Throughout World War II, there were many horrific and brutal women who became female guards inside of the concentration camps. Many were known for driving prisoners to their deaths, carrying out public executions themselves, and for causing such misery. At the end of the conflict, many of these women were brought to war crimes trials, and they tried to protest their innocence.
But the evidence of evil stacked up against them. At the Bellson trials, a number of young women were sent to the gallows because of their actions. And also at the Schuto trials, a number of female guards who were in just their 20s were executed in front of a crowd of over 20,000 people. Many other female guards were condemned within the confines of prison cells and execution chambers.
But the actions of women shocked the world when they heard about their crimes. Many thought that women would not have been capable of some of the most horrific stories that emerged from camps such as Ashvitz. In this video, we look at the executions of many of them and look at what happened within the execution chambers that brought them to justice.
At the end of World War II, when the Allies liberated many concentration camps, they discovered something they never expected to see. They found many female guards who had fearsome reputations and brutal streets. Many of these women began the Second World War as ordinary civilians who had jobs like nurses, hairdressers, and even models.
But as the influence of the Nazi party increased, many women sought jobs inside of the concentration camps. Here they could dulge into their darker sides and wield immense power over helpless and suffering people. Women such as Jenny Wonder Bachmann, Irma Graaser, and Elizabeth Falcanrath turned into beasts within the camps, and at the end of the conflict, they were brought to trials, and the courtroom were disgusted to hear about their crimes.
These women had sent thousands to their deaths inside the gas chambers, had taken lives with their bare hands, and even encouraged their dogs to maul prisoners. For these reasons, it might seem simple and straightforward why female concentration camp guards were executed at the end of World War II.
But why else did this happen? The situation was actually much more complex than you probably ever thought. As the Nazis increased their strangle hold over Germany, the head of the paramilitary organization, the SS, Hinrich Himmler, ordered the construction of a specific women’s concentration camp. These expanded and many people had found themselves arrested and prisoners of the Nazis for opposing them and holding different political views and women all over Germany were being arrested for voicing their discontent.
The largest all female camp of Ravensbrook opened in May 1939 and this served as a central camp for female prisoners. To staff these sites, the SS wanted mainly women to serve as guards, and some were constricted into working there. Others volunteered and were lured into the idea of working within these brutal sites by the promise of consistently good pay, the possibility of promotion, and the option to serve their Reich and dictator.
Many women who became camp guards moved from the BDM, the League of German Maidens, the youth group for teenage girls that was set up, and this continued the brainwashing the young women were receiving. This group turned young, skeptical women into hardened Nazis. But as the Second World War turned against the Germans, many guards who worked inside of the expanded concentration camps were sent to fight on the front lines to repel the Allied advancements, and women were drafted in to help out.
Many received short training stints, but they were then during this schooled in how to become monsters. They were taught how to keep the inmates in submission and how to terrorize them. Inside the camps, women were responsible for overseeing the women’s barracks and they often shot and tortured prisoners and also carried out public executions in roll yards.
But why specifically was the gallows or an execution sought for female guards at the end of World War II? At the end of the conflict, Allied investigators found a huge amount of evidence showing that certain female guards had taken part in beatings, torture, starvation policies, abuses of prisoners, and also selections of inmates who were then sent to the gas chambers.
Much of this evidence came directly from survivors of the camps. And because of this, some women were arrested and were put on trial for war crimes. One of the main reasons these women were then executed was because witnesses and evidence directly linked them to acts of murder and violence. Survivors described guards whipping prisoners, kicking inmates to death, setting dogs on people, and helping send inmates to the gas chambers.
Liberated prisoners gave testimony to Allied investigators almost immediately after the camps were freed. In many cases, multiple witnesses independently described the same female guard committing acts of cruelty. Prosecutors also used camp records, photographs, medical reports, and physical evidence gathered from the camps.
Some guards became especially notorious because survivors remembered them so clearly years later. Their behavior inside of these sites made them very feared figures amongst the prisoners. The involvement of women in the concentration camps did shock many after the war. In the 1940s, many societies still viewed women primarily as caregivers or mothers.
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And this was what the Nazis wanted from women inside of Germany. They wanted them to have as many children as possible for Hitler and the Reich. But as labor shortages came to a head, women entered the camps to work in large numbers. The idea inside allied nations that women could willingly participate in mass murder horrified the public.
Because of this, female guards like Irma Graasa often attracted enormous media attention during postwar trials. Newspapers frequently described them as sadistic and monstrous. Female guards sometimes became infamous symbols of Nazi cruelty because people found it difficult to reconcile traditional views of women with the brutality which was uncovered inside the camps.
The fact they were women also did not excuse them execution and death. They were tried as criminals regardless of their gender and this was why they were not given more lenient treatment. One of the most famous postwar trials was the Bellson trials which was held by the British military in 1945. The trial focused on staff from Bergen Bellson concentration camp and those who had worked at Ashvitz.
