When the atrocities committed in the concentration camps became known, many people asked themselves how on earth someone could bring themselves to do such things. However, the first concentration camp trial under British auspices, the Belsen trial, proved that women, too, were capable of committing hair-raising cruelties.
Ten women were executed in the British zone of occupation at Hameln prison. One committed suicide after learning that her death sentence had been confirmed, and one was sentenced to death but reprieved. Below is the background to these cases, followed by a more detailed article on each individual.
Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp near Fürstenberg/Havel in Germany, about 57 miles almost due north of Berlin, was the largest concentration camp exclusively for women and also served as the training camp for female guards. Some 3,500 women underwent training there. They then continued to work at Ravensbrück or were sent to other camps that had separate female compounds.
Male SS members were forbidden to enter the female compounds, so it was necessary to train female guards to run them. Initially, women volunteered but were later conscripted to work at Ravensbrück. The status of these women was “SS Gefolge,” i.e., Reich employees, not members of the SS, but under their command.
Accommodation, food, and uniform were provided, plus a relatively generous salary. There were also Kapos, who were themselves prisoners at the camp but were used by the SS in various roles.
Ravensbrück was established in November 1938 and liberated on 30 April 1945 by the Russian Army. Sixteen members of staff fled into the British Zone as the Russians approached, where they were arrested and tried at the first Ravensbrück trial held between 5 December 1946 and 3 February 1947 at the Curiohaus in Hamburg on charges of murder and brutality. All were found guilty except one, who died during the trial.
Eleven were sentenced to death, including five women: head nurse Elisabeth Marschall, Aufseherin Greta Bösel, Oberaufseherin Dorothea Binz, and Kapos Carmen Mory and Vera Salvequart. Mory committed suicide during the night of 9 April after her death sentence had been confirmed. She is included because she would otherwise have been hanged. Marschall, Bösel, and Binz were executed on 2 May 1947, and Salvequart on 26 June 1947.
Subsequent Ravensbrück Trials
The third Ravensbrück trial, the so-called “Uckermark trial,” was held between 14 April and 26 April 1948 to hear the cases of five women officials from the Uckermark concentration camp and extermination complex. Two of the women were acquitted, two received prison terms, but Ruth Closius was condemned to death. She was hanged on 29 July 1948.
The fourth Ravensbrück trial, sometimes called the “Doctors and Nurses” trial, was held from 5 May to 8 June 1948. The five accused were all members of the medical staff of the camp. They were convicted of carrying out experiments on prisoners and of murdering them by giving lethal injections.
Doctors Benno Orendi and Walter Sonntag, together with Kapo nurse, 40-year-old Gerda Ganzer, were sentenced to death. Two other female nurses were given prison sentences. The two doctors were hanged on 17 September 1948. Gerda Ganzer was reprieved on 3 July 1948, her sentence reduced to life in prison, then to 21 years in 1950, and further reduced to 12 years in 1954. She was finally released on 6 June 1961.
The seventh Ravensbrück trial took place between 2 July and 21 July 1948 to hear the cases of six women accused of maltreatment of prisoners and making selections for the gas chambers. Two of the six were acquitted, two given prison terms, and two sentenced to death: Emma Zimmer and Ida Bertha Schreiter, who were hanged on 20 September 1948. No other woman was executed as a result of the other Ravensbrück trials.
Belsen Concentration Camp Staff
Bergen-Belsen had originally been a prisoner of war camp in Lower Saxony near the city of Celle, but was converted to a concentration camp, opening in April 1943 as a transit centre under commandant SS Hauptsturmführer (CPT) Josef Kramer. It was used to house prisoners of both sexes who had become too weak to work as forced labour in German factories.
Belsen was liberated by the British army on 15 April 1945. The British soldiers found 10,000 unburied corpses and 40,000 sick and dying prisoners, of whom a staggering 28,000 subsequently died after liberation.
As a result of these atrocities, 45 former members of staff from Bergen-Belsen, including some inmates who had taken part in acts of brutality against other prisoners, were charged with being responsible for the murder or the suffering of Allied nationals in (first count) Bergen-Belsen in Germany or (second count) Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland (see below for details of this camp). Some defendants were charged with both counts.
The accused comprised 16 men and 16 women, including Josef Kramer, Belsen’s commandant, plus 12 former prisoners (seven men and five women).
