Anneliese Kohlmann

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From left to right: the concentration camp guards Marta Löbelt, Gertrud Rheinhold, Irene Haschke and Anneliese Kohlmann after their arrest on May 2, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen. In addition to the three female guards in their uniforms, Anneliese Kohlmann (far right) is wearing men's clothing, as she wore prisoner clothing when she was arrested.

Anneliese Kohlmann (born March 23, 1921 in Hamburg ; † September 17, 1977 in West Berlin ) was a German concentration camp guard in the Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps who were charged with the mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners in the second Bergen-Belsen trial Was sentenced to two years in prison.

biography

Origin and occupation

Anneliese Kohlmann was the daughter of Georg Kohlmann and his wife Margret. Her father's profession is unknown, all we know is that he was a Freemason . Little is known about their youth and education. She attended a private school until 1938 and was raised as a Christian. In February 1940 she applied for admission to the NSDAP and became a party member in early April 1940. Though a lesbian, she got engaged to a man in November 1943. She suffered from a severe form of bleaching , for which she was under medical treatment. She made her living as a tram conductor. She moved out of her parents' house at the end of October 1944 and has since sublet in Hamburg-Sankt Georg .

Concentration camp guard in the Neuengamme subcamps

On November 4, 1944, she was drafted into the SS entourage . She did not make use of the leeway available to refuse to work as a guard in a concentration camp. She was deployed in the Neugraben subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, where, as a concentration camp guard, she monitored female Jewish prisoners during construction and clean-up work. After the inmate women were transferred from the Neugraben subcamp to the Tiefstack subcamp on February 8, 1945, she was transferred to this camp as a guard. Because of her boyish appearance, she was called "Bubi" by the inmates. Kohlmann repeatedly beat female prisoners from her work detachment for “misconduct”. She was friends with Lotte Winter (Lotte Winterová (1922–2010)), a Czech prisoner wife of her work detachment from Prague , and fell in love with them. On April 7, 1945, the Tiefstack satellite camp was closed and the prisoners were taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, accompanied by Kohlmann, among others. After the prisoners had been handed over, she asked the concentration camp commandant Josef Kramer to be allowed to stay in the camp with the prisoners she was accompanying, but he refused.

Life as a prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and arrest

Finally Kohlmann drove back to Hamburg and turned back without permission. According to her statement after the end of the war, she wanted to meet Winter again in Bergen-Belsen, with whom she felt sorry. She was accompanied by Willy Brachmann , a prisoner who had escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp , who was engaged to Winter and whom she had since met. Both decided to gain access to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she claimed to have sneaked in on April 8, 1945. She organized herself into concentration camp inmate clothing and took off her uniform. After all, she lived camouflaged as a prisoner in a block with Winter so that she could be with her. Shortly after the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was handed over to the British Army on April 15, 1945, she was reported to known prisoners and arrested on April 17, 1945 on the camp grounds.

In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, prisoner concentration camp guards carry prisoners' corpses from trucks into a mass grave

After that, she and the others were arrested near the concentration camp. She then had to bury the thousands of prisoner corpses in the camp area in mass graves under guard, together with SS men and guards. In the meantime, George Rodger made recordings for the American magazine Life , which were published a few weeks later in an article about the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Among other things, he photographed Kohlmann unloading corpses from a truck.

Trial, detention and the post-war period

Finally, she was taken to prison after Celle transferred and up to her trial in remand taken. She was interrogated on June 9, 1945 and stated, among other things, that she had returned to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her fiancé without authorization because of winter and that she had lived there as a prisoner until her arrest. She was popular with the prisoners' wives of her work detail in Hamburg, although she also struck. Eventually, she stated that she had sexual relations with women during her engagement. In addition, the former superintendent Elisabeth Volkenrath , who was also imprisoned, told her that the guard Irma Grese had also entered into a lesbian relationship in the Auschwitz concentration camp . She only heard of the abuse of lesbian women in the Neugraben subcamp from hearsay.

A war crimes trial was carried out before a British military court in the second Bergen-Belsen trial against Kohlmann on May 16, 1946. As a concentration camp guard, she was charged with mistreating prisoners from Allied states in Hamburg and elsewhere and pleaded not guilty at the start of the trial. She was represented by a German lawyer who gave an opening speech at the beginning of the hearing: He criticized the fact that only the interrogation protocols of the witnesses were available for the trial. He also stated that Kohlmann only spent a few hours as a guard in Bergen-Belsen, but otherwise lived there as a prisoner. As a guard, she was popular with the inmates and helped them, among other things, by organizing additional food. She only hit “when there was no other alternative”. Afterwards Kohlmann took the stand and declared their interrogation protocol to be truthful. She also made a supplementary statement in which she denied, among other things, that she was a member of the BDM and NSDAP.

