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Grese, Bothe, and Braunstein:

Analyzing the Most Infamous Guards to Learn about the Aufseherin

Aubrey Carr

Dr. Sylvia Taschka

Wayne State University

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This paper can be used to serve as an introduction to female Nazi guards, and is a good

starting place for other historical research. I looked at prominent scholarship on these women,

alongside primary sources and journals to explore how the Aufseherin operated and where these

women fit in. With more time and pages, I would be inclined to go more in-depth about the lives

of these infamous women because I was not able to get a rounded description of all their crimes

in this paper. Despite this, I hope this paper gives a wealth of knowledge and sources that can be

used as a starting point for other scholars considering talking about the Aufseherin.

First, my research will analyze the role of women in Nazi Germany and how they could

end up as a concentration camp guard. Then, it will highlight 3 of the most famous Aufseherin. I

chose to focus on Herta Bothe, Irma Grese, and Hermine Braunsteiner, because there is strong

record of their lives and the crimes they committed. Hopefully, by looking at the lives of these

three infamous women, observations can be made about Aufseherin as a general unit, why these

women may be outliers, and why educating about these women is important.

Unfortunately, much of the documentation on the Aufseherin was destroyed by the

Nazi’s at the end of the war. Due to this, this paper is based on testimonies, interviews, and past

scholarship on the women. We will never have a complete picture of the female guards, and the

gap in information is important to note. For example, even the listing of how many female

guards there where is disputed. Due to surviving documents historians can determine there were

at least 3,500 female guards trained at Ravensbrück. However, some claim there were upwards

of 4,300 guards, but the true number will never be known.1 Another variable that is missing is

1
Kudrin, Egor Ivanovich. "The number of guards in Nazi concentration camps. Experience of
reconstruction" Izvestia of the Ural Federal University. Series 2. Humanities 18, no. 1 (148) (March 2016):
175-184 https://doi.org/10.15826/izv2.2016.1.014 .
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the amount of violence female guards showed on average. The accounts of the guards come from

survivor testimony and are typically based on the most violent women they remember.

Therefore, due to the time that has passed and the small documentation on them, we do not have

all the pieces of the puzzle. Despite this, it is important to look at the pieces we do have and

construct a narrative about the women using the most written about as the examples.

Every good narrative starts at the beginning, and to fully understand these women we

must know the world they lived in and what led them to the camps. The German perception of

the duties of women in early Nazi Germany can be described in a quote by Elsbeth Zander in

1926. “The German male will one day fight with the sword for the freedom of the fatherland, but

the German female shall fight for it with unshakable belief, with endless love and loyal hope in

unceasing painstaking and detailed work by bridging the social divide. She will bandage the

wounds resulting from the struggle and distress endured by our people. She must give the tired

new energy.”2 Women were expected to contribute to the cause of Nazism in much different

ways than men. Emotionally and socially supporting Nazism rather than rallying and fighting.

However, as Hitler gained power and the war started, the needs of women began to change, and

the duties expected of them by the government became much more physical.

Instead of how Zander described women’s duties, during the war women were needed to

work in munitions factories, have secretarial and administrative positions, be teachers and

nurses, and staff concentration camps. There were still social aspects, such as the Female Hitler

Youth and the League of German Girls, but they went hand in hand with the labor demands. So

how did the women find themselves at concentration camps? There were two basic ways women

became guards: conscription or recruitment.

2
Elsbeth Zander, Tasks Facing the German Woman, January 23rd, 1926
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Recruitment was more popular in the early days of the camps when fewer prisoners

demanded less workers. The women were recruited from employment offices, help-wanted ads,

or even directly from the factories they worked at. The majority of the women recruited were

lower-middle or working class and worked in factories or doing physical labor.3 The women who

found themselves in these jobs often needed increased finances and familial independence,

which the guard position offered them. There was no secondary or vocational training required,

accommodations were provided for them, and the salary was well above what an average

unskilled female worker would make. These factors made the job very appealing to these

women, and that is how they were recruited.

The other method, most described by the female guards in this paper, was conscription.

There was no official draft for being a camp guard, but there were circumstances in which the

women could not refuse the position. Some described the officers telling them if they did not

take the work assignment they would be put on an “unwilling to work” list and sent to the camp

as a prisoner themselves.4 Another woman reported that they threatened taking away her children

and giving them up for adoption if she did not agree to be stationed there. It is unknown if these

women experienced this or if it was a tactic used by their defense team, but due to the numerous

reports of it happening, we can determine it existed, but to an unknown extent.