The Belsen Trial, as it was known, was conducted by the British Military Tribunal at No. 30 Lindenstraße, Lüneburg, Germany, from 17 September to 17 November 1945 under court president Major-General H.M.P. Berney-Ficklin, sitting with five other officers. The prosecution was handled by a team of four military lawyers, and each prisoner was represented by counsel. All the prisoners were tried together and sat in the large dock, each wearing a number on their chest.
On the afternoon of 16 November 1945, the verdicts were delivered. Thirty-one prisoners were convicted on one or both counts, and 14 acquitted of all charges. Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath were found guilty on both counts; Johanna Bormann guilty only on the second charge.
The following day, sentences were pronounced by Major-General Berney-Ficklin: “No. 6) Bormann, 7) Volkenrath, 9) Grese. The sentence of this court is that you suffer death by being hanged.” The sentence was translated for them into German as “Tod durch den Strang,” literally death by the rope. All the prisoners were returned to Lüneburg prison.
Of the three condemned women, only Irma Grese appealed to the convening officer, Field-Marshal Montgomery, who rejected it on Friday, 7 December 1945, and signed the death warrants. The condemned were then transferred to Hameln jail the following day to await execution on Thursday, 13 December 1945.
Irma Grese
Irma Grese’s childhood was unremarkable. She was born on 7 October 1923 at Wrechen (Neubrandenburg county) in Germany, to Alfred Anton Albert Grese and Bertha Wilhelmine Auguste Grese née Winkler. It appears they were a normal, hardworking agricultural family.
She left school in 1938 at the age of 15 and worked on a farm for six months, then in a shop, and later for two years in a hospital. She wanted to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent her to work at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp instead.
Like many other young people, she was swayed by Hitler’s oratory and shocked by what she perceived as the corruption of the Weimar Republic government. She joined a Nazi youth group and wholeheartedly embraced their ideas. She was a volunteer concentration camp guard and had not been forced to work there.
At age 19, she became a supervisor at Ravensbrück, just at the time the Nazi anti-Jewish programmes were at their height in July 1942. In March 1943, she was transferred to Auschwitz. She later did a further spell at Ravensbrück and then went to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. Irma rose to the rank of Oberaufseherin (Senior SS-Supervisor) in autumn 1943, in day-to-day control of around 30,000 women prisoners, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jews. She was the second most senior female guard there.
At trial, Irma pleaded not guilty to the specific charges brought against her and was defended by Major L.S.W. Cranfield.
Testimonies Against Grese
Many of the survivors of Belsen testified against Irma. They spoke of the beatings and arbitrary shootings of prisoners, the savaging of prisoners by her trained and half-starved dogs, of her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers, and of her sexual pleasure at these acts of cruelty. She habitually wore heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol.
She was alleged to have used both physical and emotional methods to torture the camp’s inmates and seemed to enjoy shooting prisoners in cold blood. It was claimed that she beat some of the women to death and whipped others mercilessly using a plaited cellophane whip. Survivors reported that she seemed to derive great sexual pleasure from these acts of sadism.
It has been claimed that in her hut were found the skins of three inmates that she had had made into lampshades, although this is now disputed.
She said in her defense, “Himmler is responsible for all that has happened, but I suppose I have as much guilt as the others above me.”
On the 54th day of the trial, she was, not surprisingly, found guilty on both counts of the indictment and sentenced to death.
Final Letter and Execution
Irma Grese wrote the following letter to her siblings on 11 December 1945. It is clear that she maintained her faith in Nazism to the end:
If I may entrust to you my last request – it is to remain proud Germans same as before, to never show your heart fickle or despairing, but to show defiance and unrelenting love towards our beloved fatherland. These have always been my fundamentals, and I take them to my death. I know, not every human is the same. But you are my beloved siblings, therefore, in this holy belief, I want to suffer my too hard fate in the same proud and defiant manner.
Albert Pierrepoint was flown over specially to carry out the executions, which were planned for Thursday, 13 December 1945. The women were to be hanged individually, and the men in pairs to speed up the process.
Pierrepoint’s biography describes the events leading up to Irma’s execution and the hanging itself:
At last we finished noting the details of the men, and RSM O’Neil ordered “bring out Irma Grese.” She walked out of her cell and came towards us laughing. She seemed as bonny a girl as one could ever wish to meet. She answered O’Neil’s questions, but when he asked her age she paused and smiled. I found that we were both smiling with her, as if we realised the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age. Eventually she said “twenty-one,” which we knew to be correct. O’Neil asked her to step onto the scales. “Schnell!” she said — the German for quick.
