Erika Bergmann

Erika Bergmann , b. Erika Belling , from 1939 in her first marriage Erika Koch (born January 3, 1915 in Berlin-Neukölln , † 1996 in Guben ) was a warden in the Ravensbrück concentration camp notorious for her cruelty .

Life

She came from a humble background, was born out of wedlock and grew up with her grandparents. In 1933/34 she moved to Altstrelitz to work in a hotel. From 1935 to 1936 she was an assistant in the infirmary in the Prenzlau district hospital. From 1937 to 1943 she worked at the Fürstensee ammunition plant . On April 15, 1943, she was drafted into the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a guard. There she left u. a. bite a female inmate from her dog and bleed to death in the reeds. At the end of 1944 she moved to the Neu Rohlau satellite camp . She then moved to the Oederan subcamp near Chemnitz . According to her own statements, however, she served in the Genthin concentration camp near Magdeburg until the end of the war .

From May 1945 to June 1945 she worked as an auxiliary nurse in the Genthin Hospital . In June 1945 she returned to Altstrelitz. There she worked in a nursing home from 1953, where she only attracted attention because of a complaint about her hardship. So far she had been judged positively and even became a member of the SED . On November 12, 1955, she was sentenced to life imprisonment in Neubrandenburg . By May 1991 she had served a total of 36 years of her sentence in the Hoheneck women's prison .

literature

• Gerda Zörner u. a .: Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , Berlin 1986 (p. 29f).

Web links

• Archive find in Neustrelitz 2012 (p. 5)
• NDR report on the "beast in human skin"
• Interview 1990 with Erika Bergmann at the end of the article (PDF; 93 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See archive find in Neustrelitz.
2. ↑ The Daily Mail: The Daily Mail. September 26, 2018, accessed on December 14, 2019 (German).