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Hermine Braunsteiner
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Hermine Braunsteiner
Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was an Austrian SS Helferin and female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps. She was the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States to face trial in West Germany. Braunsteiner was known to prisoners of Majdanek concentration camp as "the Mare" because she was said to have kicked and stomped on prisoners, thrown children by their hair onto trucks that took them to be murdered in gas chambers, hanged young prisoners, and beaten prisoners to death.
Braunsteiner was convicted for her complicity and collaborating in murders of over 1,000 people during the Holocaust. She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Düsseldorf on April 30, 1981. She was released on health grounds in 1996, and died three years later.
Braunsteiner was born in Vienna, the youngest of seven children in a strictly observant Roman Catholic family, variously described as petite bourgeoisie (kleinbürgerlich) or working class. Her father, Friedrich Braunsteiner, was a butcher and a chauffeur for a brewery owner, while her mother was a washwoman and custodian. She was raised under impoverished circumstances in the Nußdorf suburb of Döbling.
Braunsteiner graduated from Hauptschule in 1933 with aspirations to become a nurse. Due to the death of her father in 1934, however, she was required to find employment to support the family and thus unable to enter nursing school. Braunsteiner worked as a maid, mostly in Vienna, though she briefly moved to live with relatives in the Netherlands for three months in summer 1936. Upon her return, she was hired as an assembly worker at the brewery her father formerly worked for.
From 1937 to May 1938, Braunsteiner worked in London for an American engineer's household, but returned to Austria following the Anschluss, fearing possible internment by the British government in the event of war. Having become a German citizen through the annexation, Braunsteiner filed a request to undergo nurse training with the Blaue Schwesternschaft in Berlin, to no success. In August of the same year, she relocated to Germany for a job at a munition factory in Grüneberg before moving to Berlin to work at the Heinkel aircraft works.
Unsatisfied with the menial labour, Braunsteiner found out through her landlord, a Fürstenberg police officer, that the recently established Ravensbrück concentration camp had open contractual positions for female supervisors (Aufseherinnen), with a weekly salary of 64 mark, quadruple her current income. She began her training at Ravensbrück on August 15, 1939, under Maria Mandl, receiving the service number 38. She remained there after the start of World War II, and the influx of new prisoners from occupied countries. After three years, a disagreement with Mandl led Braunsteiner to request a transfer in October 1942.
On October 16, 1942, Braunsteiner assumed her duties in the forced-labor apparel factory near the Majdanek concentration camp, established near Lublin, Poland, a year earlier. It was both a labour camp (Arbeitslager) and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) with gas chambers and crematoria. She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943, under Oberaufseherin Elsa Ehrich along with five other camp guards. By then most of the Aufseherinnen had been moved into Majdanek from the Alter Flughafen labor camp.
Braunsteiner had a number of roles in the camp. She involved herself in "selections" of women and children to be sent to the gas chambers and whipped several women to death. Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich, Hildegard Lächert, Marta Ulrich, Alice Orlowski, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, Erna Wallisch and Elisabeth Knoblich, Braunsteiner became known for her wild rages and tantrums. She was noted for her particularly cruel treatment of children, whom she called "useless eaters", regularly punishing them for minor infractions such as wearing stockings and pillows for warmth or incorrectly sewing their identification numbers to clothes, and in one instance, she beat a group of starved children with a ladle for coming too early for food distribution. One witness at her later trial in Düsseldorf described an incident where a prisoner had concealed his child inside a backpack and upon Braunsteiner seeing movement in the bag, she whipped the child for several minutes before personally dragging her to the gas chamber. Other survivors testified how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname "The Stomping Mare" (In Polish "Kobyła", in German "Stute"). For her work, she received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class, in 1943.
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Hermine Braunsteiner
Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was an Austrian SS Helferin and female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps. She was the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States to face trial in West Germany. Braunsteiner was known to prisoners of Majdanek concentration camp as "the Mare" because she was said to have kicked and stomped on prisoners, thrown children by their hair onto trucks that took them to be murdered in gas chambers, hanged young prisoners, and beaten prisoners to death.
Braunsteiner was convicted for her complicity and collaborating in murders of over 1,000 people during the Holocaust. She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Düsseldorf on April 30, 1981. She was released on health grounds in 1996, and died three years later.
Braunsteiner was born in Vienna, the youngest of seven children in a strictly observant Roman Catholic family, variously described as petite bourgeoisie (kleinbürgerlich) or working class. Her father, Friedrich Braunsteiner, was a butcher and a chauffeur for a brewery owner, while her mother was a washwoman and custodian. She was raised under impoverished circumstances in the Nußdorf suburb of Döbling.
Braunsteiner graduated from Hauptschule in 1933 with aspirations to become a nurse. Due to the death of her father in 1934, however, she was required to find employment to support the family and thus unable to enter nursing school. Braunsteiner worked as a maid, mostly in Vienna, though she briefly moved to live with relatives in the Netherlands for three months in summer 1936. Upon her return, she was hired as an assembly worker at the brewery her father formerly worked for.
From 1937 to May 1938, Braunsteiner worked in London for an American engineer's household, but returned to Austria following the Anschluss, fearing possible internment by the British government in the event of war. Having become a German citizen through the annexation, Braunsteiner filed a request to undergo nurse training with the Blaue Schwesternschaft in Berlin, to no success. In August of the same year, she relocated to Germany for a job at a munition factory in Grüneberg before moving to Berlin to work at the Heinkel aircraft works.
Unsatisfied with the menial labour, Braunsteiner found out through her landlord, a Fürstenberg police officer, that the recently established Ravensbrück concentration camp had open contractual positions for female supervisors (Aufseherinnen), with a weekly salary of 64 mark, quadruple her current income. She began her training at Ravensbrück on August 15, 1939, under Maria Mandl, receiving the service number 38. She remained there after the start of World War II, and the influx of new prisoners from occupied countries. After three years, a disagreement with Mandl led Braunsteiner to request a transfer in October 1942.
On October 16, 1942, Braunsteiner assumed her duties in the forced-labor apparel factory near the Majdanek concentration camp, established near Lublin, Poland, a year earlier. It was both a labour camp (Arbeitslager) and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) with gas chambers and crematoria. She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943, under Oberaufseherin Elsa Ehrich along with five other camp guards. By then most of the Aufseherinnen had been moved into Majdanek from the Alter Flughafen labor camp.
Braunsteiner had a number of roles in the camp. She involved herself in "selections" of women and children to be sent to the gas chambers and whipped several women to death. Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich, Hildegard Lächert, Marta Ulrich, Alice Orlowski, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, Erna Wallisch and Elisabeth Knoblich, Braunsteiner became known for her wild rages and tantrums. She was noted for her particularly cruel treatment of children, whom she called "useless eaters", regularly punishing them for minor infractions such as wearing stockings and pillows for warmth or incorrectly sewing their identification numbers to clothes, and in one instance, she beat a group of starved children with a ladle for coming too early for food distribution. One witness at her later trial in Düsseldorf described an incident where a prisoner had concealed his child inside a backpack and upon Braunsteiner seeing movement in the bag, she whipped the child for several minutes before personally dragging her to the gas chamber. Other survivors testified how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname "The Stomping Mare" (In Polish "Kobyła", in German "Stute"). For her work, she received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class, in 1943.
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