following the end of the second world
war there were many different war crimes
trials that aimed to bring the
perpetrators of atrocities and crimes
against humanity to justice
when the british army liberated
bergen-belsen concentration camp as the
third reich fell they would come across
a disgusting scene of depravity and
suffering
ten thousand very bodies lay all around
the camp and there were sixty thousand
people who were suffering and many were
starving and dying from diseases such as
typhus which was running riot throughout
amongst the prisoners were a number of
ss guards who were responsible for the
running of the camp and they were then
put to work in burying those who had
died inside of belson
amongst the guards was annalisa coleman
a young woman who was known for her
brutality and barbarism towards the
prisoners
however after the second belson trial
she was not sentenced to death and
instead was sentenced to time in prison
despite it being established that she
was involved in many violent beatings
it was claimed by her defense that she
did not take her life but her brutality
was not in question
join us today as we look at the
disgusting crimes of annalisa coleman
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annelisa coleman was born on the 1st of
march 1921 inside of hamburg
her father george was a masonic leader
and it's assumed that she had a normal
life growing up inside of hitler's
germany
it's likely that she would have joined
the league of german maidens and would
have in this group been involved in
various activities that the group
participated in
they aimed to train women to become good
mothers and mothers who would provide
hitler with as many children as possible
for his third reich
inside of this group girls also learn
domestic roles and jobs such as how to
keep a good house and cookery whilst the
boys joined the hitler youth where they
completed military drills for a career
in the armed forces
annalisa was an ardent nazi and on the
1st of april 1940 inside of hamburg she
became a member of the party at this
time she was working as a conductor on
the hamburg streetcar system and she
lived with her parents until the 30th of
october 1944
but on the 4th of november 1944 she was
conscripted into a role which would take
her into the depths of the nazi
concentration camps
as the war continued for the germans
they conscripted different people into
different roles and the military to
fight their enemies
there is some debate as to whether she
was forced to become a guard or whether
she actually chose of her own free will
as she joined the ss women's auxiliary
by doing this she knew what she was
going to be let into and before a short
period of training in which she was
schooled into how to instill a reign of
fear and terror coleman was appointed to
become an officer in or female guard
inside of the noongar concentration camp
specifically she first worked at the new
grabbing subcamp where over 500 women
prisoners were kept close to her
hometown of hamburg
nungamer itself was a large
concentration camp in which 106 000
prisoners would pass through its barbed
wire fences
and almost 43 000 people were killed
inside of the camp
it was known for its terrible food
rations and the portions offered for
prisoners were poor quality and not
enough to sustain especially with the
hard labor that was administered there
the camp had a policy of extermination
through labour where prisoners would be
worked so hard that they would die from
the horrific unsanitary hard and
terrible conditions
the death rate at the camp was very high
and as the war turned following
stalingrad a number of soviet pows were
sent there
the gods here exercised terrible
brutality over the prisoners and
executions and beatings were very common
and would be administered if a prisoner
would not perform enough work
annalisa coleman was transferred
to the slave labor camp of hanbok
tiefstak in march 1945 and she was
involved again in overseeing female
prisoners
but also in march 1945 the prisoners at
the subcamps were being sent on death
marches to places such as berg and
belson
and during one transport a prisoner
train was hit by an air raid killing a
number of prisoners
over the course of the month thousands
of people were transported to get away
from the front lines and to avoid them
falling into soviet hands and along with
the death marches and transports many ss
guards and staff also went
for some reason annelisa coleman cycled
to bergen-belsen and arrived there on
the 8th of april 1945.
now as a god she was known for being
sadistic and violent with prisoners
she would repeatedly whip many different
people including pregnant women
some pregnant women were found with
brutal whipmarks across their faces
because of coleman's brutality and she
would also kick them until they lost
consciousness
in her jack boots she would beat
prisoners to pieces if they did not do
what she asked or were not working hard
enough it was her job at noongamma to
get prisoners working as hard as they
could so they could perish and because
of this she terrorized her work
detachments
during one incident coleman punished a
female prisoner to 30 lashes for
stealing a small piece of bread
she did this a number of times and also
sexually assaulted a number of young
jewish girls
whilst at belson she traded her clothes
in her guard uniform to a prisoner who
gave her a prisoner uniform
here she tried to pass herself off as a
prisoner of belson to evade capture once
a camp was liberated but it did not take
long before she was discovered
within two days she was recognized and
arrested and then was forced to take
part in the huge cleanup operation along
with other guards at belson
coleman was made to take the corpses of
those who had died and bury them inside
of mass graves
the cleanup took a long time before she
was then brought to trial
annelisa coleman was not tried in the
first belson trials alongside the former
commandant years of crammer the beast of
belson or the infamous female guard emma
grazer which was brought to the second
belsen
this took place at luna borg on the 13th
of june 1946 and lasted five days being
presided over by the british military
on trial were a number of defendants and
annalisa was one of those and witnesses
told of her brutality
she was known for carrying her whip and
hitting anyone who was not doing what
they should and also she was known for
abusing female prisoners
coleman also became known for the fact
she would brutalize even the most
vulnerable people
including pregnant women
but one issue at her trial was the fact
that she did not actually take her life
or it was not known and evidence was not
gathered that made her a murderer
she was not found to have participated
in selections sending people to their
deaths inside of gas chambers and there
were no witnesses that came forward that
said that coleman beat someone so badly
that they did die or that she shot
anyone randomly
because of this she was considered a
minor war criminal compared to others
despite being an ardent member of the
nazi party and a person who would
happily brutalize the vulnerable
because of this she was only sentenced
to two years imprisonment but she would
never really serve any time at all for
her crimes
shockingly despite being found guilty of
crimes against humanity because she had
served time in prison before her trial
she was actually bizarrely released on
the day that her trial finished
so a guilty war criminal was happily let
free from the courtroom because of her
pre-trial confinement and incarceration
she would stay in hamburg for a number
of years and then she moved to west
berlin and died at the age of 56 inside
of the german capital
what is bizarre is the fact that
annelisa coleman escaped without any
real punishment
she was an evil woman who would happily
and violently rain down hell with her
whip and her verdict was no real justice
for her victims
coleman was one of many female guards
who ended up at bergen-belsen as a war
turn against the germans and a number
was sentenced to death in the belsen
trials
but compared to these women
coleman received a sentence which was
incredibly lenient and shocking
and today many of her crimes
remain untold
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