In Britain, prison warders and medical staff would normally be responsible for weighing and measuring the condemned prior to execution, but on this occasion Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill had to do it. Irma was 5 feet 5¼ inches tall and weighed 150 lbs. She was given a drop of 7 feet 4 inches.
According to Pierrepoint, it was decided that as Irma was the youngest of the three women, she would be the first to die. However, a press release from Field-Marshal Montgomery’s office after the executions stated that she was the second to be hanged, after Elisabeth Volkenrath. This is borne out by the entries on the return part of her death warrant. Her execution took place at 10:04 a.m.
Brigadier Paton Walsh was the British officer in charge of the executions, and with him was the deputy governor of Strangeways prison, Miss Wilson, to oversee the hanging of the three women.
Pierrepoint recorded:
The next morning we climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting. A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung open the door and we filed past the row of faces and into the execution chamber. The officers stood at attention. Brigadier Paton Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave me the signal, and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber. I walked into the corridor. “Irma Grese,” I called.
The German guards quickly closed all grills on twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion her in the corridor. “Follow me,” I said in English, and O’Neil repeated the order in German.
At 9:34 a.m., she walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing around it, then walked on to the centre of the trap where I had made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark very firmly, and as I placed the white cap over her head she said in her languid voice “Schnell.” The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After twenty minutes, the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.
It has recently been revealed that some of the prisoners were given pericardial injections of chloroform to stop their hearts beating and obviate the need to leave them suspended for an hour, which was normal practice in England. It is not known whether this was done to the women, although Irma’s body was able to be removed from the rope after 20 minutes.
After the execution, Irma’s personal belongings were handed over to her sisters Helene and Lieschen. Among these were 439.65 Reichsmarks in cash plus a bankbook showing a balance of 4,391.57 Reichsmarks. As a concentration camp guard, single and without children, she would have been paid 186.65 Reichsmarks per month plus 35 Reichsmarks overtime premium. To put this into perspective, an unskilled worker earned about 30 Reichsmarks per month.
Also, see Irma Grese – The Most Notorious Female Nazi War Criminal.
Elisabeth Volkenrath
Elisabeth Volkenrath, née Mühlau, was born on 5 September 1919 at Schönau in Silesia. Before the war, she worked as a hairdresser and was called up for National Service in 1939 to work in a munitions factory. In 1941, she was conscripted into the SS and sent to Ravensbrück to be trained as an Aufseherin under Johanna Langefeld. Here she supervised outside Kommandos (prisoner work parties).
In March 1942, she was sent to Auschwitz No. 1, where she worked in a tailoring shop supervising the mending of prisoners’ uniforms. Here she met SS-Rottenführer (Cpl) Heinz Volkenrath, who had worked there since 1941 as an SS Blockführer. They married in 1943. In August 1942, the women’s compound was transferred to Birkenau. She continued to work there until September 1944, running the parcel store and supervising some 25 prisoners.
She was then transferred to Auschwitz No. 1 and promoted to Oberaufseherin (Senior Supervisor) for female prisoners. It is claimed that she oversaw the hangings of three prisoners here. When Auschwitz-Birkenau closed, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen and worked there from 5 February 1945 until the camp was liberated on 16 April 1945. She was arrested by the British Army the following day.
Trial and Execution
At the Belsen Trial, Elisabeth Volkenrath wore the number 7 on her chest. She was charged with having taken part in acts of brutality against other prisoners and with being responsible for the murder of Allied nationals or the suffering of those in Bergen-Belsen (first count) or Auschwitz concentration camp (second count). She was defended by Major Cranfield.
During pre-trial interviews and testimony, she admitted holding supervisory positions in these camps but denied selecting prisoners for the gas chambers or beating women prisoners. She did admit to slapping the faces of women to maintain discipline. Survivors described her as the most hated woman in the camp and testified to many atrocities she committed. Elisabeth denied their statements, dismissing them as lies.
She was found guilty on both counts and sentenced to “suffer death by being hanged.” She chose not to appeal. On Friday 7 December, her death warrant was signed by Field Marshal Montgomery in accordance with Army Order No. 81 of 1945. She was transferred with the other condemned prisoners to Hameln prison the following day to await execution.
Elisabeth Volkenrath was the first of the three women to die, being hanged at 9:34 a.m. on Thursday, 13 December 1945. Albert Pierrepoint set a drop of 7 feet 5 inches for her 151 lbs. body weight.
