Hermine Braunsteiner

She was born in Vienna to a family of devout Catholics. Difficult conditions at home forced the Austrian woman to go to work at a young age. First she worked for an animal trader, then went to the Netherlands to her younger sister, who arranged for her to work as a cleaner. This was not possible because she did not get into school due to her poor literacy skills.

When the Anschluss of Austria took place, Hermine Braunsteiner began working in an arms factory, but she volunteered to work as a camp supervisor (SS-Aufseherin) for a living. In 1939, when she was 20 years old, she was sent to Ravensbrück. Two years later, she became head of the clothing warehouse at the camp. In 1942, she received another promotion. She was transferred to KL Lublin (Majdanek), where she became deputy head of the camp’s office, which was Elsa Ehrich.

The new manager was a terror among the female prisoners, and participated in all selections for the gas chambers. She murdered women and children in cold blood. Hermine Braunsteiner quickly learned from her superior. Soon Majdanek’s female inmates christened her “Mare” or “Tratting Mare” because the Austrian often practiced murdering prisoners by crushing their body parts.

A Majdanek prisoner, Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk, described her as follows:

The adjutant – a big, bony blonde with a horse’s face – inspires fear even from a distance. She is spiteful, vindictive, vulgar and bossy.

In just a few months Hermine Braunsteiner reached the next rung of her career. She first became a reporting officer (SS-Rapportführerin) and then deputy senior overseer (SS-Oberaufseherin), and for her outstanding service she was honored with the Second Class War Merit Cross. In 1944, she asked for a transfer. She was sent to Genthin, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück, where she became a manager.

Just before the Red Army entered, she fled to her native Austria. After being arrested, she was brought before a Viennese court, where she was sentenced to three years in prison. She was tried only for the last months of the war, because the Austrian woman did not admit that she had been in Majdanek, which was not established by the prosecutor.

Hermine Braunsteiner was released after a few months. She lived in Austria, but after a few years emigrated to the United States with an American soldier, whom she married and after whom she took the surname Ryan. In 1964, she was tracked down by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who had been approached earlier in Tel Aviv by three female Majdanek prisoners, asking him to search for a criminal who had not been held accountable.

During the Cold War era, the American public did not believe the reports of her crimes. There were also long efforts to revoke her American citizenship. This was only successful in 1971. The American government received two requests for Hermine Ryan’s extradition, from Germany and Poland. Approval was given for the woman to be handed over to the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, which may have saved her life, since in that country she did not face the death penalty – as she would have in Poland.

The trial lasted six years, during which she was released on bail. However, there were threats against witnesses in the case, so she soon returned behind bars. In 1981 she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She was found guilty of the complicity in murdering over 1000 people. In 1996, Joannes Rau, the future president of Germany, granted her a pardon. She died three years later in Bochum.