The best known female defendant was Emma Graasar. She was only in her early 20s, but already had developed a reputation for extreme cruelty. Survivors accused her of beating prisoners, carrying a whip, shooting inmates, and participating in selections for the gas chambers. Grazer, despite her age, too, was found guilty and was executed by hanging in December 1945 alongside other female guards, Yuanna Borman and Elizabeth Falcanra.
Grace’s execution was a key moment in legal history as she was condemned as a female war criminal, something which was incredibly rare, but it was equally justified because of her actions. Female guards were also prosecuted in trials connected to the concentration camp. Several women were sentenced to death and were publicly executed in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Poland after being convicted of crimes against prisoners.
These executions were carried out publicly because the authorities wanted to demonstrate that those responsible for camp atrocities were being punished. Large crowds attended some of the executions due to the intense anger felt after the war. But the legal basis for these executions was that guards had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Prosecutors argued that concentration camps were part of a massive system of persecution, forced labor, torture, and murder. If guards knowingly participated in that system, especially through direct abuse or murder, they should be held criminally responsible. In some cases, prosecutors argued that simply working willingly in the camps showed participation in mass murder because the purpose of the camp was widely understood by staff.
When Allied troops liberated sites such as Bellson, they discovered horrific scenes. Thousands of bodies lay unburied, survivors were starving, and disease spread throughout the camps. Photographs and news rail footage shocked the world. There was enormous pressure on governments and military authorities to punish those responsible quickly.
Female guards captured directly in the camps became highly visible targets of public anger because they’ve been part of the very system that ordinary people were now seeing for the first time. As mentioned, many were actually beaten to death by prisoners and also allied soldiers who encompass this anger. Although some female guards were executed mostly through hanging, most of them were not.
Thousands of women who had worked in the concentration camp systems, but only a relatively small number received a death sentence. Many were given prison sentences instead, and others were released after relatively short periods. Some escaped punishment completely, especially during the later decades of the Cold War when interest in prosecuting lower ranking personnel declined.
Courts also varied in how they judged responsibility. Some trials in the immediate postwar years were very severe, but later courts often demanded more precise evidence directly linking individuals to murder. The trials of the female concentration camp guards helped establish the principle that women could be held equally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Gender did not protect individuals from prosecution if evidence showed that they had taken part in atrocities. For survivors of the camps, these trials and executions represented an attempt to achieve justice after years of suffering. Even so, many people believed that numerous perpetrators, both male and female, were never fully punished for their role inside the Nazi concentration camps.
Bergen Bellson was a camp that began as a camp for allied prisoners of war. It was established in 1940 and was found within Germany and until 1943 was used exclusively for prisoners of war. However, the SS then took over a part of the camp and turned it eventually into a concentration camp.
It was made up of a number of different centers and it had three main sections. The prisoner of war one, the resident camp and also the prisoner camp. Over the course of the Second World War, the complex held Jews, political prisoners, and other groups that were targeted for persecution by the Nazis. The SS divided Bellson into subsections for different groups.
For example, the Hungarian camp, the special camp for Polish Jews and the Star Camp for Dutch Jews. Between 1943 and 1944, thousands of prisoners were transported to Bellson. Whilst here, the inmates were forced to do work inside of the shoe commando in which they recovered pieces of leather from shoes for recycling. Berg and Bellson also transitioned to become a recovery camp as well where sick prisoners would arrive from different places and they were then taken in.
The idea was that they were supposed to recover at Bellson. However, the majority of them were put to work and ended up dying of disease, starvation, and poor medical care. In August 1944, a new element at Bellson was established, a women’s camp. This caused a large number of women to be brought over, but most only stayed for a short amount of time before they were then moved to other places for slave labor.
It’s famously known as a place where Margot and Anne Frank were transported to and where both of them died inside the barbwire fences of Bellson. However, much of the issues inside of the camp were caused by the huge overcrowding element that occurred as the Germans lost territory during World War II. By late 1944, Yseph Crom and the beast of Bellson was in charge and his leadership saw Bellson swell huge in its size.
Around 85,000 people were transported to Bergen Bellson and within a year the number of prisoners had risen 10fold and this caused catastrophic effects. The overcrowding led to a number of issues in particular with a lack of food and malnutrition as there was nowhere near enough food to go around which caused thousands to starve.
Also, disease ran riot around Bellson with huge outbreaks of tuberculosis, typhoid and dissentry causing more deaths. Bellson itself was only meant to house 10,000 prisoners, but the huge number of transported prisoners caused severe problems and because of this scores of people were killed. It has been estimated that during the time it operated, over 120,000 prisoners passed through Bellson.
The treatment of those inside varied on individual sections of the camp that they found themselves inside of. Exchange prisoners, for example, were often treated better than others. There were no gas chambers at Bellson, but the vast majority of prisoners died from the conditions inside caused by the huge overcrowding. When the British and Canadians liberated Bellson, the huge scale of the problem was brought to the world’s knowledge.