Johanna Bormann
Johanna Bormann (or Juanna Bormann, as shown on her death warrant) was born at Birkenfelde in East Prussia on 10 September 1893. She was apparently deeply religious and had given up missionary work to join the SS. She began work at Lichtenburg, the first women’s concentration camp, as a civilian employee on 1 March 1938, initially working in the kitchens.
She and the rest of the staff and inmates were transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp when it opened in May 1939, where she served as an Aufseherin (overseer). In March 1942, she moved to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, then in October was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1944, she went to the satellite camp at Hindenburg, before returning to Ravensbrück in January 1945. In March, she was sent to Bergen-Belsen, serving under its commandant Josef Kramer.
Like most defendants later tried for war crimes at Belsen, she was arrested at the camp on the day it was liberated. The staff were remanded to the prison at Celle to await trial.
Trial and Testimony
At the Belsen Trial, Johanna wore the number 6 card. She was represented by Major A. S. Munro and pleaded not guilty to war crime charges. She faced allegations of beating prisoners, setting her dogs on them, and selecting them for the gas chambers.
Jewish-born Anni Jonas accused Johanna of pointing out prisoners to Dr. Mengele who looked too weak for work, resulting in their being sent to the gas chamber. Dora Szafran, an inmate since June 1943, witnessed Johanna at selections for gassing and recounted how Johanna set her dog—a German Shepherd—on a woman in a work detail. The woman was badly savaged and taken away on a stretcher; her survival is unknown. Dora stated Johanna seemed proud of her actions.
Polish-born Hanka Rozencwajg testified that Johanna set her dog on prisoners and beat several women for lighting a fire without permission. She told the court that all the women inmates feared Johanna.
Another Pole, Peter Makar, recognized Johanna as the woman in charge of the pigsties and witnessed her beating women caught stealing vegetables.
Dora Silberberg accused Johanna of beating her and a friend; Johanna allegedly punched Dora hard enough to knock out two teeth and set her dog on her friend, who later died from injuries.
Alexandra Siwidowa accused Johanna of beating prisoners for wearing better clothes and forcing strenuous exercises, beating them with a stick when they flagged. Johanna denied these allegations.
Johanna’s Defence
Johanna testified as a single woman, detailing her work history in camps. She denied involvement in selections for gassing, stating she attended only roll calls. She admitted owning a dog, claimed it was a pet, and denied ever setting it on prisoners. She suggested another Aufseherin named Kuck, who resembled her and had a dog, might be responsible.
Johanna denied many witness statements, sometimes on grounds she was not present at the alleged times or places. She denied overseeing the clothing store and denied ever being at Birkenau at the relevant time. She admitted to slapping prisoners but denied beating them with sticks.
When questioned about trying to leave the SS, Johanna said she had applied in writing in 1943 but was refused.
Cross-examined by Colonel Backhouse, she denied being worse than other guards, denied attending selections or seeing the crematorium, and insisted her dog was never trained to attack prisoners. He cited testimony from Herta Ehlert alleging Johanna’s brutality and use of her dog, which Johanna denied.
Johanna acknowledged being in charge of the piggery at Belsen but said she fed the pigs the swill she was given, while prisoners starved.
Verdict and Execution
Johanna was found not guilty of crimes committed at Belsen (count one) but guilty of crimes at Auschwitz (count two). The charge involved ill-treatment causing deaths and physical suffering of Allied nationals.
Major Munro delivered a mitigation speech, painting her as a sad, lonely woman affected by camp conditions. The court was not persuaded, and on 16 November 1945, she was sentenced to death.
She left the court “as if in a dream” and chose not to appeal. She was returned to Lüneburg prison, then transferred to Hameln jail on 9 December to await execution. The hangings were scheduled for 13 December 1945, to be carried out at half-hour intervals: Elisabeth Volkenrath at 9:34 a.m., Irma Grese at 10:03 a.m., and Johanna at 10:38 a.m.
Albert Pierrepoint described Johanna during her last hours. She limped down the corridor looking old and haggard, about 5 feet tall, weighing 101 lbs., and trembling as she was weighed. In German, she said, “I have my feelings.” The drop was calculated at 8 feet 8 inches.
Also, see Johanna Bormann “The Woman With Dogs”.
Dorothea Binz
Dorothea Binz was born on 16 March 1920 at the forester’s lodge at “Düsterlake” near Templin in Germany (her father was an assistant forest official). At age 10, she joined the League of German Girls, the female wing of the Hitler Youth. At school, she was educated under the Nazis’ anti-Semitic curriculum. In her teens, she contracted tuberculosis and spent months in a clinic, missing some senior school.
