Margarete Mewes

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Margarete Mewes (born February 14, 1914 in Fürstenberg / Havel ; † December 12, 1998 in Soest ) was a guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

Life

Margarete Mewes was after visiting the elementary school working as a nanny, who works in a forester and a chocolate factory. In 1936 she was committed to work in the Fürstenberg ammunition factory by the Fürstenberg Labor Office and then worked for Deutsche Fasstoff GmbH until June 1939 . Mewes, mother of three sons, was a member of the German Labor Front (DAF).

After her release for operational reasons, she placed the labor office in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, where she worked from July 1939 as a guard and later as a block leader . At first she worked with two other female guards to supervise female prisoners in external detachments. From January 1943 to July 1943 she was an overseer and then, until the Ravensbrück concentration camp was dissolved in April 1945, head of the camp's own cell block or bunker.

After fleeing the Red Army due to the war on April 28, 1945, she lived with her sons in Lauenburg . There she was arrested on June 19, 1945 and sent to the British internment camp in Neumünster. From there she was transferred to the Hamburg remand prison in November 1946 .

Mewes had to answer for her crimes committed in the Ravensbrück concentration camp before a British military court in the first of the seven Ravensbrück trials . Isa Vermehren , a former inmate in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, testified for Mewes as a witness for the discharge . Vermehren, who spent nine months in the bunker, described Mewes as decent and incorruptible. Mewes herself stated the following in her petition for clemency on February 17, 1947: “I am not to blame. As a stupid insignificant person, I cannot be held responsible for the crimes of the SS who are completely indifferent and hateful to me . "

On February 3, 1947, Mewes was sentenced to ten years in prison. She was initially imprisoned in Fuhlsbüttel prison and from October 1948 in Werl prison. Mewes was dismissed on February 26, 1952 for “good conduct” and moved first to the Hameln area , later to Körbecke , where she found employment as a waitress. She married in August 1968 and died in late 1998 after an inconspicuous life.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Eva Wolfangel: “Never other than a willless cog”, Margarete Mewes: Overseer and head of the cell construction in the Ravensbrück concentration camp (1939–1945). In: Simone Erpel (ed.): In the wake of the SS: Overseers of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. Accompanying volume for the exhibition. Berlin 2007, pp. 72-81
  2. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 186
  3. ^ Statement by Mewes in the context of her petition for clemency on February 17, 1947, quoted from Schäfer, Silke: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 186
personal data
SURNAME Mewes, Margarete
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Fürstenberg / Havel
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1998
Place of death Soest