
at the age of 75. There were no tears shed for Hildegard Lächert.
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