On the 11th of April 1945, Himmler had agreed to hand over the camp without a fight, and the SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead to attempt to hide some of the crimes. A few days later, the British set up a neutral zone that was established surrounding Bellson. What surprised the British was that so many of the guards and staff, including Ysef Kramer, were still inside of Bellson, and Karma claimed that they were there to uphold order inside.
When the British and Canadians arrived and entered Bergen Bellson, what they saw was truly horrific. They found over 13,000 unburied bodies and 60,000 prisoners who were in a terrible state, many who were in fact dying of starvation and disease. The majority of the prisoners had simply been abandoned and left and had been given no food and water for days and 500 were dying a day from disease.
The scenes were reported on the BBC. It was said here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which. The living lay with their heads across the corpses and around them moved the awful ghostly procession of emaciated aimless people with nothing to do and no hope of life. unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them.
Babies have been born here, tiny things that could not live. A mother driven mad screamed at the British sentry to give her milk for her child and thrust a tiny might into his arms, then ran off crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby that had been dead for days. This day at Bellson was the most horrible of my life. The British began to provide care and support for the prisoners.
But after the liberation, revenge killings did take place and even the SS guards shot and killed some prisoners who were trying to get food from the storehouses. Prisoners over the next few days were deloused and survivors were moved to a different camp. The British forced many of the SS staff based at the camp to bury the bodies in mass graves for those who had died.
The camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrown tanks due to the epidemic of typhus and huge efforts were made to help the survivors. But one thing remained on the minds of those with regards to Bellson. Who on earth could carry out the atrocities committed at the camp? And who on earth could inflict such suffering onto other people? Over the time it was operating, almost 500 people worked at Bellson.
However, from September the 17th, 1945 to November the 17th, 45 SS guards and former workers were brought to justice in the Bellson trials. And what shocked many people around the world was the fact that many of these were young women. Young women whose names have gone down in history with the immense cruelty and sadism of the Holocaust.
The trial took 54 court days and comprised of much of the British Army footage taken as Bson was liberated. On trial were those who were found at the camp and those such as Yseph Kramer who were involved in the leadership of the camp. Other staff such as doctors and cooks also found themselves on trial. Some of the women who were brought to trial have gone down in infamy for their notoriously sadistic treatment of prisoners throughout their time at Bellson and also other concentration camps such as Ravensbrook and Ashvitz.
Those women who were on trial in the Bellson trial were Irma Grade, Elizabeth Falenrath, Johanna Borman, Hera Bofa, Hera Elhert, Ilsa Foster, Ire Hashik, Gertrude Sauer, Anna Hemple, Gertrude Feist, Freda, Valar, Hilda Lissivich, and other women who were acquitted. However, some of these women were notoriously evil.
Irma Graves became known as a beautiful beast or the hyena of Ashvitz. She was only 22 when she faced the court and was the youngest person to die under British law in the 20th century. She was a strange character as her father even threw her out of his home. Such was his disgust that she became a concentration camp guard.
She became a guard at different camps and was known for taking part in selections at Achvitz, picking those women and children to be sent to their deaths in the gas chambers, virtually playing God with other people’s lives. She was also known for murdering prisoners, too, with her own hands and weapons, and was even noted for setting dogs onto prisoners, encouraging them to rip the prisoners to bits.
Elizabeth Falconrath 2 was just a young girl when she faced the judges. She too worked as an overseer inside of Ashvitz and she was noted for selecting prisoners to go to the gas chambers. Vulcar was well thought of inside of the Ashvitz’s command and she oversaw all of the camp sections for female prisoners, virtually being the head of the women’s prison there.
She was also known for being a prolific murderer, often beating prisoners unconscious with a trenchon. She even once pushed an elderly prisoner down some stairs to her death and she was known for shooting prisoners at will. Johanna Borman was also known as a woman with the dogs. She was older than Graasar and Vulcanrath and worked in a number of different camps.
She was selected to work inside of Ashvitz and she abused prisoners terribly. She was known for also setting her dogs onto prisoners for murdering them as well and she also took part in selections. These three women in particular were sentenced to death alongside a number of men following the Bellson trials. Found guilty of crimes against humanity, inflicting such suffering onto prisoners of Bergen Bellson and also Avitz and other camps they worked inside of.
Herhart, Ilsa Foster, Herabofa, Irene Hashuk, Gertrude Sauer, Anna Hemple, Gertru Feist, Freda, and Hilivich were all sentenced to various different prison sentences. having been found guilty of only one offense with the condemned being found guilty of more than one. The executions of the Bellson trials were to be carried out on the 13th of December 1945 and they were performed by hanging with the execution of being Albert Perpoint.
Perpoint was an experienced executioner who used a long drop method in which he would meet prior to the execution with the condemned to work out their height, weight, and also the drop needed to snap their necks. Perpoint was brought to Hamlin prison to carry out the executions and he was seen as reliable and trusted and he was expected to complete the job effectively and efficiently.
