Under the cover of the Second World War, the Nazis instigated a reign of terror over the
millions of prisoners who found themselves within the barbed wire fences of the concentration camps.
The true horror and barbarism that occurred in camps such as Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen and Dachau.
Following the end of World War 2, a number of trials took place to bring the perpetrators of the
Holocaust to justice, and these sought to bring some punishment for the evil that had occurred.
The most high profile trials were the Nuremberg Trials,
in which many remaining members of Hitler’s Nazi Government such as Hermann Goring,
Rudolf Hess and Ernst Kaltenbrunner were brought in front of a judge.
However other trials took place to bring specifically the evil staff at the
concentration camps to face up to their crimes, and one of these was the Ravensbruck Trials.
These took place to bring those guards and camp officials from Ravensbruck,
a predominantly female camp to court to face up to what they had done.
In total 38 defendants were tried in the seven trials, and 21 of these were women. Today we
look at one evil woman who was sentenced to death for her despicable role in the Holocaust,
and in particular for the barbarism that she inflicted upon prisoners at Ravensbruck. So join
us today as we look at the Justified Execution of Vera Salvequart, the evil Nurse of Ravensbruck.
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Born on the 26th November 1919 in Czechoslovakia, little is known about Vera Salvequart’s early
life. She was brought up by Czech and German parents, and after completing
a period of schooling, she began to train as a nurse having moved to Leipzig and Germany.
At this time, Hitler had seized control of the country, and was instilling his dictatorship and
Nazi Regime onto the country. It was this and his requirement to expand his Reich or Empire,
that signalled in the Second World War as he invaded Poland, France
and large landmasses within Europe. One thing that isn’t as commonly addressed though
is the state of Germany before the war broke out. As Hitler seized control, he instilled a number
of rather severe rules and regulations onto the population, and many of these centred around race,
and aimed to persecute and isolate many of the minorities within Germany including the Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, which came around as the Nazis wanted to instil their ideas
about race into law. They championed the Aryan race as the superior German race, and claimed
that Jews threatened the German people. The laws outlined how someone was classed as Jewish and
in the years that followed, more restrictions and rules were passed to isolate and segregate jews.
One of these rules in particular sent Vera Salvequart into a concentration camp herself.
In 1941, she failed to reveal to the Gestapo the identity of her Jewish boyfriend, and this
was seen as a rather serious offence and for this she was sent to Flossenburg Concentration Camp for
10 months. This was a rather serious crime within Nazi Germany, but her time in prison did not teach
her much, as within a few months of her securing her freedom, she was arrested yet again for having
another relationship with a Jewish man, and was then sentenced to another 2 years in prison.
So despite being around the age of 23, Vera had found herself in prison twice,
however things would get worse for her. On the 6th December 1944, whilst in prison she helped
5 officers who had been held captive escape, and following this more severe punishment
was inflicted upon her. Because of this she was sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp,
as a prisoner. Ravensbruck was seen during the Holocaust as the main female camp, and it was
found north of Berlin. It has been estimated that around 132,000 women passed through the camp,
around 50,000 of these from Poland which made up the majority of the prisoners. Around 80% of the
prisoners were political prisoners, and many were forced to undergo hard labour and work as slaves.
The death rate inside Ravensbruck was rather high, with around 50,000 people dying inside the camps
walls, either from execution, starvation, disease or some form of experimentation.
The conditions at the camp were rather terrible, however Vera Salvequart found herself inside the
camp herself as a prisoner. So how could her execution be justified? Well, at the time,
there was a shortage of SS personnel inside of the concentration camps, as many were forced to
leave their posts to go and fight to try and repel the advancing Allies and the Red Army.
We’re talking about 1944, when the tide of the war was severely turning against the Germans,
and because of this the Germans were forced to sometimes use specifically German prisoners
to work inside the camps, supervising other inmates.
As Vera Salvequart had trained previously as a nurse before the conflict,
she was chosen to serve in the camps medical wing as a nurse during her stay at Ravensbruck.
