The largest and most infamous concentration camp complex used by the Nazis was Auschwitz.
It was a camp of immense cruelty, suffering and killing with an estimated at least 1.1
million people being killed inside of the Auschwitz. It was separated into three main
camps, Auschwitz I the main labour camp, Auschwitz II Birkenau, the extermination complex and
Auschwitz III Monowitz, the labour camp for IG Farben. The stories told by the victims
of the guards who worked there remain harrowing still to this day, and the barbarism exhibited
by some guards was incredibly shocking. After the Second World War, a trial was held that
aimed to bring 41 former staff of Auschwitz to justice. The best known defendants were
the former commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel and Maria Mandel. However there were so many
members of staff who managed to escape and evade the hangman noose. Join us today as
we look at, ‘The Justified Executions of the Female Guards of Auschwitz.’ Remember
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The Auschwitz Trial began on the 24th November 1947, and there were 40 former members of
staff who faced the court in Krakow. However an alarming lack of those staff were women.
Only 5 of the 40 were female, however the stories told by the female prisoners of Auschwitz
talked about the sadistic barbaric treatment that went on inside of the barbed wire fences.
Other former members of staff such as Irma Grese, Johanna Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath
did work at Auschwitz, however they were brought to trial earlier at the Belsen Trials, after
they were captured at the different camp. Many of the female guards of Auschwitz were
transferred to different places throughout the Second World War, and many accompanied
death marches as prisoners were transported further away from the front lines. With this,
many of the female members of staff ran away and hid out in different towns and villages,
leaving the death march to try and evade capture.
The women camp at auschwitz was established following a mass transport of Jewish German
women from Ravensbruck in March 1942. 999 women were transferred first, and eventually
around 30% of the registered inmates of Auschwitz were female. The first women who arrived were
classed as asocial, political and criminal, and they were given serial numbers. As time
went on, the women camp expanded on a huge scale. A new women’s camp was created inside
of Auschwitz II, and initially women were held in blocks 1-10 of Auschwitz I, but the
new women’s camp held thousands. 13,000 were transferred there, and it had 15 brick
barracks, and 15 wooden barracks. Further expansion took place, and the following year
it held over 32,000 women. Along with women, guards were also transferred to Auschwitz.
They were mostly trained at Ravensbruck, a concentration camp exclusively for women and
the guards were taught by horrifically brutal women who’s job it was to make these women
depraved killers who had very little regard for human life.
The conditions in the women’s camp were terrible. In fact there was a point when the
male prisoners entered to establish a hospital there, and at one point there were so many
corpses around they couldn’t distinguish them from the women who were still alive.
The sanitation was terrible, and they were treated awfully. One former inmate once wrote,
‘There was one latring for 30 to 32 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 out turn and
soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off out bodies.
The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals.
We were so close we could not help soiling one another.’ As you can expect, disease
spread very quickly also. Steralisation experiments also took place which affected the women,
with them being carried out in barracks 30. The first female camp Lagerfuhrein was Johanna
Langefeld, and she was later succeeded by Maria Mandel, who was in particular known
for her brutality.
When Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, they found 7000 prisoners alive in the main
camps, as well as hundreds of corpses. They came across the true horrors of Auschwitz
and the fear that the prisoners had. After the war, only 789 individuals who worked at
Auschwitz and its sub camps were ever tried, and 750 received some form on sentence, be
it a death sentence or time in prison. As the years went on, trials were still behind
held and are still held today, with the sentenced becoming more lenient and focussed on time
in prison. In fact even few women were ever brought to trial. At the Auschwitz Trial that
took place in Krakow in 1947, Maria Mandel, Therese Brandl, Hildegard Lachert, Alice Orlowski
and Luise Danz were brought to trial.