When he met Irma Graaser, he wrote in his biography that at last we finished noting the details of the men and O’Neal ordered bring out Irma Graves. She walked out of her cell and came towards us laughing. She seemed as Bonnie a girl as anyone could ever meet. just O’Neal questions, but when we asked her her age, she paused and smiled.
I found that we were both smiling with her, as if we realized the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age. Eventually, she said 21, which we knew to be correct. O’Neal asked her to step on the scales. Schnel, she said, the German for quick. In Britain, prison warders and medical staff would have been responsible for weighing and measuring the condemned prior to the execution.
But on this occasion, Albert Peer point and O’Neal did it. Irma was 5′ 5 and/4 in tall and weighed 150 lb and she was given a drop of 7’4 in. Gra’s execution was also described by peer point. It was chosen that she would be the first of the condemned to die due to her age, but there is some debate as to whether her and Vulcanrath were executed first.
The executions of the women took place at 9:34 a.m., 10:04 a.m., and 10:38 a.m. Perpoint wrote of Grace’s execution. The following morning, we climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting. The German officer at the door leading to the corridor, flung the door open, and we fired past a row of faces and into the execution chamber.
The officer stood at attention. Brigadier Patton Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave me the signal and a sigh of relief breath was audible in the chamber. I walked into the corridor. Irma Graaser I called. The German guards quickly closed all of the grills on all 12 of the inspection holes and open one door. Irma Graaser stepped out.
The cell was far too small for me to go inside of and I had to pinion her in the corridor. Follow me, I said in English, and O’Neal repeated the order in German. At 9:34 a.m., she walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the official standing round it, then walked on in the center of the trap where I had made a chalk mark.
She stood on the mark very firmly, and as I placed a white cap over her head, she said in her voice, “Chel,” the drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After 20 minutes, the body was taken down and placed in a coffin, ready for burial. Elizabeth Falconrath, following her death sentence, continued to deny her involvement in the Holocaust, and she stated that she did not know where the prisoners were going, that she selected to be sent to their deaths.
She claimed to have never heard of the gas chambers, but it was Perpoint who would hear her final words. At around 10:04 a.m., in the same manner as Graaser, she was brought from her cell, her identity confirmed, and then she was handed over to Peeroint for her execution. With ruthless efficiency and success, he performed her execution with the drop snapping her neck.
She was only 26 when she was executed, and when she first conducted her horrific crimes, she was even younger. Johanna Borman is the outlier of the three women executed following the Bellson trials. She was much older than Graaser and Vulcanra, but two displayed sadistic tendencies shown by the staff that worked inside of the concentration camps.
When he met her, Peer Point stated that she limped down the corridor looking old and haggarded. She was 52, standing only a little over 5T. She was trembling as she was put on the scale. In German, she said, “I have my feelings.” Like the two women who went before her, Borman was executed with efficiency by peer point, as he had already meticulously calculated her drop needed to have been 8’8 in.
Her execution was performed at 10:38 with her execution being performed very swiftly and she was the final female executed following the Bellson trials. The men were then fetched from their cells to face their sentence and peer point and he performed 11 executions on the 13th of December 1943 inside Hamlin prison on the gallows.
The execution of the female guards of Bellson showed the world how evil in particular these three women were. The Bellson trials brought to the world’s attention how terrible humans can be to each other with the suffering of those inside the camp being shown in front of the world’s media. The suffering of those who were responsible for the horrific conditions at Bellson was short-lived and was no match for what they inflicted onto innocent people.
Bellson was the place where Anne Frank and dozens of thousands of other people died because of the regime that sought to exterminate so many people off the face of the earth. The executions of Irma Graasar, Elizabeth Falconrath, and Johanna Borman were justified, but for so much suffering, there was only a few executed.
Much interest fell on those who were simply sentenced to time in prison, and there was much debate as to whether more people could have been sentenced to death for the crimes of Bergen Bellson. Stutoff concentration camp was the first camp set up outside of the borders of Germany during World War II and it began its operations on the 2nd of September 1939.
It was a camp linked to the ethnic cleansing of Poland that included executing the elite of Polish society including politicians, religious leaders and intellectuals in the area of West Prussia and around Danzig. Lists had been drawn up even prior to the invasion of Poland for people to be arrested and the Nazis had plans to open up camps following the invasion for these prisoners.
It was originally a camp in which civilians would be kept. However, after a huge expansion effort took place, it became similar to Dhau and a labor education camp in which prisoners would be forced to conduct grueling work. The first prisoners, around 150 of them, arrived when it first opened, and these were Poles and Jews who were arrested straight after the war broke out.
Within a few weeks, the number of prisoners grew greatly to around 6,000. And initially, all of the prisoners were Polish. The number of inmates grew as the war went on with large amounts of Jews being deported to the camp, and many arrived from Ashvitz and other camps across Nazi occupied lands. Throughout its years in operation, it saw 110,000 people pass through the gates from all different countries.
Amongst the prisoners were Jews from all over Europe, but also resistance fighters, Soviet prisoners of war, communists, psychiatric patients, and many more. The main camp in Stutoff also had around 40 different sub camps that served it during the conflict with different prisoners based in different subcamps producing things for different companies.
