Following the end of the Second World War, a number of war crimes trials took place to
deal with the SS guards and staff who worked at the concentration camps.
At Bergen-Belsen, the British liberators came across a sight of pure horror, with thousands
of unburied bodies and dying people lying around the camp.
As the war turned against the Germans, the prisoners of Belsen grew in their numbers
and the camp became incredibly overcrowded.
Amongst the thousands of emaciated and diseased prisoners, were a number of SS guards and
members of staff who remained with the prisoners to ensure order was upheld.
One of the most striking guards arrested was Hertha Bothe, a woman who stood at 6 feet
3 inches tall, and towered above many of the soldiers.
She was regarded as a beast of a woman, and she was also guilty of violent outbursts which
she imposed onto prisoners.
She was never executed for her crimes at camps such as Bergen Belsen, but what did she do
inside of the concentration camp system?
Join us today as we look at, ‘The HORRIFIC Crimes of Hertha Bothe, the Giant of Belsen.’
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Hertha Bothe was born on the 3rd January 1921 in Mecklenburg.
It’s believed that as a young girl she joined the League of German Girls, the youth group
established by the nazis in which girls were taught how to raise children.
This was done to ensure that they had as many children for Hitler’s Reich, and also in
this group they were taught how to keep a good house and many domestic tasks.
She helped her father in his wood shop also as a young girl, but it was clear that she
was indoctrinated like so many young people with the ways of the Nazi regime.
In September 1942, Bothe became the SS Aufseherin at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.
She was around 21 years old, and she had gone to Ravensbruck to learn how to be a concentration
camp guard.
Many women who became infamous for their horrific treatment of prisoners such as Irma Grese
and Maria Mandel all worked at Ravensbruck and were schooled in brutality and violence
here.
Bothe then was also placed on a four week training course and she was then sent to the
Stutthof Camp near to Danzig to work as an overseer.
Whilst she was at Stutthof, she gained the nickname the Sadist of Stutthof and was known
around the camp for her savage beating of prisoners.
She stayed at Stutthof for around two years.
When she was arrested after the war, she was questioned at trial with regards to her brutality
and violent side.
She was asked, ‘Have you ever beaten anybody at all?’
She replied, ‘Yes with my hands, because they stole wood and other things, I have never
beaten anyone with a stick, a piece of wood or a rubber truncheon.’
She was 6 feet 3 tall, and when standing in her jackboots would have been an intimidating
figure for anyone.
It was claimed also that she walked around the camp with a pistol, and she would regularly
beat and hit prisoners sometimes very severely.
She claimed later at trial that she had nothing to do with prisoners at Stutthof, but this
was of course a lie.
She then transferred in July 1944 to Bromberg East sub camp, before she accompanied a death
march of women in January 1945 from Poland to Bergen Belsen.
As the Soviets were advancing towards German lands and pushing back the German forces,
the concentration camps were evacuated and staff were brought back to camps such as Bergen
Belsen.
Belsen’s numbers swelled heavily and the camp could not cope, and the healthcare and
food given to prisoners was non existent.
Disease was rampant and typhus was killing hundreds each day, and in months dozens of
thousands of prisoners were being killed by the conditions at Belsen.
Bothe stood out from the other female guards because she wore civilian shoes much of the
time and still towered above the rest.
At her trial, she went into detail about what she did at Belsen.
She arrived without any duties and was then appointed to the bath house, and then she
became in charge of the Wood Kommando, a group of prisoners who were tasked with gathering
wood.
She said, ‘There were 60 internees in a.
Kommando which was under the charge of an SS man, and I was the Aufseherin.
The Internees were practically all Russians, and were in quite good states of health.
Big tree trunks were fetched from the woods into the camp and the male internees cut them
into smaller parts, and the women into even lesser parts.
Whilst I was working with this commando, I had nothing to do with other prisoners.’
She claimed that she never had a prisoner whilst monitoring the wood commando, but disturbing
accounts came out about her violence.
It was claimed by one prisoner that Bothe was seen beating prisoners with her bare hands
at Belsen, and that she beat a prisoner to death who had been working in the vegetable
detachment, presumably for stealing food.
The women in her wood collecting detachment were given more food because of the manual
labourer but it was not enough to sustain the prisoners under he command.
She claimed that she dealt with prisoners stealing from the wood detachment, and she
said that when she caught someone, she slapped them on the face.
She claimed she did not use a stick or other weapons, but accusations about this came and
it was said she brutalised some women who were caught with wood in their pockets.
She was known for beating a prisoner to death who was taking turnip peelings from a camp
kitchen, and claimed that in the final days of the camp there were no dead bodies lying
around the camp, which was of course a lie.
She was seen as a ruthless overseer, who forced women and men to work incredibly hard with
the threat of violence looming over them.
When Belsen was liberated, she was forced to help clean up the bodies and corpses in
the camp, and she told later of the horror in doing this.
She said she was not allowed to wear gloves to do this, which made her fear for getting
typhus.
Bothe also claimed that the bodies were so rotten that limbs would come away when they
were moved, and she complained of a bad back from doing so which was rather disgusting
considering she was part of the infrastructure that allowed such brutality to go on.
She was then arrested and was imprisoned at Celle prison, before she was taken to trial.
At the Belsen Trials, the judges showed her for being a ruthless person, who would relish
in hitting prisoners but she maintained her stance that she had never beaten anyone with
a rod, stick or any instrument.
This was disputed, as there was evidence that she battered a Hungarian Jew named Eva to
death with a wooden block, and another prisoner testified that Bothe shot two prisoners for
unknown reasons Wirth her pistol.
The evidence behind this was shaky, and nothing was proven which ultimately spared Hertha
Bothe going to the gallows.
Despite this she was a violent woman and was part of the sadistic SS guard system at one
of the worst concentration camps.
As she had also not worked at Auschwitz where horrendous crimes and mass murder was also
committed, this is also what spared her a death sentence, when compared to guards such
as Irma Grese.
Hertha Bothe was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for her involvement in the Holocaust, and
was released early on the 21st December 1951 alongside a number of other female guards
who were captured at Belsen.
Hertha Bothe had a reputation inside of the concentration camps for being a huge brute
of a woman who would inflict violence onto prisoners whenever she felt like it.
Ultimately she was spared execution because of the fact she had not worked at Auschwitz
also, and that the evidence about her murdering prisoners was her testimony versus a witnesses.
What is shocking is that when she committed all of these acts of brutality, she was roughly
only 24 years old, which shows how indoctrinated the young adults were within Hitler’s Germany.
Hertha Bothe lived until the year 2000 when she died at the age of 79, and she claimed
in her later years that she was forced to go and work in a concentration camp.
She claimed that, ‘Did I make a mistake?
No.
The mistake was that it was a concentration camp ,but I had to go to it, otherwise I would
have been put into it myself.
That was my mistake.’
Why Hertha Bothe would have been imprisoned inside one of these camps is a mystery, but
she did not deny or show much compassion for the people she had tortured, and the crimes
she had committed.
Today many of Hertha Bothe’s crimes remain untold.
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