The most high profile defendant was Maria Mandel, and she was accused of being complicit
and involved in the mass murder of 500,000 prisoners. During the trial there were many
statements provided by prisoners who told of Mandl’s brutality. For example it was
said, ‘At the ramp in Birkenau, the transport was awaited by Mandl accompanied by SS woman
Margot Dreschel, and as soon as the transport arrived, Mandl carried out a selection, sending
approximately 90% of the transport to the cars which transported these people to the
crematorium. During these selections, Mandl tortured the prisoners beating the women,
the men and children with a whip and kicking them blindly. She would tear the children
from the arms of their mothers, and Mandl would beat the mothers. One young mother tried
to get near her 2 year old child thrown onto the car, and Mandl kicked and beat her so
badly that she didn’t get up anymore.’
The same woman also stated, ‘Mandl began to beat me so cruelly, that I fell. She continued
to kick me, and she knocked out almost all of my teeth.’ Mandl became known as the
beast for her abuse of the prisoners, whipping and kicking them sometimes to death. She often
stood at the gates of the women’s camp, and if any prisoner looked at her, she would
kill them immediately, sending them to the gas chambers. Mandl also signed the inmate
lists sending its estimated 500,000 women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers.
Therese Brandl was a guard who worked inside of Auschwitz II, and she was also known for
taking part in selections in which women and men would be sent to their deaths in the gas
chambers. She was also known for physically assaulting prisoners and even children. She
was even accused of forcing children to stand out in the frost over night, in freezing conditions
which could kill. Another woman brought to trial was Luise Danz, who a Jewish commando
in the camp laundry. She rose throughout the ranks of the camp, but later was transferred
back to Ravensbruck before Auschwitz was liberated. She was known for beating prisoners brutally
with her bull whip, forcing women to stand for hours on end in exhausting roll call in
terrible conditions. Danz was even involved in hanging Prisoners inside of the camp too.
Hildegard Lachard was also brought to trial, and she was known for sadistic behaviour.
She became known as ‘Bloody Brigitte,’ for her cruel treatment. She took part in
many selections, and also set her dog onto prisoners. She would encourage these to rip
the prisoners to pieces, and strike fear into the inmates. Alice Orlowski, was known also
for her terrible behaviour. At other camps she whipped prisoners, and was involved in
taking items and jewellery from prisoners. However it was said as she was posted on a
death march to Auschwitz, her attitude changed during the march, and she displayed some kindness
to some women. It was believed that she knew she would be tried as a war criminal, hence
why she displayed some empathy.
At the Auschwitz Trial, every defendant who faced the judge was found guilty of crimes
against humanity, and 23 death sentences were issued. However only two of the women, Maria
Mandl and Therese Brandl were condemned to die, and were executed by hanging. The other
women were given various sentences in prison, and were made to spend time behind bars. Of
the executions of Mandl and Brandl, these took place on the 28th January 1948 inside
of Krakow Prison. The prison had been one of the most notorious Nazi Prisons in Poland,
and along with the other condemned they were hanged. Maria Mandl herself was the first
of the group to be executed, and at 7:09 am the hangings began inside of the execution
chamber.
Maria along with four other male prisoners was forced to climb a simple step. Then the
noose was secured around her neck, and shortly after a check was done, the stool or step
was removed, and Mandl was left slowly strangling to death. It was said that it took 15 minutes
for all of the first group including Maria Mandl to be classified as dead by the doctor,
with their executions not being instant. Therese Brandl’s execution happened shortly after
too, but these two were the only women executed following the Auschwitz Trials. There were
a number of other female guards who worked at Auschwitz, such as Irma Grese and others
mentioned earlier, but these specifically weren’t executed following a trial centered
wholly around activities inside of Auschwitz. The Belsen Trials in which these were executed
within took into account the crimes of the women who were captured at Belsen.
So despite thousands of guards working inside of Auschwitz, only a small percentage were
sentenced to death. The Auschwitz Trials sought to bring some punishment for the crimes committed
in the horrific camp, but many of the former staff remained unpunished.
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