Some of these companies were involved in the war effort using slave labor to make parts for the German war machine. For example, an armament’s factory was based at the camp, but also in the war, a [ __ ] wolf aircraft factory was also built there. Conditions at Stutoff were very brutal and extremely tough. Inside, disease was rife and thousands of prisoners died from starvation.
A couple of large typhus epidemics killed thousands of prisoners in 1942 and 1944. And this led to selections taking place. During these selections, the SS officers and doctors would select prisoners who were too ill or too weak to continue working to be sent to a small gas chamber that was based on the site.
Executions also occurred there and many Polish resistance fighters who found themselves imprisoned were shot dead. As mentioned, there was a small gas chamber on the site and using Cyclon B to mass murder prisoners began in June 1944. It has been estimated that around 4,000 prisoners, mostly Jewish women and children, were murdered inside of the gas chambers before the camp was evacuated.
Now, the guards at the camp were incredibly sadistic, and there are examples of them inflicting barbaric punishment onto the inmates. Jenny W Barkman was a guard who was, despite just being 24 when she was executed, she was noted for her horrific treatment. She was one who selected prisoners to go to the gas chambers and also regularly beat women prisoners to their deaths.
Barkman was just one of many guards who was noted for their barbaric treatment with many prisoners being clubbed and beaten to death. It was estimated that overall around 65,000 prisoners died at Stutoff with many also drowning in the boggy mud that was inside of the camp. The doctors also killed many injured and sick prisoners inside of the infirmary using lethal injections.
There was even allegations made that the SS used human fat from corpses to make soap and that hundreds of prisoners were executed for this purpose to just make soap. So Stutoff had an extremely high death count. Executions were prominent and the guards were noted for their horrific treatment. Suffering continued as in late January 1945 a full-scale evacuation of the camp was ordered.
50,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced out of the camp. 5,000 of them were forced to march to the Baltic coast and when they arrived there they were forced to walk into the water and then guards shot them indiscriminately with their machine guns. Other prisoners marched towards Eastern Germany but after being cut off by the Soviets they were forced to return.
The horrific treatment during the death march by the SS guards as well as being provided with little or no food and being forced to walk in the freezing winter conditions meant thousands died on the death march. The remaining prisoners a few months later were taken from the camp by sea and more prisoners were thrown into the sea and shot.
It’s thought that in the evacuation of Stuttov, 25,000 prisoners died. It was eventually liberated on the 9th of March 1945, but only around 100 prisoners were found there. Those who had hid from the death march. Following the Second World War, many war crimes trials took place, including the Nuremberg trials, which aimed to bring the leaders of the Nazi right to justice.
But many less high-profile trials took place to punish those guards inside of the concentration camps. And some of these were known as the Stutto trials. These were a series of trials to prosecute the guards and officials responsible for the crimes that occurred at Stutoff. There were four trials in the series that began in 1946 and ended the following year.
One issue was that despite around 2,000 SS staff working at Stutoff, only 72 SS officers and six female overseers were ever brought to trial. The trials were held in Gdansk and during the first trial the six women who were accused of being alsinhot and Erdna Bilehart. During the trial witness statements and much evidence was heard inside of the courtroom and it was noted that the women in particular did not seem to take the trial very seriously.
In particular, Jenny Bachmann was noted to have been more bothered with her hair and that she smirked during the presentation of horrific evidence and even flirted with the guards inside of the courtroom. Of the women on trial, Jenny Bachmann, Elizabeth Becker, Vonda Cloff, Eva Pedes, and Gerish Steinhoff were sentenced to death with a Bhart sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
Along with the women, a number of men were sentenced to death. All to be executed together on the 4th of July 1946. On that date, all of those who were condemned were brought to the city of Gdansk and in particular the Biscupia Gawker on a large hill that stands in that area of the city. They had been taken to the hill by car being guarded by Soviet officials.
At the site, there was a huge crowd that had gathered to watch the proceedings. Around 200,000 people lined the area near to the gallows. The gallows in particular here were very large and it was possible to execute two of the condemned on one gallows and even free on the central gallows such was the size of them.
They were also very tall ensuring that the crowd in attendance saw the bloody proceedings easily. Beginning with Jenny Barkman, the women and the men executed that day were all loaded onto trucks and then these were backed up to the gallows. Barkman was the first to be executed that day, and she wore a simple dress and at 5:00 p.m.
stood under the gallows. Whilst on the truck, her arms and ankles were tied together, and a noose was passed over the wooden structure. The hangman then placed a noose around her neck, and final preparations were made. She was stood facing the huge crowds, and then suddenly the truck drove away, leaving Jenny Barkman suspended in the air with nothing to stand on, hanging in front of the huge crowd.
She was there dangling and her hands and feet twitched and she lost a shoe as she struggled for breath before turning limp and dying. She was the first of 11 executed that day upon the hill in this manner and the women who were condemned were all executed first. The five women were then left hanging whilst the men were executed also on the gallows next to them.