“I think the girls in my work detachment in Hamburg all liked me, although I admit that I hit them occasionally when they did something wrong, but they preferred to be hit by me than by the commanding officer and therefore Did they love me despite the beatings [...] no less [...] I came to Bergen-Belsen unofficially and without permission because I wanted to help one of the inmate women, Lotte W., who had been in my work detachment in Hamburg [...] Me wanted to help this girl because I was friends with her and she and the other Czech girls had promised to take me to Prague with them when they were free again [...] When I came to Belsen, I [...] lived as a prisoner wife for a few days Lotte W. until I was discovered. "

- Statements made by Kohlmann during her trial on May 16, 1946.

Recorded interrogations of prisoner women, who were read out during the trial, incriminated Kohlmann: she repeatedly hit prisoner women with her hands or with a stick for minor things. A witness and a former prisoner wife from her work detail in Hamburg also stated that Kohlmann preferred young prisoner women. In addition, she has shown "perverse sexual behavior".

Winter's fiancé, a concentration camp guard and her mother testified as exonerations. Winter's fiancé Brachmann stated that he drove to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with Kohlmann. She had previously smuggled food and letters from him into the camp for winter. His fiancée told him that the inmates had trusted Kohlmann and that she had had problems with camp leader Kliem as a result. He never saw Kohlmann strike, but had to admit that he had never seen her work as a guard. A former guard from the Tiefstack subcamp stated that the inmates liked Kohlmann and that she had problems with camp leader Kliem as a result. Female guards would also have slapped inmates with their hands, but only if they felt it was inevitable. Winter did not give any testimony.

On May 16 or 18, 1946, she was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, which she then served in Fuhlsbüttel prison. Since Kohlmann did not object to the judgment and her mother no longer submitted an application for release from prison on time, the sentence was confirmed and Kohlmann had to serve the entire sentence. A later petition for clemency was also not granted. She was detained in a solitary cell because she was considered a lesbian .

After her release from prison, she lived in Hamburg. She is said to have worked as a prostitute for a few years and then was a truck driver. In 1965 she moved to West Berlin with her partner - a woman who was persecuted as a half-Jewish woman during the Nazi era. There she took up residence in Berlin-Charlottenburg and found work as a cook in a hospital in Berlin-Zehlendorf , where she died on September 17, 1977 at her place of work.

The historian Anna Hájková is writing a book about Anneliese Kohlmann and her relationship with the prisoner wife Lotte Winter.

Under the skin directed by Rakefet Binyamin 2014 in Tel Aviv

Under the skin

The play Under the Skin by the Israeli playwright Jonathan Calderon is based on the love story between Kohlmann and Winter; for this purpose, Kohlmann's trial protocol and reports from Holocaust survivors were evaluated, including Ruth Bondy .

The play is set in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991. The young German journalist Kirsten Eberhardt visits the Holocaust survivor Charlotte Brod and questions her about her love affair with the guard Ilse Kohlmann. The young Lotte Rosner and the guard Ilse Kohlmann appear in flashbacks during the camp. The actress who played the Holocaust survivor slips into the role of the concentration camp guard, and the actress who plays the journalist plays the young Charlotte.

literature

Web links

  • Anneliese Kohlmann. (pdf, 916 kB) In: Open Archive of the Neuengamme Memorial. April 13, 2014.;
  • Colin Russell Leech: Overseer Anneliese Kohlmann. In: bergenbelsen.co.uk. (English, photographs by Anneliese Kohlmann shortly after the liberation of the camp).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Marc Buggeln: Slave Laboratory in Nazi Concentration Camps. Oxford 2014, p. 243.
  2. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 111 f.
  3. ↑ a b Open archive of the Neuengamme Memorial: Anneliese Kohlmann. P. 3.
  4. ^ A b Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 103 f.
  5. ↑ Stefanie Oppel: Marianne Essmann: From clerk to SS overseer. Service obligation as a compulsory measure? In: Simone Erpel (Hrsg.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-19-2 , p. 81 ff.
  6. ^ Open archive of the Neuengamme Memorial: Anneliese Kohlmann. P. 4.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 104.
  8. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. 105 f.
  9. ↑ Karin Orth : The Concentration Camp SS. Munich 2004, p. 266 f.
  10. ↑ Ben Cosgrove: At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945. In: time.com . April 12, 2013, archived from the original on January 28, 2015 ; accessed on March 13, 2020 (English).
  11. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 106.
  12. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 107.
  13. ^ Open archive of the Neuengamme Memorial: Anneliese Kohlmann. P. 13.
  14. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 106 f.
  15. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 109 f.
  16. ↑ a b c Anna Hájková: A queer relationship in the concentration camp: When a guard fell in love with the Jewish woman Helene Sommer. In: tagesspiegel.de . December 14, 2019, accessed March 10, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. P. 104 f.
  18. ↑ Sexuality in the concentration camp - facets of a forced relationship with women. Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, archived from the original on January 7, 2019 ; accessed on March 13, 2020 . Anna Hájková: Telling the Holocaust in a queer way . S.
     86-110 .
  19. ↑ Jonathan Calderon: Under the Skin: A Play Based on a True Story. (pdf, 429 kB) In: dramaisrael.org. May 26, 2016, archived from the original on October 2, 2016 ; accessed on March 13, 2020 (English, script).
personal data
SURNAME Kohlmann, Anneliese
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp guard in concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 1977
Place of death West Berlin