She left school at 15 with minimal qualifications and worked as a kitchen maid, a job she did not enjoy. At 19, despite family objections, she applied for a job at the local SS office on 26 August 1939 and was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp for women on 1 September 1939.
Career and Atrocities
After training, she became an Aufseherin under Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld. She worked in the kitchen and laundry and is claimed to have later worked in the bunker where inmates were tortured and murdered. In August 1943, she was promoted to acting Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress). In this role, she was in charge of about 100 female staff and responsible for training and assigning duties. One of her trainees was possibly Ruth Closius.
Ravensbrück was the training center for Aufseherinnen who were assigned to other camps in Germany, Poland, Austria, and France.
As Oberaufseherin, she was responsible for some 50,000 women and child inmates. In 1944, with an influx of women and children from Polish camps, Binz was alleged to have overseen large-scale shootings and gassings. She also starved and abused prisoners, often beating, slapping, kicking, shooting, whipping, and stomping inmates. French prisoners nicknamed her “La Binz.”
Personal Life and Capture
Binz was in a relationship with SS-Obersturmführer (1LT) Edmund Bräuning, with whom she lived in a house outside the camp. They reportedly enjoyed watching women flogged. Bräuning was transferred to Buchenwald in late 1944.
Binz fled Ravensbrück just before liberation at the end of April 1945 but was captured by the British on 3 May 1945 in Hamburg. She was remanded to Recklinghausen camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald.
Trial and Execution
The first Ravensbrück trial ran from 5 December 1946 until 3 February 1947 at the Curiohaus in Hamburg. Binz wore the number 5 and was one of seven women on trial, five of whom were condemned to death. She admitted beating prisoners. Her defense argued against the death sentence on grounds that no one had died because of her mistreatment, that she was young, and that she was honest about her guilt.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on 19 April 1947 that she attempted suicide by cutting her wrists when she learned her death sentence was confirmed. Before her execution, she reportedly said to an officer, “I hope you won’t think that we were all evil people.”
At 9:01 a.m. on Friday 2 May 1947, she was hanged at Hameln prison by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by RSM Richard O’Neill.
Elisabeth Marschall
Elisabeth Marschall was born in Meiningen (Thuringia), Germany, on 27 May 1886. She trained as a nurse in her hometown in 1909, qualifying the following year. In 1914, she worked in Lausanne (Switzerland), where she became proficient in the French language. She joined the Nazi Party on 1 January 1931, believing that only Hitler could save Germany.
She was employed as the Head Nurse (Oberschwester) at the Hermann Göring Werke, an iron works in Braunschweig (Brunswick). At her trial, she said:
“I was matron … in the Hermann Goering works Hospital near Brunswick, and I had a couple of French P.O.W’s who worked there, and to these P.O.W’s I gave in the morning coffee and bread that was left from the sisters. I also used to use the French language when I talked to them, and this got me the disliking of the people around me. One day the Gestapo asked me to appear before them.”
There, she was told that what she had done was wrong and that she had kept food away from the German people. Proceedings began in November 1942 but were later stopped, and she was transferred as punishment to Ravensbrück. Her nursing skills were quickly recognized and put to use there. By April 1943, she had risen to Oberschwester at Ravensbrück.
Role at Ravensbrück and Trial
Marschall came to trial at the 1st Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg from December 1946 to February 1947 as defendant No. 11.
As head nurse at Ravensbrück, Marschall was in charge of the Kapo nurses and ward orderlies. She was alleged, in conjunction with Dr. Percival Treite, to have taken part in experiments on prisoners and in making selections of those to be sent to Auschwitz. Some 800 women were sent there, most, if not all, dying in the gas chamber.
She was also accused of killing inmates by lethal injection, using a drug called Luminal, the trade name for the anti-seizure drug phenobarbital. In 1940, several German physicians had invented the so-called “Luminal scheme” for inconspicuous killing: slight overdoses of Luminal, given three times per day over several days, combined with malnutrition, would develop pneumonia. This method had first been used elsewhere in Germany for killing around 5,000 mentally and physically handicapped children and youths up to age 16.
One prisoner-nurse testified that Marschall had 50 prisoners with newborn infants loaded into a cattle car without water, food, or milk, and that they all died.
Toward the end of March 1945, Marschall decided that all pregnant women and women with newborns still had to work. Every day she recorded the count of the number who went to work.
Character and Defence
Marschall appeared to have a “Jekyll and Hyde” character—caring for some inmates while mistreating others. Odette Sansom, a British SOE operative sent to Ravensbrück for execution, testified that she had become seriously ill and was given life-saving treatment by Marschall.
