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Maria Mandl had many nicknames given to her by female inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau. One called her “Mandelka”, which was a diminutive form of her name. To others, she was “Mancia”, which probably referred to both her name and a popular children’s poem before the war. Others called her Mandel [German word “Mandel” means “Almond”]. However, she was most often referred to as “The Beast.”
Maria came from Austria, after the Anschluss in 1938 she began working in concentration camps, later justifying this choice with good wages. She got her first “job” in Lichtenburg, then in Ravensbruck. There she received training for SS female guards. At first she worked as a private supervisor, then as a senior supervisor (SS-Oberaufseherin). She was thus in charge of the guard staff, establishing daily work commands, overseeing their efficiency, inspecting the barracks and appointing female functionary prisoners. In 1942 Maria Mandl was transferred to Auschwitz and promoted to SS-Lagerführerin – head of the Birkenau women’s camp, the highest position a woman could hold in the hierarchy of the camp staff. In practice, she answered only to camp commandant Rudolf Höß.
Grotesquely, her weaknesses were children and music. Female prisoners recalled that when transports from the Soviet Union came and there were children without parents in them, Mandl would take them in her arms, sing to them, and then send them to the gas chambers after a few days. Some she escorted personally. She would also go to the children’s block, take them on her lap and hand them packages from the dead. She was able to withdraw some child from the line to the gas chamber when they turned out to be musical. Maria Mandl ordered the formation of an orchestra, which she made play on cue at all hours. She was most fond of the part of Cio-Cio-San from the opera “Madame Butterfly”.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau, however, female prisoners mainly experienced her sadistic side. Her specialty was knocking out jaws with one punch and violent blows to the abdomen. Such punishment could be earned, for example, for keeping one’s hand in one’s pocket or smoking a cigarette, for rubbing one’s nose with one’s hand, for tying a handkerchief crookedly on one’s head or for a handkerchief sticking out of one’s pocket. She practically never parted with her whip and baton. She could ride a bicycle in front of a line of several thousand women and beat them in the faces at the same time. Maria Mandl liked to be the mistress of life and death. When groups of women returned from work, they went through a selection at the gate. Mandl held a stick at a height of 50 centimeters. Those who managed to jump over it kept their lives, while those who couldn’t make it were sent to the gas chamber.
Maria Madl signed 500,000 death sentences in total.
In December 1944, she escaped from the approaching Red Army. She tried to return to the family home, but her father refused to shelter her. She was arrested by the Americans, and in 1946 was handed over to the Polish side. The trial of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp crew took place in Krakow, where Mandl was sentenced to death. In prison, Maria Mandl was held in a death cell next to Stanisława Rachwał, who was sentenced to death by the Communists for being a member of the Home Army. The Germans had imprisoned a Polish woman in Auschwitz during the war for underground activities, so the two women met in the camp. Stanisława Rachwał later recalled:
In the afternoon we were called for a bath (…) the situation was incredible: the two of them [Mandl and another Auschwitz guard – Therese Brandl] and me. Locked up, the three beings from the former death camp (…) suddenly I saw the two German women walking slowly toward me. The old fear gripped me all over. I stood terrified and helpless. And the former Oberaufseherin Mandel stood at a distance of two steps in front of me, wet, small, and streams of tears flowed from her eyes. She said slowly, struggling to catch her breath, “I ask for forgiveness, I beg for forgiveness“. I cried along with them. I grasped her outstretched, asking hand and said, “I forgive on behalf of the prisoners“. At this they both dropped to their knees and began to kiss my hands.
Maria Mandl was hanged in Krakow on January 24, 1948. Just before she died, she shouted “Long live Poland”.
