page_title: Female guards in Nazi concentration camps
section_title: Camps, names and ranks
hierarchical_section_title: Female guards in Nazi concentration camps / Camps, names and ranks
caption_attribution_description: English: Female guards of the Stutthof Concentration Camp at a Gdańsk war trial held before the Special Law Court between 25th April and 31st May of 1946, Poland First row from left to right: Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff (or Herta Bothe, see below), Wanda Klaff Second row: Erna Beilhardt, Jenny Wanda Barkmann Polski: Strażniczki obozu koncentracyjnego Stutthoff przed sądem specjalnym w Gdańsku od 25go kwietnia do 31 maja 1946 W pierwszym rzędzie (od lewej): Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff, Wanda Klaff W drugim rzędzie: Erna Beilhardt, Jenny Wanda Barkmann
context_page_description: Aufseherin was the position title for female guards in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Of the 55,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 3,700 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. The German title for this position, Aufseherin means overseer or attendant. Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano, Kaiserwald-Riga, Mauthausen, Stutthof, Vaivara, Vught, and at other Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps, etc.
context_section_description: Near the end of the war, women were forced from factories in the German Labour Exchange and sent to training centres. Women were also trained on a smaller scale at the camps of Neuengamme; Auschwitz I, II, and III; Flossenbürg (as well as Dresden-Goehle, Holleischen and Zwodau); Gross Rosen (as well as its satellites in Langenbielau, Ober Hohenelbe and Parschnitz); Stutthof, as well as a few at Mauthausen. Most of these women came from the regions around the camps. In 1944, the first female overseers were stationed at the satellite camps belonging to Neuengamme, Dachau, Mauthausen, a very few at Natzweiler-Struthof, and none at the Mittelbau-Dora complex until March 1945.
  28 Aufseherinnen served in Vught, none at Buchenwald (except for two brothel Aufseherinnen (summer–November 1943))  (possibly others during evacuations), 60 in Bergen-Belsen, one at Dachau overseeing the brothel (possibly others during evacuations), more than 30 in Mauthausen (January 1945–May 1945), none at Dora Mittelbau proper, none at Natzweiler-Struthof proper, 30 at Majdanek, around 200 at Auschwitz and its subcamps, 140 at Sachsenhausen and its subcamps, 158 trained at Neuengamme (over 400 in its satellites), 47 trained at Stutthof (150 in its entire complex of labor camps), compared to 958 who served in Ravensbrück (3,500 were trained there), 561 in the Flossenbürg complex, and over 800 in the Gross Rosen. Many female supervisors were trained and/or worked at subcamps in Germany, Poland, and a few in eastern France, a few in Austria, and a few in some camps in Czechoslovakia.
  The head overseer at Allendorf was SS-Oberaufseherin/Erstaufseherin Kaethe Hoern (September 1944–March 1945) while her assistant was SS-Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin Hildegard K.; in Auschwitz Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld (March 1942–October 1942), Lagerfuehrerin Maria Mandl (October 1942–November 1944), Stellvertetende Oberaufseherin Emma Zimmer (1942–43), Stellvertretende Lagerfuehrerin Margot Dreschel (late 1943–November 1944), Arbeitsdienstfuehrerin Elisabeth Hasse, Oberaufseherin Elisabeth Volkenrath (November 1944–January 1945), and Rapportfuehrerin Irma Grese (1944–of Hungarian Jewish women's compound under Mandl, Dreschel and Hasse), Mandl herself commanded all the SS women within Auschwitz-Birkenau. Grese and Volkenrath were convicted of war crimes and hanged on 13 December 1945; Mandl was hanged on 24 January 1948.
  at Barth Lagerfuehrerin Irmgard Reissner (1944-April 1945), Oberaufseherin Ruth Neudeck,  (March 1945–May 1945), Stellvertretende Lagerfuehrerin Gerda Langner, and Kommandoführerin Gertrud Herrmann,  in Belzig head female guard was Hedwig Ullrich (Summer 1944–April 1945).
  In Bergen-Belsen the three head overseers were Oberaufseherin Elisabeth Volkenrath (February 1945–April 1945), Rapportführerin Hildegard Gollasch, while Herta Ehlert served an additional deputy wardress and Irma Grese (January/February 1945–April 1945) was Kommandoführerin alongside Juana Bormann.  At the Gross-Rosen annex camp at Bernsdorf (Bernartice), Maria Mühl was Kommandofuehrerin under Lagerfuehrerin Else Hawlik, who commanded all of the Trautenau Ring labor camps.  At the Gross-Rosen annex camp at Breslau-Hundsfeld (Wroclaw Psie Pole) the Kommandofuehrerin was Emilie Kowa and another high female ranking officer-Margarete Schueller.
  Johanna Wisotzki was Oberaufseherin in Bromberg-Ost (Bydgoszcz East) from June 1944 until January/February 1945 along with Gerda Steinhoff, while Ilse Koch was appointed (unofficially) head female guard at Buchenwald, even though the camp had very few female prisoners. Koch was convicted of war crimes; she committed suicide in Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967.
  At Christianstadt, a Gross-Rosen satellite in Silesia, Emilie Harms was in charge of the camp; her assistant was Stellvertretende Kommandofuehrerin Lina Pohl. In the Danzig Holm subcamp Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin Gerda Steinhoff was second-in-command of all the female overseers and prisoners (October 1944–December 1944); in the Dora Mittelbau satellite in Gross-Werther, thi
caption: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, back row right, at the Stutthof concentration camp war crimes trial between 25 April and 31 May 1946, in Gdańsk
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