The public spectacle was absolutely huge with 11 bodies dangling from the huge gallows. For many who were stood on the hill during the executions, some small part of revenge was had for the horrors that were inflicted at Stutoff concentration camp. Overall, a huge amount of people suffered and died inside the confines of the camp.
And all of the guards who were executed were killed for their barbaric treatment of prisoners. The women who were executed had different roles inside of the camp, but they all had one thing in common. They were happy to inflict the mass suffering and happy to murder prisoners with their own hands or even select them to go to their deaths inside of the gas chambers.
The Amvitz trial began on the 24th of November 1947 and there were 40 former members of staff who faced a court in Kov. There were an alarming lack of staff who were women. Only five of the 40 defendants were female. However, the stories told by female prisoners of Ashvitz talks about the sadistic barbaric treatment that went on inside of the barbwire fences.
Other former members of staff such as Irma Graaser, Johanna Borman, and Elizabeth Falconra did work at Ashvitz, but they were brought to trial earlier at the Bellson trials after they were captured at the different camp. Many of the female guards of Ashvitz 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 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’s camp at Ashvitz was established following a mass transport of Jewish German women from Ravensbrook in March 1942. 999 women were transferred first and eventually around 30% of the registered inmates of Ashvitz were female.
The first women who arrived were classed as a social and political and criminal and they were given serial numbers. As time went on, the women’s camp expanded on a huge scale. A new woman’s camp was created inside of Ashvitz 2 and initially women were held in blocks one of 10 of Ashvitz one 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 Ashvitz. They were mostly trained at Ravensbrook, a concentration camp exclusively for women.
And the guards were taught by horrifically brutal women whose job it was to make these specific guards depraved killers who had very little regard for human life. The conditions in the women’s camp were terrible. In fact, there was one point when the male prisoners entered to establish a hospital there. And at one point, there were so many corpses around, they could not distinguish between them and the women who were still alive.
The sanitation was terrible, and they were treated awfully. One former inmate wrote, “There was only one latrine for 30 to 32,000 women, and we were permitted to use it at only certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get into this tiny building kneedeep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dissentry, we could barely wait our turn and soiled our ragged clothes which never came off our 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 too. Sterilization experiments also took place which affected the women with them being carried out in Barack 30. The first female camp lagurin was Johanna Langangerfeld and she was later succeeded by Maria Mandel who in particular was known for her brutality.
When Ashvitz was liberated by the Red Army, they found 7,000 prisoners alive in the main camps as well as hundreds of corpses. They came across the true horrors of Achvitz and the fear that the prisoners had. After the war, only 789 individuals who worked to Achvitz and its subcamps were ever tried and 750 received some form of sentence, be it a death sentence or time in prison.
As the years went on, trials were still being held and some are still today held with the sentences becoming more lenient and focused on time in prison. In fact, even fewer women were ever brought to trial. At the Ashvitz trial that took place in Kov in 1947, Maria Mandel, Faras Brandle, Hildigard Lacert, Alice Olowski, and Louise Dans were brought to trial.
The most high-profile female 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 Mandel’s brutality. For example, it was said at the ramp in Ashvitz, the transport was awaited by Mandel accompanied by SSwoman Margot Dreschel.
And as soon as the transport arrived, Mandel carried out a selection, sending approximately 90% of the transport to the cars, which transported these people to the crerematorium. During these selections, Mandel tortured the prisoners, beating the women and the men and the children with a whip and kicking them blindly.
She would tear the children from the arms of their mothers, and Mandel would then beat the mothers. One young mother tried to get near her 2-year-old child who was thrown onto the car, and Mandel kicked her and beat her so badly that she didn’t get up anymore. The same woman also stated, “Mandel began to beat me so cruy that I fell.
She continued to kick me and she knocked out almost all of my teeth.” Marie Mandel became known as a 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 straight to the gas chambers.
Mandel also signed the inmates list, sending its estimated 500,000 women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers. Farice Brle was a guard who worked inside of Ashvitz, too. And she was also known for taking part in selections in which women and men would be sent to their deaths. She was also known for physically assaulting prisoners and even children.
She was even accused of forcing children to stand out in the frost overnight in freezing conditions that would kill. Another woman brought to trial was Louise Dans. She rose throughout the ranks inside of Ashvitz, but later was transferred back to Ravensbrook before Ashvitz was liberated. She was known for beating prisoners brutally with her bull whip, forcing women to stand for hours on end in exhausting roll calls in terrible conditions.
Dan was even involved in hanging prisoners inside of Ashvitz too. Hildigard Lacard was brought to trial and she was known for sadistic behavior. She became known as Bloody Bridget for her cruel treatment. She took place in many selections too and also set her dog onto the prisoners. She would encourage these to rip the prisoners to pieces and strike fear into the inmates.
Alice Olosski was also known for her terrible behavior. At other camps, she whipped prisoners and was involved in taking items and jewelry from them. However, it was said that she was posted on a death march to Ashvitz. Her attitude changed during the march and she allegedly displayed some kindness to some women.
