Elisabeth Volkenrath

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Elisabeth Volkenrath after her arrest in 1945

Elisabeth Volkenrath , née Mühlau (born September 5, 1919 in Schönau an der Katzbach , Lower Silesia Province ; † December 13, 1945 in Hameln ) was a German concentration camp guard who was sentenced to death as a war criminal in the Bergen-Belsen trial and executed .

Origin, occupational activities and obligation to the SS entourage

Elisabeth Mühlau was the daughter of the forest worker Josef Mühlau and his wife; she had at least five siblings. After finishing elementary school, she worked as a nanny and cook helper from 1933 to May 1938, then as a hairdresser. During the Second World War , she signed up for the SS retinue at the beginning of October 1941 , trained as an overseer under Dorothea Binz in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and subsequently supervised external commands.

Service in Auschwitz concentration camp

In March 1942 she volunteered for service in the main camp of Auschwitz and was given a post as a guard in the prisoners' tailoring shop. From there, in August 1942, she was transferred to the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau , where, according to her own account, she soon fell ill with typhus and was admitted to a hospital. After her stay in hospital, she took over the parcel post in Birkenau from the end of December 1942, where she monitored around 25 to 30 prisoners. According to her statement, the arriving parcels at the parcel station were searched by the Red Cross or prisoner members and then given to the prisoners concerned. She was also mainly responsible for distributing bread in the camp. She carried out these functions in the camp until September 1944. She was then transferred back to the main camp of Auschwitz, where she became camp leader of the women's camp. In November 1944 she was promoted to superintendent of the women's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau and remained in this position until the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945.

On August 15, 1942, she became engaged to Heinz Volkenrath (* 1920), an SS-Unterscharfuhrer who worked in the commandant's office of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and whom she married soon afterwards.

Service in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, arrest and imprisonment

In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, prisoner concentration camp guards carry prisoners' bodies from a truck to a mass grave.

In the course of the evacuation, Volkenrath left Auschwitz on January 18, 1945 and ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on February 5, 1945 , where she worked under camp commandant Josef Kramer . She said she fell ill again after a few days and did not resume her work as a supervisor until March 23, 1945 after a stay in hospital.

On April 15, 1945, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops who found over 10,000 dead and around 60,000 survivors there. The SS camp personnel were arrested on April 17, 1945 and obliged to remove all corpses and bury them in mass graves . Subsequently, Volkenrath was brought to the Celle prison with the other members of the camp staff. In May 1945, she was interrogated there by investigators from the War Crimes Investigation Team (WCIT), and Hanns Alexander was also present and interpreted. Even in the run-up to this interrogation, the investigators had learned of Volkenrath's brutality through statements by former prisoners. Volkenrath initially gave willingly information about her career. However, she denied her involvement in gassings in Auschwitz. When Alexander finally asked who was responsible for the conditions in the Auschwitz concentration camp, she named the camp commandant Rudolf Höss and also the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler . An affidavit was drawn up from the essential contents of this interrogation and authorized by Volkenrath.

Trial and death sentence

In the Bergen-Belsen Trial (September 17 to November 17, 1945 in Lüneburg), Volkenrath was charged with the crimes she had committed in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Like all the other defendants, she pleaded "not guilty" at the beginning of the trial. Despite credible accounts from witnesses, she denied involvement in mass murders and denied alleged mistreatment of prisoners. Although she admitted that she had attended selections in Auschwitz concentration camp, she denied active participation in them. She was not informed about the fate of the selected people who were brought on trucks, and she did not know anything about the gas chambers . She admitted to slapping prisoners for disregarding instructions and justified this by maintaining the camp rules. The fact that she participated in the mistreatment of the prisoners was a "damned lie". She even went so far as to make the grotesque statement that the camp service in Auschwitz had punished her in the same way as the prisoners, since the guards had to live like them. In addition, the guards did not always receive their wages on time and in full. She repeatedly pointed out the catastrophic conditions in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to the camp commandant without success.

On November 17, 1945, she and Irma Grese and Johanna Bormann heard the verdict. All three women were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging . The British executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out the death sentences on December 13, 1945 in Hamelin prison .

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • United Nations War Crimes Commission (Ed.): Law reports of trials of war criminals, selected and prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission. 3 volumes, William S. Hein Publishing, Buffalo NY 1997, ISBN 1-57588-403-8 (reprint of the original edition from 1947–1949)
  • John Cramer: "Brave, blameless, with a clear conscience". Concentration camp guards in the first Belsen trial of a British military court in 1945 . In: Simone Erpel (ed.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , editors: Jeanette Toussaint, Johannes Schwartz, Lavern Wolfram (series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , Volume 17). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-19-2 .
  • Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Self-image and self-portrayal of the SS personnel from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . In: Alfred Gottwaldt, Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (eds.): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing. (= Publications of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Education Center; Vol. 11). Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , p. 396ff.

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Volkenrath  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Self-image and self-portrayal of the SS personnel from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . In: Alfred Gottwaldt, Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (eds.): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing. , Berlin 2005, p. 396.
  2. ↑ a b c Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Self-image and self-portrayal of the SS personnel from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . In: Alfred Gottwaldt, Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (eds.): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing. , Berlin 2005, p. 397.
  3. ↑ John Cramer: "Brave, blameless, with a clear conscience". Concentration camp guards in the first Belsen trial of a British military court in 1945 . In: Simone Erpel (Hrsg.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück , Berlin 2007, p. 106.
  4. ↑ Karin Orth : The Concentration Camp SS , Munich 2004, p. 266f.
  5. ^ Thomas Harding : Hanns and Rudolf. The German Jew and the Hunt for the Commander of Auschwitz . Translated from the English by Michael Schwellien. dtv, Munich 2014. ISBN 3-423-28044-1 .
  6. ^ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in front of the court , Oldenburg 1998, p. 53f.
  7. ↑ John Cramer: "Brave, blameless, with a clear conscience". Concentration camp guards in the first Belsen trial of a British military court in 1945 . In: Simone Erpel (Ed.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , Berlin 2007, p. 108.
  8. ↑ John Cramer: "Brave, blameless, with a clear conscience". Concentration camp guards in the first Belsen trial of a British military court in 1945 . In: Simone Erpel (Ed.): In the aftermath of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , Berlin 2007, p. 109.
  9. ↑ John Cramer: "Brave, blameless, with a clear conscience". Concentration camp guards in the first Belsen trial of a British military court in 1945 . In: Simone Erpel (Ed.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , Berlin 2007, p. 111.
  10. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court . Oldenburg 1998, p. 66.
personal data
SURNAME Volkenrath, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mühlau, Elisabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp supervisor
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Schönau an der Katzbach , Province of Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1945
Place of death Hamelin