Johanna Langefeld

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Johanna Langefeld (born March 5, 1900 in Kupferdreh , today a district of Essen , † January 20, 1974 in Augsburg ) was a German supervisor in the Lichtenburg , Ravensbrück and Auschwitz concentration camps .

Life

Langefeld grew up in a Protestant-Lutheran and nationalist family. Her father worked as a blacksmith. She moved to Mülheim in 1924 and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died two years later as a result of a lung disease. After separating from her new partner, she moved to Düsseldorf in 1928 and gave birth to a son in the same year. She was unemployed until the early 1930s and then worked as the head of a housekeeping course in Neuss. From 1935 Langefeld was employed as a housemother and assistant supervisor in the Brauweiler Labor Institute , where so-called asocial women were imprisoned. On September 30, 1937, she joined the NSDAP .

Activity in concentration camps

From March 1, 1938, Langefeld was employed as a guard in the Lichtenburg concentration camp , where she was appointed superintendent on March 1, 1939. On April 15, the women's concentration camp was relocated to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , which was under construction , and Johanna Langefeld remained in her position. On February 1, 1942, Max Koegel commissioned her to round up the prisoners who were to be murdered as part of the "14f13" murder. In mid-March 1942 , Richard Glücks , the head of the inspection of the concentration camps , gave her the order to set up a women's concentration camp in the main camp of Auschwitz with 10 guards and 100 prison functionaries from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This women's camp was moved to Birkenau in the summer of 1942. Rudolf Höß , the senior citizen of the Auschwitz concentration camp, writes in his memoirs that he considered Johanna Langefeld unsuitable for managing the camp and therefore placed the women's camp under the camp leader Hans Aumeier . During the visit of the Reichsführer of the SS , Heinrich Himmler , Höss presented his criticism in the presence of Langefeld Himmler and asked that Langefeld continue to report to the protective custody camp leader . Himmler rejected Höss's request on the grounds that a women’s camp should be run by a woman and suggested that Langefeld be assigned an SS leader to support him, which was not implemented. After consulting Oswald Pohl, Langefeld returned to the Ravensbrück concentration camp at the beginning of October 1942 and took over the post of supervisor from Maria Mandl , who in turn took over Langefeld's post in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In April 1943, she was arrested for assisting Polish women prisoners in preventing the execution of victims of medical experiments. Margarete Buber-Neumann , block elder and secretary of Langenfeld, came as a result of allegations against Langenfeld at Ravensbrück concentration camp in a dark cell for ten weeks in the bunker. For lack of evidence, Langefeld was acquitted by the SS and Police Court in Breslau and released from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After her release, she moved with her son to her sister's in Munich and worked at BMW .

After 1945

On December 20, 1945, she was arrested by the US Army , questioned as part of the Ravensbrück Trial and transferred to Landsberg . On September 23, 1946, she was extradited to the Polish authorities who were already preparing the Krakow Auschwitz trial. On December 23, 1946 Langefeld escaped from prison, went into hiding in a Polish monastery and worked in a private household. During the escape and the following years she was supported by former Polish prisoners from Ravensbrück. Langefeld, who lived illegally in Poland, did not return to Germany until 1957 and moved back to her sister in Munich. There she lived in seclusion and made a living as a saleswoman. She died on January 20, 1974 in Augsburg. After her death, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor closed the investigation against her.

crime

In July 1940 Langefeld had the windows of the Jewish block in the Ravensbrück concentration camp locked and the water shut off for three days. In February 1942, Langefeld arranged transports of selected female Ravensbrück prisoners to the Bernburg euthanasia center , where they were gassed in Operation 14f13 . As a supervisor in the women's camp at Auschwitz, she also took part in selections and designated prisoners for gassing .

literature

  • Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oświęcim 1998, ISBN 83-85047-35-2 .
  • Johannes Schwartz: The self- image of Johanna Langefeld as SS-Oberaufseherin , in: Ulrich Fritz, Silvija Kavcic, Nicole Warmbold (eds.): Tatort KZ. New contributions to the history of the concentration camps, Verlag Klemm & Oelschläger, Ulm 2003, pp. 71–95.
  • Johannes Schwartz: Gender-specific stubbornness of Nazi perpetrators using the example of concentration camp superintendent Johanna Langefeld , in: Viola Schubert-Lehnhardt (Ed.): Women as perpetrators in National Socialism. Protocol volume of the conference organized by the Bildungsverein Elbe-Saale eV in Saxony-Anhalt from 17. – 18. September 2004 in Bernburg, Gerbstadt 2005, pp. 56–82.
  • Johannes Schwartz: Options for action by concentration camp guards. Three case studies of everyday and gender history , in: Helgard Kramer (Ed.): Nazi perpetrators from an interdisciplinary perspective , Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, Munich 2006, pp. 349–374.
  • Johannes Schwartz: "Female Affairs". Action spaces of concentration camp guards in Ravensbrück and Neubrandenburg , Hamburg 2018.
  • Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002 (Dissertation TU Berlin), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 .

documentary

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jens Müller: Never accused again . In: taz - the daily newspaper . 29th July 2020.
  2. ↑ Matthias Hannemann: Documentation about concentration camp guard: She too was part of the system on www.faz.net from July 29, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Langefeld, Johanna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German superintendent in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kupferdreh , now part of Essen
DATE OF DEATH 20th January 1974
Place of death augsburg