In her defence, Marschall denied ever giving a lethal injection or selecting anyone for extermination and said she tried to obtain extra food for the mothers and infants. When asked to respond to witnesses’ testimony of her as a cruel and indifferent nurse, she replied:
“I was not always nice, but when you think of the people who came into the camp and who did not always behave properly, then it is very possible that I wasn’t very nice. But I can say that I always listened to them and tried to be as fair as possible.”
At 9:31 a.m. on Friday, 2 May 1947, 61-year-old Elisabeth Marschall was hanged at Hameln by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill.
Greta Bösel
Greta Bösel was born on 9 May 1908 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Germany, as Greta Müller. She was a qualified nurse before the war and later married. She eventually obtained a job as an Aufseherin (overseer) at Ravensbrück concentration camp.
By November 1944, she had risen to the post of “work input overseer,” which meant she was among those who decided which prisoners were too weak to work and should be immediately sent to the gas chamber, and which “women who were sick, no longer efficient, or over 52 years old” could be sent to Uckermark concentration camp to die or be killed. She is supposed to have said:
“Let them rot if they can’t work.”
She was promoted to Report Overseer. In this capacity, she organised daily roll calls of all the prisoners and was responsible for general discipline.
Flight and Trial
As the Russian army closed in on Ravensbrück, Bösel and her husband, together with other senior staff, fled west toward the advancing British and US troops. She was arrested in April 1945 and tried in Hamburg by the British alongside other Ravensbrück staff between 5 December 1946 and 3 February 1947, wearing number 7.
During her trial, she made contradictory statements about her role in selecting prisoners for the gas chamber. Various witnesses testified against her. She was found guilty of maltreatment of camp inmates, murder, and participating in selections for gassing.
Greta Bösel was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill at 9:55 a.m. on Friday, 2 May 1947.
Vera Salvequart
Vera Salvequart, aged 28, had not been an SS guard but rather a prisoner herself at Ravensbrück. She was born on 26 November 1919 in Wohontsch (today Ohníč), then part of Kremusch (today Křemýž in Czechia). At her birth, the region was Czechoslovakian but became part of the German Reich when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland in 1938. Vera was raised by Czech and German parents and trained as a nurse.
Imprisonment and Role at Ravensbrück
According to her, she served 10 months in Flossenbürg concentration camp for refusing to reveal to the Gestapo the identity of her Jewish boyfriend in 1941, and then two years starting in 1942 for a similar offence, being released in April 1944. She was sent to Ravensbrück on 6 December 1944 after being arrested for helping five detained officers escape. Here she became a Kapo and worked as a nurse in the camp’s hospital wing.
In February 1945, she was said to have administered poison in the form of a sleeping powder to some 50 patients, of whom 12 died.
Trial and Witness Testimony
Salvequart was among 16 staff members arrested and tried by a British military court in Hamburg between 5 December 1946 and 3 February 1947. She wore number 10.
On 18 December 1946, the main prosecution witness against her, Irene Ottelard, testified in court. Ottelard identified Salvequart as the ward nurse in camp Uckermark and stated that Salvequart had sole responsibility for the camp because the SS man in charge, Joseph Köhler, was rarely present. Ottelard said she never saw a physician in the ward and that Salvequart gave injections and a “white powder” to sick women. Ottelard was present when her friend was given such a powder by Salvequart and saw her subsequently die.
Salvequart used to tell inmates on such occasions that they were to be sent on a transport and needed to take the powder to gain strength. If they refused, they would be given an injection by her. Ottelard observed that women who received the powder or injection fell into a deep sleep and stopped breathing the next day, dying thereafter. Salvequart did not care for them until they were dead. Ottelard observed this procedure multiple times, involving at least three to five women on each occasion.
Cross-examined whether Salvequart had saved many inmates’ lives, Ottelard replied:
“I have to say that the behaviour or the attitude of Vera Salvequart was very ambivalent. It is true that she saved the lives of some women, but it is also a fact that she murdered quite a number of them.”
Further Testimony and Verdict
Salvequart’s defence was further compromised by Viennese witness Lotti Sonntag, who testified that Salvequart provided prisoners with shoes taken from people who had been poisoned. Sonntag also said Salvequart admitted to giving inmates a poisonous white powder disguised as medication, since prisoners would not accept it from SS staff.
Vera Salvequart was found guilty on Monday, 3 February 1947, and was among five women sentenced to hang.