It’s believed that she knew she would be tried as a war criminal, hence why she displayed some empathy. At the Ashvitz trial, every defendant who faced a judge was found guilty of crimes against humanity and 23 death sentences were issued. However, only two of the women, Maria Mandel and Farice Brle, were condemned to die and were executed by hanging.
The other women were given various sentences in prison, were made to spend time behind bars. of the executions of Mandel and Bralle. These took place on the 28th of January 1948 inside of Crackoff Prison. The prison had been one of the most notorious Nazi prisons in Poland and along with other condemned they were hanged.
Maria Mandel herself was the first of the group to be executed and at 7:09 a.m. the hangings began inside of the execution chamber. Maria along with four of her 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 stoall or step was removed and Mandel was left slowly strangling to death.
It was said that it took 15 minutes for all of the first group, including Maria Mandel, to be classified as dead by the doctor with their executions not being instant. Farice Brandle’s execution happened shortly after too, but these two were the only women executed following the Ashvitz trials. There were a number of other female guards who worked at Ashvitz, such as Graaser and others mentioned earlier, but these specifically weren’t executed following a trial solely centered around the crimes inside of Ashvitz.
The Bellson trials in which these were executed within took into account the crimes of women who were captured at Bellson, but also focused on those crimes they committed inside of Ashvitz. So despite thousands of guards working inside of Ashvitz, only a small percentage were sentenced to death. The Ashvitz trials sought to bring some punishment for the crimes committed inside the horrific death camp, but many of the former staff remained unpunished.
Construction of Ravensbrook began in November 1938 and it was to hold only female prisoners. In May 1939 it opened with 900 women moved from another camp and within 8 months of the Second World War starting it was at capacity. Because of this it was expanded and the biggest number of prisoners at Ravensbrook at one time was around 45,000.
It’s estimated that 130,000 prisoners passed throughout the camp, but around 50,000 died from disease, starvation, the harsh labor conditions, and around 2 and a half thousand were killed inside the gas chambers. Amongst the thousands killed, there were many spies who were executed from other countries, including members of the SOE, and the camp was huge with 70 sub camps serving it.
There were many male members of staff who worked there, too, along with 150 female SS guards who were tasked with overseeing the prisoners. As mentioned, as a training camp, over 4,000 female overseers learned there, and many of these women went on to be known in infamy with horrific treatment of the Holocaust. For example, Irma Graaser, the hyena at Ashvitz, was trained at Ravensbrook.
The treatment of the prisoners was barbaric with guards accompanied by SS men armed with dogs and whips overseeing the prisoners during the day. Prisoners would be forced to undergo the long roll call and were often beaten rather awfully sometimes even to death. One guard, Alfreda Müller, was so harsh that she became known as a beast of Ravensbrook.
Maria Mandel, a guard who worked in a senior capacity at Ashvitz, was a chief overseer at Ravensbrook and was later executed for the deaths of 500,000 people. Prisoners were forced to wear symbols denoting what sort of prisoner they were and where they were from, and many when they arrived at Ravensbrook were forced to have their heads shaved.
Over the years, mass deportations of women from Ravensbrook to Ashvitz took place with them being forced to undergo selections once there. resulting in the deaths of thousands as soon as they arrived at Ashvitz. Conditions inside of Ravensbrook were rather terrible and they deteriorated quickly as the camp was expanded.
It was said by a survivor that they didn’t shoot the women. We were to die of misery, hunger, and exhaustion. When we arrived at Ravensbrook, it was the worst. The first thing I saw was a cart with all the dead piled on it. We didn’t even feel like we had the value of cattle. You worked and then you died. The sort of work the women required to do varied in its purpose, but it was all hard and heavy labor.
Some women worked in the factory making soldiers socks and some work to build V2 rocket parts. Before Ravensbrook was liberated, the SS leadership tried to remove as many prisoners as possible and they forced all women physically able to embark on a death march. When the camp was liberated, less than 3,500 were found malnourished and ill.
But after the cleanup operation, the focus shifted to bringing those responsible of crimes against humanity at the camp to justice. The SS guards, female and male, of former workers at the camp, were arrested by the Allies, and from 1946 to 1948, a series of trials took place. Many of the guards were never brought to justice and did escape following the end of the war.
Ultimately, there were seven Ravensbrook trials. The first was held on December the 5th, 1946 and lasted a few months with 16 members of staff on trial. During the first proceedings, seven women faced a judge. These were Dorafa Bins, Greta Basel, Margarita Muse, Elizabeth Marshall, Carmen Murray, Vera Southquart, and Eugeneia von Skin.
Dorafa Bin served as a deputy warder, and she was known for brutality, having personally been responsible for the torture and death of many. She was said to have beaten, slapped, shot, kicked, and whipped prisoners on a daily basis. She carried a whip with her German Shepherd. And at a moment’s notice, she would kick prisoners to death or set her dog on them.
