Alice Orlowski

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Alice Orlowski at the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków (1947)

Alice Elisabeth Minna Orlowski , née Elling , (born September 30, 1903 in Berlin ; † May 1976 ) was a German concentration camp guard in several concentration camps .

Life

Alice Elling was the daughter of a senior tax inspector. She attended the Lyceum in Berlin. At 18, she gave birth to a child out of wedlock and was expelled from her parents' home. She had to finish a medical degree after a few semesters for financial reasons. Then she worked as a mannequin. In the early 1930s she married a stateless nobleman and businessman of Belarusian origin and ran the joint leather goods store. After the divorce, she took over a bar in Aachen until it was destroyed during the Second World War in 1943 as a result of a bomb attack. After that she lived with her mother.

Orlowski was conscripted to serve as a concentration camp guard and in July 1943 quickly trained as a concentration camp guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp . In accordance with her training, she was employed as a commando leader in the Majdanek concentration camp from July 1943 to April 1944 . She was then transferred to the Plaszow concentration camp in the course of the evacuation of the Majdanek concentration camp , where she worked as a guard. From the beginning of October 1944 Orlowski was deployed as a command leader in the Budy subcamp of Auschwitz . In mid-January 1945, Orlowski accompanied an evacuation march from Auschwitz via Loslau ( Wodzisław Śląski ). It is possible that she worked as a guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp or one of the subcamps until April 1945.

At the end of the war , Orlowski was arrested and extradited to Poland. Orlowski stood before the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland at the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków from November 24 to December 22, 1947 . There she was charged with belonging to a criminal organization and for mistreating female inmates. On December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The verdict states: "The defendant hit either with her bare hand or with a knocker or with a leather whip, and she mistreated her victims even if they were old women or children." She served her sentence until she was released in 1956 in Poland. After her return to the Federal Republic of Germany, Orlowski led an inconspicuous life.

In 1973, Orlowski, a social pensioner, was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment on the basis of anti-Semitic statements. In the third Majdanek trial , which began on November 26, 1975 before the Düsseldorf Regional Court , she and other accused were charged with the crimes committed in the Majdanek concentration camp. Orlowski died during the main hearing in spring 1976 and the case against her was dropped on May 14, 1976.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oświęcim 1998, p. 239
  2. ↑ Quoted in Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 305 f.
  3. ^ Elissa Mailänder Koslov: Images of perpetrators in the Düsseldorf Majdanek trial (1975–1981). In: Simone Erpel (Ed.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , editors: Jeanette Toussaint, Johannes Schwartz and Lavern Wolfram (series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , Volume 17). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, p. 213
  4. ^ Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 305 f.
personal data
SURNAME Orlowski, Alice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Orlowski, Alice Elisabeth Minna (full name); Elling, Alice Elisabeth Minna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp guard in various concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 1976