For many women, camp life was a different world. While they got paid well, and

Ravensbrück had childcare accommodations, the women were not used to the harsh reality of the

camps and the rules that went with them. It often took weeks or months to get used to the harsh

treatment and different reality of the concentration camps.5 The standard procedure was 3 months
3
Statement by Herta B. on 30 October 1974 in Waldshut, HStA Düsseldorf, Ger. Rep. 432 No. 203, p. 23
4
Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler. Eine Welt im Dunkel (Berlin: Ullstein,
1997), 320ff ., 322
5
Germaine Tillion, Ravensbriick, trans. Gerald Satterwhite (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor,
1975), p. 69.
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of training at Ravensbrück before getting stationed there or at a different camp, but towards the

end of the war the training became much shorter. The uniforms were to be always worn, and

unlike the male guards, females were not permitted to have pistols, but some did anyways. Some

had whips, but the large majority just had night sticks as weapons. They wore large clunky boots

and accessorized their uniform with jewelry. The women who rose most quickly through the

ranks at the camps were the most sadistic, and by contrast, the men who rose through the ranks

were often more bureaucratic. However, because men were the ones choosing which females got

promoted, it tells us that men mistook sadism for toughness.6

Of the 3,500+ women who were concentration camp guards, few have been documented

more than the women featured in the next section of the paper. Now that a background of the

guards has been established, I will be describing the crimes of three particularly brutal guards,

their backgrounds, and their punishments. All of this is to reinforce the information given in the

first section while also providing details on the horrific things these female camp guards did to

prisoners. After this section, I will be giving my analysis on the culpability of the female guards

with their position in society and heinous crimes considered.

Irma Grese

Irma Grese is arguably the most infamous camp guard, known for her crimes against

prisoners and her relationships with high-ranking Nazi officials. In the testimonies of survivors,

6
Roger W. Smith, "Women and Genocide: Notes on an Unwritten History," Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 8, no. 3 (Winter 1994): 315-334
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they often remembered her name or appearance more than anyone else’s.7 However, her

childhood stemmed from tragedy.

At a young age, her mother committed suicide after discovering her father had an affair.

She performed poorly in school but became an assistant nurse before being conscripted to work

at Ravensbrück. She is one of the guards who claimed to not have been given a choice on

transferring the camp, although history will show that she became quite comfortable there. She

was very beautiful and had a reputation for wearing perfume and jewelry around prisoners to

make them feel lesser. Gisella Pearl, a former prisoner at Auschwitz, who also was a doctor,

reported many disturbing occurrences with Grese in her memoir. For one, she claimed that

during a breast procedure with no anesthetic, Grese came into the room and watched the

procedure while becoming visibly aroused. After that, she would whip women with the largest

breasts so they would get infected and she would be able to watch their procedures to satisfy her

sadistic and sexual needs.8

Due to the above crimes and ones of similar nature, after Auschwitz-Birkenau was

liberated by the British troops, she was taken into custody and was sentenced to death during The

Belson Trials. She was only 22 at the time of her execution in 1945. Sentenced to hang, her last

moments were spent giving the order “Schnell” to the executioner.9 That order, undoubtedly as

familiar to her as her name, used to signify her power in the camp. However, nobody ran faster

or straightened their posture for fear of being whipped when she gave it this time. When she gave

her final orders, the floor latch opened, and she hung in the gallows. There is some comfort that

7
Vida, Bianka (2016). "A case study of Irma Grese: Constructing the ‘evil’ and the ‘ordinary’ through
digital oral testimonies and written trial testimonies of the Holocaust survivors". Kaleidoscope
(Budapest) (2062-2597), 7 (13), p. 529
8
Perl, Gisella. 1948. I was a doctor in Auschwitz. New York: International Universities Press Pg. 45-47
9
Pierrepoint, Albert (1977) [1974]. Executioner: Pierrepoint. London: Coronet. ISBN 978-0-3402-1307-0
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the command she used to bring pain to many and assert dominance with was also the command

that left her powerless and lifeless.

Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner is the most well-documented female guard, thanks to her numerous

interviews. She grew up poor and had to work doing manual labor at a brewery to support her

family. She completed all of school and wanted to become a nurse but could not afford the

training required. She ended up going abroad and finding a job in London before moving back

due to heightened tensions between Germany and England.10 She went to work at a munition’s

factory, but when the police chief offered her a job as a guard at Ravensbrück, she could not

refuse. The commute was shorter, and the pay was much better. In 1938, she became a guard

there. In 1943, after receiving metals and moving up at Ravensbrück, she was transferred to

Majdanek. She claims it was punishment for resisting advances made by the administrative

director of the camp.11

At Majdanek, she became chief officer for the women prisoners and often decided who

went to the gas chambers. Testimony by a prisoner claimed that if she did not like the look of a

person, she would send them to get gassed.12 Braunsteiner’s violent acts, however, stemmed from

a different place than Irma Grese’s. She used violence to express her power and keep herself

respected, unlike Grese who drifted more towards sadism than sending a message. She often

