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Role of female guards in Nazi concentration camps From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aufseherin ([ˈaʊ̯fˌzeːəʁɪn], pl. Aufseherinnen) was the position title for a female guard in Nazi concentration camps. Of the 50,000 guards who served in the concentration camps, training records indicate that approximately 3,500 were women.[1] In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of Aufseherin translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen (March – May 1945), Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara[2] (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts.
Female guards were generally from the lower to middle classes[3] and had no relevant work experience. Their occupational backgrounds varied: one source mentions former prison matrons, hairdressers, tramcar-conductors, or retired teachers.[4] Volunteers were recruited via advertisements in German newspapers asking for women to show their love for the Reich and join the SS-Gefolge ("SS-Retinue", a Schutzstaffel (SS) support and service organisation for women). Additionally, some were conscripted based on data in their SS files. Adolescent enrollment in the League of German Girls acted as a vehicle of indoctrination for many of the women.[5] At one of the post-war hearings, Oberaufseherin Herta Haase-Breitmann-Schmidt, head female overseer, claimed that her female guards were not full-fledged SS women. Consequently, at some tribunals it was disputed whether SS-Helferinnen employed at the camps were official members of the SS, thus leading to conflicting court decisions. Many of them belonged to the Waffen-SS and to the SS-Helferinnen Corps.[6][7]
While training records suggest that as many as 3,500 women were employed as camp guards, some sources estimate a much lower number, between 50 and 190.[8][9]
Female guards were collectively known as SS-Helferin[clarification needed] (German: "SS Helper women"). The supervisory levels within the SS-Helferin were as follows:
Relations between SS men and female guards are said to have existed in many of the camps, and Heinrich Himmler had told the SS men to regard the female guards as equals and comrades. At the relatively small Helmbrechts subcamp near Hof, Germany, the camp commandant, Wilhelm Dörr, openly pursued a sexual relationship with the head female overseer Herta Haase-Breitmann-Schmidt.
Corruption was another aspect of the female guard culture. Ilse Koch, known as "The Witch of Buchenwald", was married to the camp commandant, Karl Koch. Both were rumored to have embezzled millions of Reichsmark, for which Karl Koch was convicted and executed by the Nazis a few weeks before Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army; however, Ilse was cleared of the charge. Convicted of war crimes, she was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1951.
One apparent exception to the brutal female overseer prototype was Klara Kunig, a camp guard in 1944 who served at Ravensbrück and its subcamp at Dresden-Universelle. The head wardress at the camp pointed out that she was too polite and too kind towards the inmates, resulting in her subsequent dismissal from camp duty in January 1945. Her fate has been unknown since 13 February 1945, the date of the allied firebombing of Dresden.[10]
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Near the end of the war, women were forced from factories in the German Labour Exchange and sent to training centres. Women were also trained on a smaller scale at the camps of Neuengamme;[11] Auschwitz I, II, and III; Flossenbürg (as well as Dresden-Goehle, Holleischen and Zwodau);[12] Gross Rosen (as well as its satellites in Langenbielau,[13] Ober Hohenelbe[14] and Parschnitz); Stutthof,[15] as well as a few at Mauthausen.[16] Most of these women came from the regions around the camps. In 1944, the first female overseers were stationed at the satellite camps belonging to Neuengamme, Dachau,[17] Mauthausen, a very few at Natzweiler-Struthof, and none at the Mittelbau-Dora complex until March 1945.[18]
Twenty-eight Aufseherinnen served in Vught,[19] some at Buchenwald,[20] 60 in Bergen-Belsen, one at Dachau overseeing the brothel,[21] more than 30 in Mauthausen[22] (January 1945–May 1945), 30 at Majdanek,[23] around 200 at Auschwitz and its subcamps,[24] 140 at Sachsenhausen and its subcamps, 158 trained at Neuengamme, 47 trained at Stutthof, compared to 958 who served in Ravensbrück,[25] 561 in the Flossenbürg complex, and over 800 in the Gross Rosen.[26] Many female supervisors were trained and/or worked at subcamps in Germany, Poland, France, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.[27]
Prisoner Olga Lengyel, who in her memoir, Five Chimneys, wrote that selections in the women’s camp were made by SS Aufseherin Elisabeth Hasse and Irma Grese. Other survivors accused Juana Bormann, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Elisabeth Ruppert and Margot Dreschel for the same crimes.[115]
In 1996, a story broke in Germany about Margot Pietzner (married name Kunz), a former Aufseherin from Ravensbrück, the Belzig subcamp and a subcamp at Wittenberg. She was originally sentenced to death by a Soviet court, but it was commuted to a life sentence, and she was released in 1956. In the early 1990s, at the age of 74, Pietzner was awarded the title "Stalinist victim" and given 64,350 Deutsche Marks (32,902 Euros). Many historians argued that she had lied and did not deserve the money. She had, in fact, served time in a German prison which was overseen by the Soviets, but she was imprisoned because she had served at three concentration camps.[116]
The only female guard to tell her story to the public was Herta Bothe, who served as a guard at Ravensbrück in 1942, then at Stutthof, Bromberg-Ost subcamp, and finally in Bergen-Belsen. She received ten years' imprisonment and was released in the mid-1950s. In a rare interview recorded in 1999, Bothe was asked if she regretted being a guard in a concentration camp. Her response was, "What do you mean? ... I made 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."[117] Though Bothe claimed that refusal of the position of guard would have seen her placed in the camp herself – an explanation given by many female ex-guards – it was unlikely to have been true, as records from the time showed some new recruits leaving their positions at Ravensbrück, facing no recorded negative consequences for doing so.[118]
In 2006, 84-year-old San Francisco resident Elfriede Rinkel was deported by the US Justice Department to Germany; Rinkel had worked at Ravensbrück from June 1944 to April 1945, and had used an SS-trained dog in the camp. She had hidden her secret for more than 60 years from her family, friends and Jewish-German husband Fred. Rinkel immigrated to the US in 1959 seeking a better life, and had omitted Ravensbrück from the list of residences supplied on her visa application. In Germany, Rinkel did not face criminal charges, with the expiry of the statute of limitations meaning that only murder allegations could be tried after such a length of time.[119] The case continued to be examined until Rinkel's death in 2018.[120]
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