During her day working in the camps infirmary, she would regularly oversee the gassings of thousands
of sick and ill women. Her role inside of the camp truly was horrific. She was first required to fill
out the death certificates for the dead who had either perished inside of the camps gas chambers,
or had died in the hospital wing of disease. Then she would inspect the corpses for either
gold teeth which were then ripped out and then melted down to help finance the German war effort.
It seems that as time went on Vera seemed to enjoy her sick work,
and that she seemed to take a more proactive role in the execution and killing of inmates.
To save the hassle of transporting prisoners who were due to be murdered in the gas chambers,
simply for saving time and man power, Vera Salvequart often took matters into her own hands.
She regularly poisoned prisoners to simply avoid the effort of taking them to the gas chambers,
and she was known to have murdered a number of prisoners inside of the camp
in this way. Former prisoners at her trial told of her murderous ways, and she was said to have
administered a poison powder to around 50 of the prisoners, with a dozen of them dying.
At trial, a witness would describe how Salvequart used to administer the poison to prisoners.
She said, how she used to tell the inmates that they were to be sent on a transport,
and that they needed to take the powder to gain strength. If they refused they were then given
a lethal injection by Salvequart, and then these women would fall into a deep sleep and
then stop breathing. It was said that at a time she would do this to up to 5 different prisoners.
So the woman who initially was a prisoner inside of Ravensbruck, very quickly turned into an evil
member of staff who inflicted much suffering onto others. She stated, ‘I remember that
the sick had no trust in the beginning because they thought I took part in the mass murdering.
I must say that in their place, I would have had the same impression. I was locked up without
interruption, couldn’t go anywhere alone, and all they knew about me was that I lived there where
they murdered so many people. Additionally the prisoners saw when I entered the washroom,
they heard the women scream and therefore assumed I was part of the mass murder.’ So she claimed she
was also a prisoner inside the camp, which technically was true and she did have her
freedom restricted, but she chose to take her work further and to contribute to the final solution.
Vera Salvequart also claimed that she acted in a pleasant manner towards prisoners,
and claimed that she allegedly saved some childrens lives by swapping their ID numbers out
with an already dead inmates. She claimed to have hidden one child, and fed him and because of this
she was then threatened with being sent to the gas chambers. Then apparently some prisoners disgused
her as a male prisoner, and she kept this up until the end of the war, however this is disputed.
Ravensbruck was liberated in April 1945, and with this she was captured and then turned over
to a military tribunal and the Ravensbruck Trials. At trial she stated that a former
lover of hers was a British spy, and she said that she had stolen plans for the V2 Rocket
and then handed them over to the British through her spy boyfriend.
Because of this she asked for clemency, and was granted a slight break before this was denied.
It was clear she was a member of staff at the concentration camps despite also being a prisoner
who took her work seriously, and who went out of her way to murder innocent people, thus
contributing to the final solution, and for this she was sentenced to death. On the 26th June 1947,
she was taken from her cell in Hamelin Prison into the execution chamber. There to carry out
her execution was Albert Pierrepoint, who had previously met with Vera Salvequart to calculate
her height, weight and the drop required to snap her neck. On the day of her execution,
there were 13 prisoners to be hanged that day and she was the first. Inside the execution cell, a
double gallows had been created to hang prisoners simulateously, and at around 9am Vera was led
into the chamber flanked by guards. Her identity was confirmed, and then she was ushered up the
stairs of the gallows where she met Pierrepoint again, as he placed a black hood over her head.
Pierrepoint then fastened the noose around her neck, and within minutes of her entering
the chamber, the trapdoor was released, and Vera Salvequart plunged to her death.
The story of Vera Salvequart is a rather interesting one.
A lady who previously was a nurse, then found herself imprisoned inside a concentration camp,
and then eventually became a murderer inside of Ravensbruck.
It was clear she helped to kill a number of prisoners, and even administered the
poison herself, and for this its easy to see why the courts found her guilty at trial.
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