From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Aufseherin is the term for a female guard in the Nazi concentration camps.
The women were generally middle to low class and had no work experience. The ones who did were former prison matrons, hairdressers, street car ticket takers, opera singers, retired teachers or others. The genuine volunteers saw ads in German newspapers asking for women to show their love for the Reich and join the SS-Gefolge (an SS cousin organisation for women).
At first, women were trained at Lichtenburg (1938). After 1939, women were trained at Ravensbruck camp near Berlin. When the war broke out, the Nazis built other camps in Poland, France, Holland, Belgium and most other countries they occupied.
In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbruck. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a guard shortage. Later on in the war, women were also trained on a smaller scale at the camps of Neuengamme, Auschwitz I, Plaszow, Flossenburg, Gross Rosen, Vught and Stutthof.
The numbers of Aufseherin were generally low. Of the 40,000 guards who served in the camps, only 3,500 were women, roughly 10%. And no female guard ever served at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka or Chelmno.
Only twenty-four SS women served at Buchenwald, eighteen at Dachau, eighteen in Mauthausen, three in Dora Mittelbau, six at Natzweiler, thirty at Majdanek, 200 at Auschwitz and its subcamps, one hundred at Sachsenhausen, 200 at Neuengamme, thirty at Stutthof, compared to 4,000 who served in the Ravensbruck complex, and 1,000 at Gross Rosen. Many female supervisors worked in subcamps in Germany, France, Austria and Poland.
If a woman appeared to be ruthless, she would be promoted to Rapportaufseherin (Report Leader), Erstaufsehgerin (First Guard) or Oberaufseherin (Senior Overseer). The highest rank ever attained by two women, Klein Plaubel and Luise Brunner, was Chef Oberaufseherin (Chief Senior Overseer).
Head overseers at Ravensbruck were Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, Jane Bernigau, Erna Rose, and their assistant, Dorothea Binz. At Auscwhitz they were Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, Margot Dreschler, Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath, and at Maidnek they were Elsa Erich, Hermine Braunsteiner, and Else Weber. In Stutthof, Elisabeth Wistoki and Gerda Steinhoff were Oberaufseherin; at Mauthausen it was Margarethe Freiberger and Jane Bernigau; and at Buchenwald, Ilse Koch.
The SS women, as they have been called, were generally strong, stout and healthy. They were normally ugly, fat and brutal to the female inmates. Most carried whips and used them frequently. After the war, only a few SS women were tried for their crimes. Most SS women tried at the Auschwitz Trial, Ravensbruck Trial, Stutthof Trial, and Third Majdanek Trial.