Execution and Final Notes
As previously related, Elisabeth Marschall, Greta Bösel, and Dorothea Binz were hanged at Hameln on 2 May 1947. Vera Salvequart was scheduled to hang with them but petitioned King George VI for a reprieve, claiming to have stolen plans for the V2 rocket and passed these to British intelligence. She was granted a stay of execution while this was considered.
Lord Russell of Liverpool, the Deputy Judge Advocate General, wrote in his recommendation against her plea for reprieve:
“Vera Salvequart, until now, has made seven absurd and inconsistent statements; three during the trial, one in her own defence, and in the two petitions made since the trial. It seems clear that one can rely neither on her written nor on her spoken word.”
Thus, the Royal prerogative of mercy was withheld. On Thursday, 26 June 1947, she followed the other three women to the gallows. She was the first of thirteen prisoners to be hanged that day by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by RSM O’Neill, her execution carried out at 9:03 a.m. Her body was later buried in the Wehl cemetery in Hameln.
Ruth Closius
Ruth Closius was born Ruth Hartmann in Breslau, Germany, on 5 July 1920. Growing up, it is probable that she was influenced by the propaganda of Hitler’s National Socialist Party. She married a man named Neudeck and in some accounts is called Ruth Closius-Neudeck. He later died, and she told British authorities that she was a widow.
Prior to going to Ravensbrück, she had worked as a wages clerk. In her signed deposition dated 20 April 1948, she told British authorities that she was conscripted to the staff of Ravensbrück on 3 July 1944 and worked there as an office clerk until November 1944. On 5 January 1945, she became block leader in Block 27 and refused a post back in the office. Five days later, she transferred with five other Aufseherinnen to the nearby satellite camp at Uckermark, which had formerly been a camp for criminal or difficult girls but had now become an extermination camp for women who were too sick or too old to work.
After six weeks as Oberaufseherin at Uckermark, she was transferred at her request to be chief supervisor of the KL Barth Ostsee camp until the end of the war. This camp housed slave labour for Heinkel Aircraft Works. She was given a cane with a silver handle by Sturmbannführer (SS Major) Saue at Ravensbrück, an item that she always kept with her until she left the camp.
The Uckermark Trial
The third Ravensbrück trial, also known as the “Uckermark trial,” was held at the British Military Court in Hamburg between 14 and 26 April 1948. It heard the cases of five women officials from the Uckermark concentration camp and extermination complex. Two of the women were acquitted as they had only worked there when it was a camp for girls, two received prison terms, but Ruth Closius was condemned to death on 26 April 1948, having confessed to selecting prisoners for the gas chambers.
She testified:
“As I took over the Uckermark Camp, there were approximately 4,000 prisoners of all nationalities present. When I was reposted approximately six weeks later, only 1,000 prisoners remained. During my activity, approximately 3,000 women were selected for the gas chamber accordingly.”
She further explained:
“When the vans were completely filled, both SS men and I drove in the direction of the crematory. There we had to unload the prisoners at a toolshed. In my function as Oberaufseherin I ordered them to undress completely. When all women were undressed, a disguised SS man in a white coat brought the women, one after the other, to another toolshed. When this shed was filled, it was locked. Then two male prisoners were ordered to enter the roof. I have seen how they dropped something there. Then the opening on the roof was closed. After the two prisoners had climbed down from the roof, the motors of the lorries were switched on so that the screaming of the victims could not be heard.”
The murdered women were told that they were being transported to a better camp named “Mittweida.” This camp did not exist and was simply a code name for gassing in one of the three mobile gassing vans or the static gas chamber in the “tool shed.”
Unlike many of the Nazi women tried by the British, Closius largely admitted her crimes and seemed almost proud of what she had done. She was hanged at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, 29 July 1948 by Albert Pierrepoint, who had arrived in the British Zone by air on 26 July and left again by air on 29 July 1948.
Ida Bertha Gertrud Schreiter
Ida Bertha Gertrud Schreiter was born on 27 December 1912. She is the least well-known of the female guards who worked at Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. It is thought that she was an Aufseherin there from 1939 to 1945. There is very little information available on her case, and she is the only one of the ten women hanged at Hameln for whom no photo exists.
After the camp was liberated, Schreiter was arrested and tried by the British at the 7th Ravensbrück trial, held in Hamburg between 2 and 21 July 1948. She stood accused of having taken part in the selection of prisoners for the gas chamber and of causing the deaths of inmates by deliberate overwork and/or neglect.