Allegedly, she even had a boyfriend who she would take around on romantic strolls around the concentration camp. Greta Bozel was involved in the selection of prisoners and was heard saying, “If they cannot walk, let them rot.” Margaret Muse worked as a jail warden and during the trial was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Elizabeth Marshall worked as a nurse at the camp and she was involved in overseeing medical experiments and at times she even killed some of the prisoners herself with lethal injections. She was involved in also seeing which prisoners would be shipped to Ashvitz to be killed. Carmon my was a spy who also worked as a cappo at the camp and she developed a terrible reputation for brutality towards many of the inmates.
She initially was even alleged to have been sent to the gas chambers, but her friends struck her name off the list. Then she rose to prominence. Vera Southquart also was a capo and her job was to serve as a nurse in the medical wing and to fill out death certificates. She took an active role in the killing process, poisoning many of the prisoners rather than sending them to the gas chambers as she could not be bothered to arrange their transport.
Eugenia skin was also an inmate in Aapo and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the first trial’s conclusion, Dorafa Bins, Greta Bozel, Elizabeth Marshall, Carmen Mory, and Vera Southquart was sentenced to death along with other men to be executed. Carmon my took her own life before the sentence could be carried out.
And it was Albert Perpoint who executed these women. Inside Hamlin prison, a callous had been created, and the usual rule for executions was ladies first. The condemned were held inside of the condemned cells at Hamlin for a short amount of time, and then they were taken out of their cells to face the executioner. Peer point before would have met all of the condemned to calculate their weights, heights, and drops required to slap their necks, killing them instantly.
Upon being called from the cells, they were brought into the execution cell with their arms fastened behind their backs. Identification took place at the bottom of the gallows. Then, once this was done, they were marched up the stairs by the guards. Last words were asked before peer point straightened the women and checked their restraints before placing a black hood over their heads.
He then placed the noose over their heads too and shuffled them over a chalk X he had drawn on the floor before peer point then quickly pulled the lever. The executions were performed swiftly and within seconds of the condemned entering the execution chamber they were dead. Dorfins interestingly was executed first on May the 2nd 1947 with the other women executed on the 3 and Vera Savquat being executed the following month.
During the second Ravensbrook trial, no female guards were brought to justice. However, five female camp officials were brought to trial in the third Ravensbrook trial. These were involved in the leadership of the UK Mark sub camp which was found around one mile from Ravensbrook and it housed teenage girls aged 16 to 21 labeled criminal and difficult.
Of these five women brought to trial, two were acquitted, one was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and one was sentenced to life in prison, but only RF Noc was sentenced to death. She served as a chief warden of the extermination camp and was known for her murderous actions. In one incident, she allegedly cut the throat of a prisoner with the sharp edge of a shovel.
She was also involved in the executions and selections of over 5,000 women and children. And for this she was executed in exactly the same way as the female guards in the first Ravensbrook trial were with Perpoint taking her life at Hamlin prison on the gallows. During the fourth Robvens book trial, three former members of staff, all nurses were brought to face a judge.
Their charges focused around mistreatment, sending people to the gas chambers and also torture. Only one Ga Ganza was sentenced to death, but her sentence was later withdrawn and instead she spent a number of years in prison. The fifth and sixth Ravensbrook trials resulted in the imprisonment of a number of male guards and also one death sentence.
But during the final seventh Ravensbrook trial, six female camp wardens or Serinans were tried on the 2nd of July to the 21st 1948. They’re accused of ill treatment towards prisoners of allied countries, but also in sending many prisoners to the gas chambers. On trial were Louise Brunner, a chief warden who was given 3 years imprisonment, and Klene, a chief warden who was acquitted due to a lack of evidence, Christine Hartthau, who was also acquitted, and Elsa Vetman, who was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
However, there were two more death sentences carried out with regards to crimes at Ravensbrook. Emma Zimmer, an assistant chief warden who was known for sadistic behavior, was sentenced to death. It was said she was vicious and dangerous and frightening us constantly with threats, proclaiming in a sadistic voice, “I will report you and you will go away.
You know where?” Just one way up the chimney. Also sentenced to death was Ida Shrita who was known for selecting prisoners to die. She was also responsible for the murders of prisoners due to overworking them. Both of these died in the same manner as before with Albert Perpoint being the hangman at Hamlin Prison who took their lives.
The Ravensbrook trials were just one of a series of trials that aimed to punish those perpetrators of crimes against humanity which occurred at the camps. Of course, there were many other guards who worked at Ravensbrook who were brought in front of judges at different trials. In fact, of those women who were known for war crimes and were sentenced to death, the majority learned everything they knew at Ravensbrook, being schooled in genocide and depravity.
The Bellson trials, for example, sentenced a number of female guards to death who worked at Ravensbrook, including Irma Graaser. In total, there were 38 defendants in the Ravensbrook trials. 21 were women. Despite less than 40 facing trials for crimes at Ravensbrook, there were a colossal number who never faced up to their crimes and were never punished for them.
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