Gertrud Rabestein

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Gertrud Rabestein (born January 5, 1903 in Naumburg , † 1974 in Stollberg / Erzgeb. ) Was a German overseer in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and sergeant in the Naumburg prison .

biography

Rabestein, a trained household helper, worked as a cleaner in the Naumburg district court. In May 1933 she joined the Naumburg branch of the NSDAP . After she applied as a guard in the women's department of the Naumburg prison in 1938, she got a job as a guard in the Lichtenburg concentration camp that same year . There she also worked with Maria Mandl and Johanna Bormann . In May 1939 she was transferred with the other guards to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp near Fürstenberg , where she temporarily acted as a dog handler . There she was nicknamed "Rabenaas" because she is said to have behaved extremely brutally towards prisoners. From 1942 she lived in Naumburg again and was employed as a sergeant in the Naumburg prison until the invasion of the Red Army in April 1945.

After the end of the war, Rabestein was arrested and sentenced on August 31, 1948 by the Halle (Saale) regional court to life imprisonment for the murder and mistreatment of concentration camp inmates . She was imprisoned for the rest of her life and died seriously ill in 1974 in the Hoheneck women's prison . Several requests for clemency, most recently in 1971 by her son, were rejected.

Trial against Erna Dorn

The person of Gertrud Rabestone caused a public sensation again in 1953 in connection with Erna Dorn . After the end of the war in Halle (Saale), the former Gestapo employee initially posed as a former concentration camp prisoner. During the trial of Gertrud Rabenstein in 1948, she evaded testimony for two years through a faked pregnancy. Dorn was arrested in 1951 and later sentenced for other criminal offenses. While in custody, she claimed to have worked in the political department of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was accused by former prisoners of the concentration camp in the newspaper Neues Deutschland of having committed crimes against concentration camp prisoners as Gertrud Rabestein alias Dorn. Although none of her information was verifiable, she was referred to as "Die Kommandeuse von Ravensbrück, Erna Dorn alias Rabestein, das Rabenaas" and condemned. During the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 , she was freed from custody by the insurgents, arrested again the next day and, as the main ringleader of the uprising in Halle, executed with the guillotine at the central execution site of the GDR on October 1, 1953 . Stephan Hermlin processed the case in 1957 in the anti-fascist novella "Die Kommandeuse". Rabestone's nephew asked Hermlin by letter in 1985 to revise the novella because of the miscarriage of justice , but Hermlin refused.

literature

  • Ulrike Weckel, Edgar Wolfrum (Hrsg.): Beasts and recipients of orders - women and men in Nazi trials after 1945. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-525-36272-2 .
  • Hermann-Josef Rupieper, Daniel Bohse, Inga Grebe: "... And the most important thing is unity": June 17, 1953 in the districts of Halle and Magdeburg. LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6775-7 .

Web links

credentials

  1. ↑ Hermann-Josef Rupieper, Daniel Bohse, Inga Grebe: "... And the most important thing is the unity": June 17, 1953 in the districts of Halle and Magdeburg, LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2003, p. 374ff .
personal data
SURNAME Rabestein, Gertrude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Naumburg
DATE OF DEATH 1974
Place of death Stollberg / Erzgeb.