She was hanged at Hameln on Monday, 20 September 1948 by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill.
Emma Anna Maria Zimmer
Emma Anna Maria Zimmer née Mezel was born on 14 August 1888 at Schlüchtern, Germany. In 1938, Zimmer became an Aufseherin (guard) at Lichtenburg concentration camp at Prettin, near Wittenberg in Saxony, which housed female prisoners from 1937 to 1939. She and the prisoners were then transferred to the new camp at Ravensbrück.
In 1941, Zimmer selected mentally ill prisoners for euthanasia at the Bernberg Euthanasia Center, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide. In October 1942, she became assistant camp leader (Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin) at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).
Normally, Aufseherinnen had to retire at 45, but Zimmer was allowed to stay on until January 1945, when she was dismissed, either due to her age or her alcoholism.
Zimmer was convicted of maltreating prisoners and making selections for the gas chamber at the 7th Ravensbrück trial of six Aufseherinnen, held at Hamburg between 2 and 21 July 1948. A survivor from Auschwitz testified:
“Our supervisor was an old and mean SS-woman called Emma Zimmer. She was vicious and dangerous, frightening us constantly with threats, proclaiming in a sadistic voice, ‘I will report you and then you will go away, you know where? Just one way up the chimney.’ We hated her and were scared of her.”
She was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill on the same day as Ida Schreiter, 20 September 1948.
Carmen Maria Mory
Carmen Maria Mory was born on 2 July 1906 in Berne, Switzerland, to a spa doctor, Ernest Emil Mory, and his wife Leona née Bischoff, who was half Filipino.
Mory originally wanted to be a singer, but this aspiration was thwarted by a throat operation. In 1932, she travelled to Berlin, Germany. From early years, she had a penchant for a somewhat affluent lifestyle but had no training that would have earned her the corresponding means.
She drew small sums from her work as a journalist, socializing in Berlin salons. Her predominant talent, in addition to a terrific memory for details, was for intrigue, deception, and lies, which she used to get money from strangers as well as family and friends, and to set them up against each other. This talent was noticed and exploited by the Gestapo, who used her starting in February 1937 at the latest as “agent S11” in department II A 2, charged with observing the activities of Social Democratic circles at home and abroad.
Her Gestapo handler sent her to Switzerland on espionage jobs while at the same time trying to strike down charges of fraud and embezzlement brought against her. In late 1937, Mory left Berlin for Paris on Gestapo business while criminal proceedings against her accumulated.
Her first job in France was spying on German Socialist emigrants Max Braun and Helmuth Klotz. In summer 1938, she was charged with exploring French defence readiness, especially a fuel pipeline supplying the Maginot Line. Together with two German men, she was arrested on 5 November 1938 by the Sûreté. The French were not in a tremendous hurry to try her, but finally, on 28 April 1940, a Military Court condemned her to death for espionage.
On 6 June 1940, she was pardoned by the French President under the condition that she remain at the disposal of the French intelligence service. One of her co-accused was shot the next day; the other had died in prison.
She used the chaos of the German occupation of France in June 1940 to escape from confinement, made her way to an Abwehr post, and reported there. The chief of Amt IV, “Gestapo” Müller, ordered the seizure of all French court and police files on her because he suspected her of betraying her co-defendants, in other words, of being a double agent.
In August 1940, she was arrested by the Gestapo and brought to Berlin, where Reinhard Heydrich himself interrogated her. In February 1941, she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She became a Block Senior, perhaps not before 1944, and worked as an inmate nurse in Block 10, housing women with tuberculosis and insane inmates.
In November 1945, Mory was arrested by the British and tried at the first Ravensbrück trial (December 1946 – February 1947). Wearing the number 9, she was accused, among other crimes, of the murder of 60 inmates and of making selections for the gas chamber.
The evidence of fellow inmates on her was divided. According to some, she was a victim of SS atrocities herself, receiving 28 whip lashes, while others accused her of teaming up with the camp leaders and spying on fellow inmates. In the end, the court was satisfied that she was a perpetrator rather than a victim, and that the allegations of killing inmates by injections and making selections for the gas chamber were true.
She was sentenced to death on 3 February 1947. The sentence was confirmed, and she was scheduled for execution on Friday, 2 May 1947, along with Dorothea Binz, Greta Bösel, and Elisabeth Marschall. On 9 April 1947, having learned that no reprieve was forthcoming and her execution was inevitable, she slashed her wrists and jugular vein with a razor blade she had concealed in her shoe. She was dead by the time she was discovered by guards.
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