Johanna Bormann

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Johanna Bormann

Johanna Bormann (born September 10, 1893 in Birkenfelde, East Prussia , † December 13, 1945 in Hameln ) was a German guard in various concentration camps and was part of the SS entourage .

Life

In 1945, Bormann testified in court that she had joined the SS entourage - women were only admitted as SS members in the helper corps - for financial reasons. She got her first job as a guard in 1938 in the Lichtenburg concentration camp in the Prussian province of Saxony , where she was deployed with 49 other women under the superintendent Jane Bernigau and initially worked in the kitchen area. In May 1939, in the course of the dissolution of the women's concentration camp in Lichtenburg, she was transferred to the newly created Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she supervised prisoners' working groups; among other things, she was responsible for kitchen and external commands there.

In May 1943 at the latest, Bormann was transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where she was initially employed as a guard and Margot Drechsel and Maria Mandl were among their superiors. In other missions, Bormann was deployed in the agricultural operations of the Auschwitz concentration camp , the Babitz farm, the Budy farm and Rajsko, and monitored female prisoner detachments during agricultural activities. She beat inmates and set her dog on them. The prisoners feared her because of her cruelty, which is why she was usually called "weasel" or "the woman with the dogs".

In August 1944 she was transferred to the Hindenburg OS sub-camp in Silesia , where she supervised female prisoners who were used in the manufacture of weapons. During the evacuation of Auschwitz accompanied Bormann in January 1945 a prisoner transport over the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the Bergen-Belsen , where she arrived in mid-February 1945th In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - as before in Auschwitz-Birkenau - she worked under Josef Kramer , Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath . She was responsible for the pigsty and supervised the work detachment that worked there.

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 obliged to remove all corpses and bury them in mass graves . Then Bormann was arrested, taken to Celle prison and interrogated by British military personnel. In the Bergen-Belsen trial (September 17 to November 17, 1945), based on testimony , she was charged with the crimes committed in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen . She stated that she did not hit prisoners with anything; She only saw rubber truncheons from British soldiers. Five former inmates and one co-defendant accused her of chasing her dog on helpless inmates on several occasions. In this regard, she claimed that the camp commandant Friedrich Hartjenstein had gone hunting with her dog; however, the prisoners under her control played with the animal.

Bormann, who had pleaded “not guilty” at the beginning of the trial, was found guilty on November 17, 1945 and sentenced to death by hanging . The British executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out the sentence on December 13, 1945 in Hameln penitentiary . On the same day, Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath , among others, were also executed .

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 and Lavern Wolfram ( series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , Volume 17). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-19-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 60.
  2. ^ A b 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.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 285.
  4. ↑ Karin Orth : The Concentration Camp SS . Munich 2004, p. 266f.
  5. ↑ John Cramer: “Brave, innocent, 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. 108.
  6. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court . Oldenburg 1998, p. 54.
  7. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court . Oldenburg 1998, p. 66.
personal data
SURNAME Bormann, Johanna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bormann, Juana
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp guard in various concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Birkenfelde, East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1945
Place of death Hamelin