10
Mailänder, Elissa, and Mailänder, Elissa. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence : The Majdanek
Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015. Accessed
December 10, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
11
Statement by Hertha Nauman (married name: Ehlert) on 18 April 1972 in Bad Homburg, HStA
Düsseldorf, Ger. Rep. 432 No. 296, p. 7461
12
8. Survivor, in Eberhard Fechner, Norddeutscher Rundfunk: Der Prozess: Eine Darstellung des
Majdanek-Verfahrens in Düsseldorf, videotape (1984), part 1; see also statement by Teresa-Maria
Slizewicz on 23 May 1972 in Warsaw, HStA Düsseldorf, Rep. 432 No. 235, pp. 80ff
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picked on the lowest on the social rung, the elderly, and was more about being feared and

humiliating others than doing it for her own pleasure.13

Herta Bothe

Herta Bothe was only 21 when she started at Ravensbrück, but she had already

established herself as a nurse prior to becoming a camp guard.14 She was a massive woman,

towering 6’3 in height, and this contributed to her frightening demeanor. Her nickname was the

Sadist of Stutthof, for she had a reputation of being very cruel to the prisoners in her unit at

Bergen-Belson. There were multiple reports of her cruelty in the camp, from using pistols to

shoot two innocent prisoners, to using a wooden block to beat an old woman to death for no

apparent reason.15 She was known for her unrelenting beatings for minor offenses, like stealing

food scraps. At the Belson trials, she was only sentenced to 10 years in prison, however she got

out early due to leniency by the British government.

During her trial, she talked about after the liberation, her and the other guards were

forced to carry and bury the bodies of the dead prisoners without any gloves. She recalls how

badly decomposed some of the bodies were, and how worried she was of getting typhus. After

her short prison sentence, she did not do many interviews. However, in a special that aired in

1999 she made clear her true feelings on her time as a camp guard. “Did I make a mistake? No.

The mistake was that it was a concentration camp, but I had to go to it, otherwise I would have

13
Mailänder, Elissa, and Mailänder, Elissa. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence : The Majdanek
Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015. Accessed
December 10, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central. Pg. 236
14
Belson Trial, 37th day, Monday October 29th 1945
15
Wendy Adele-Marie Sarti, Women and Nazis: Perpetrators of Genocide and Other Crimes During
Hitler's Regime, 1933-1945 (Palo Alto, California: Academica Press, 2011), pp. 87-89
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been put into it myself. That was my mistake.”16 In the interview where she says this, she is very

old, and yet there is no acknowledgment of any wrongdoings on her part.

The purpose of this paper is to raise understanding on who the women guards were, what

they were like, and how they were part of Nazi society. However, when doing research like this,

it is important to consider the impact these women made on society. Not only were these women

responsible for killing and hurting thousands of innocent people, but they showcase a side of

women not often seen. In society, the stereotypical woman is nurturing, kind, and not incessantly

cruel. The three women researched today, and countless other nameless Aufseherin, were the

opposite of this ideal.

In the job description, these women could beat prisoners with their bare hands and their

sticks. For these women, however, that was not enough. They broke their own protocol to obtain

weapons like pistols and whips to cruelly punish innocent people to exert their power and satisfy

their sadistic needs. Research on these women are crucial because oftentimes Nazi women are

not viewed the same as Nazi men. In Wendy Lowers book, Hitlers Furies, she says this, “The

Nazi regime mobilized a generation of young female revolutionaries who were conditioned to

accept violence, to incite it, and to commit it, in defense of or as an assertion of Germanys

superiority.”17 The male guards who were tried got more prison time and more executions than

any female guards, and only one of the women mentioned in this paper, Irma Grese, was given

the death penalty.

16
Dreykluft, Friederike (2004). "HERTA BOTHE interview". Holokaust (TV mini-series). MPR Film
und Fernsehproduktion
17
Lower, Wendy. 2013. Hitler's Furies : German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers. Accessed December 13, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Pg. 166
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Despite this cruelty, not all women behaved liked the ones mentioned. Because so many

records were lost and there are limited interviews, we know little about the majority of the

female guards. However, there are some examples of nicer guards in the interviews. Herta Ehrlet

was describes by Hermine Braunsteiner as always giving prisoners extra food.18 She would tell

the prisoners to go check the trash, and there would be sandwiches waiting for them. Another

guard, Emily Macha, was called ‘Mama’ by the prisoners for her stern words but kind heart.19

The testimony on humane guards is important because it helps develop a more accurate depiction

of the Aufseherin.

Through the research of the individual women, each Aufseherin had different reasons for

acting the way they did, but it does not excuse any of them. It was their job to exert dominance

and power over others, and in the patriarchal society of Nazi Germany, the most indicative

determiner of a woman’s strength to a man was brutality. Some of the women, like Irma Grese

and Herta Bothe, may have just been sadistic by nature. Others, like Braunsteiner, used their

cruelty to receive more power. We can assume these differences also occurred to the majority of

the Aufseherin.

As stated in my purpose statement, I hope the research I have done on this topic

gives a good background on the Aufseherin as a unit and provides details of their lives and

deaths through the examples of Irma Grese, Hermine Braunsteiner, and Herta Bothe. This work

is very important to me as a woman and a student of history, as there are many lessons to be

learned about the Aufseherin and history’s treatment of them after the war.

18
Buber-Neumann, Gefangene, 305
19
Mailänder, Elissa, and Mailänder, Elissa. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence : The Majdanek
Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015. Accessed
December 10, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central. Pg. 236