On
this date, January 24, 1948, an Austrian SS female Nazi War Criminal, Maria
Mandl was executed by hanging. I will post information about her from
Wikipedia.
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| Photograph of Maria Mandel after her arrest by U.S. Army troops on August 10th, 1945. |
Born
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January 10, 1912
Münzkirchen, Austria-Hungary |
Died
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January 24, 1948 (aged 36)
Kraków, Republic of Poland |
Cause of death
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Capital Punishment (Hanging)
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Occupation
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Prison Guard
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Employer
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Aufseherin, Lichtenburg, Oberaufseherin, Ravensbrück, Lagerführerin,
Auschwitz II Birkenau, women's camp at Birkenau, Dachau concentration camp.
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Home town
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Münzkirchen, Austria
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Political party
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NSDAP
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Maria Mandl
(also spelled Mandel) (January 10, 1912 - January 24, 1948) was an Austrian
SS-Helferin infamous for her key role in the Holocaust as a top-ranking
official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where she is believed to
have been directly implicit in the deaths of over 500,000 female prisoners.
Life
Mandl
was born in Münzkirchen, Upper Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, the
daughter of a shoemaker.
Camp
work
After
the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany she moved to Munich, and on 15
October 1938 joined the camp staff as an Aufseherin at Lichtenburg, an
early Nazi concentration camp in the Province of Saxony where she worked with
fifty other SS women. On May 15, 1939 she along with other guards and
prisoners were sent to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp near
Berlin. She quickly impressed her superiors and, after she had joined the Nazi
Party on 1 April 1941, was elevated to the rank of a SS-Oberaufseherin
in April 1942. She oversaw daily roll calls, assignments for Aufseherinnen
and punishments such as beatings and floggings.
On
October 7, 1942, Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp in Poland
where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin, a female
commandant under (male) SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß. As a woman she could
never outrank a man, but her control over both female prisoners and her female
subordinates was absolute. The only man Mandl reported to was the commandant.
She controlled all the female Auschwitz camps and female subcamps including at
Hindenburg, Lichtewerden, Budy and Raisko.
Mandl
took a liking to Irma Grese, whom she promoted to head of the Hungarian women's
camp at Birkenau. According to some accounts, Mandl often stood at the gate
into Birkenau waiting for an inmate to turn and look at her: any who did were
taken out of the lines and never heard from again. In the Auschwitz camps Mandl
was known as "The Beast", and for the next two years she
participated in selections for death and other documented abuses. She
reportedly often chose so-called "pet" Jews for herself, keeping them
from the gas chamber for a time until she tired of them, then sending them to
their deaths. Mandl is also said to have enjoyed selecting children to be
killed. She created the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz to accompany roll calls,
executions, selections, and transports. She signed inmate lists sending an
estimated half a million women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers
at Auschwitz I and II. For her services rendered she was awarded the War Merit
Cross 2nd class.
In
November 1944, she was assigned to the Mühldorf subcamp of Dachau concentration
camp, and Elisabeth Volkenrath became head of the crumbling Auschwitz empire of
camps, which were liberated in early January 1945. In May 1945, Mandl fled from
Mühldorf into the mountains of southern Bavaria to her birthplace of
Münzkirchen, Austria.
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Maria Mandl
(1912-1948), Auschwitz Trial Kraków - "The Trial of Forty German Butchers
of Auschwitz Camp," November 24-26, 1947
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| PHOTO SOURCE: http://peliculasdelholocaustojudio.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/maria-mandel-alto-rango-en-el-campo-de.html |
Arrest
and execution
The
United States Army arrested Mandl on August 10, 1945. Interrogations reportedly
revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work in the camps.
She was handed over to the Republic of Poland in November 1946, and in November
1947 she was tried in a Kraków courtroom in the Auschwitz Trial and sentenced
to death. Stanisława Rachwałowa (a Polish survivor of Auschwitz who was an
inmate under Mandl's administration and, after the war, was arrested by
Poland's post-war communist authorities as an "anti-communist
activist") was imprisoned in the cell next to Maria Mandl and Therese
Brandl. Rachwałowa was proficient enough in German to interpret for the
wardens. She has stated that the last time she and the two German war criminals
met - after they had been sentenced to death and several days before their
execution took place - both asked her for forgiveness. Mandl was hanged on
January 24, 1948 at the age of 36.
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