Hermine Braunsteiner Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan ( July 16 , 1919 – April 19 , 1999 ) was a female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camp s , and the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States , to face trial in Germany . She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Düsseldorf on April 30 , 1981 . Life . Braunsteiner was born in Vienna , the youngest child in a strictly observant Roman Catholic working class family . Her father Friedrich Braunsteiner was a chauffeur for a brewery and / or a butcher . Hermine lacked the means to fulfill her aspiration to become a nurse , and worked as a maid . From 1937 to 1938 she worked in England for an American engineer ' s household . In 1938 Braunsteiner became a German citizen after the Anschluss . She returned to Vienna from England and the same year relocated to Germany proper for a job at the Heinkel aircraft works in Berlin . Camp guard at Ravensbrück . At the urging of her landlord , a German policeman , Braunsteiner applied for a better paying job supervising prisoners , quadrupling her income in time . She began her training on August 15 , 1939 , as an Aufseherin under Maria Mandel at Ravensbrück concentration camp . She remained there after the start of World War II , and the influx of new prisoners from occupied countries . After three years , a disagreement with Mandel led Braunsteiner to request a transfer in October 1942 . Majdanek . On October 16 , 1942 , Braunsteiner took up her duties in the forced - labor apparel factory at the Majdanek concentration camp , established near Lublin , Poland a year earlier . It was both a labour camp ( Arbeitslager ) and an extermination camp ( Vernichtungslager ) with gas chamber s and crematoria . She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943 , under " Oberaufseherin " Elsa Ehrich along with five other camp guards . Her abuses took many forms in the camp . She involved herself in " selections " of women and children to be sent to the gas chamber s and whipped several women to death . Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich , Hildegard Lächert , Marta Ulrich , Alice Orlowski , Charlotte Karla Mayer - Woellert , Erna Wallisch and Elisabeth Knoblich , Braunsteiner was infamous for her wild rages and tantrums . According to one witness at her later trial in Düsseldorf , she " seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers ” . Other survivors testified how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel - studded jackboots , earning her the nickname " The Stomping Mare " . ( In Polish " Kobyła " , in German " Stute von Majdanek " . ) She received the War Merit Cross , 2nd class , in 1943 , for her work . Ravensbrück again . In January 1944 , Hermine was ordered back to Ravensbrück as Majdanek began evacuations due to the approaching front line . She was promoted to supervising wardress at the Genthin subcamp of Ravensbrück , located outside Berlin . Witnesses say that she abused many of the prisoners with a horsewhip she carried , killing at least two women with it . Post war Austria . On May 7 , 1945 , Hermine Braunsteiner fled the camp ahead of the Soviet Red Army . She then returned to Vienna , but soon left , complaining that there was not enough food there . The Austrian police arrested her and turned her over to the British military occupation authorities ; she remained incarcerated from May 6 , 1946 , until April 18 , 1947 . A court in Graz , Austria convicted her of torture , maltreatment of prisoners and crimes against humanity and against human dignity at Ravensbrück ( not Majdanek ) , then sentenced her to serve three years , beginning April 7 , 1948 ; she was released early in April 1950 . An Austrian civil court subsequently granted her amnesty from further prosecution there . She worked at low level jobs in hotels and restaurants until emigrating . Emigration and marriage . Russell Ryan , an American , met her on his vacation in Austria . They married in October 1958 , after they had emigrated to Nova Scotia , Canada . She entered the United States in April 1959 , becoming a United States citizen on January 19 , 1963 . They lived in Maspeth , Queens , where she was known as a fastidious housewife with a friendly manner , married to a construction worker . Discovery . Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal had followed her trail from a tip in Tel Aviv to Vienna to Halifax , Nova Scotia , and then , via Toronto , to Queens . In 1964 Wiesenthal alerted the " New York Times " that Braunsteiner might have married a man named Ryan and might live in the Maspeth area of the Borough of Queens in New York . They assigned Joseph Lelyveld , then a young reporter , to find " Mrs . Ryan . " They first lived at 54 - 44 82nd St . in western Elmhurst and moved to 52 - 11 72nd St . in Maspeth . He found her at the second doorbell he rang , and later wrote that she greeted him at her front doorstep and said , " " My God , I knew this would happen . You ' ve come . " " Braunsteiner Ryan stated that she had been at Maidanek only a year , eight months of which in the camp infirmary . " " My wife , sir , wouldn ' t hurt a fly " " said Ryan . " " There ' s no more decent person on this earth . She told me this was a duty she had to perform . It was a conscriptive service . " " On August 22 , 1968 , United States authorities sought to revoke her citizenship , because she had failed to disclose her convictions for war crimes ; she was denaturalized in 1971 after entering into a consent judgment to avoid deportation . Extradition . A prosecutor in Duesseldorf began investigating her wartime behavior , and in 1973 the German government requested her extradition , accusing her of joint responsibility in the death of 200 , 000 people . The United States court denied procedural claims that her denaturalization had been invalid ( U . S citizens could not be extradited to Germany ) , and that the charges alleged political offenses committed by a non - German outside West Germany . Later it rejected claims of lack of probable cause and double jeopardy . During the next year she sat with her husband in United States district court in Queens , hearing survivors ' testimony against the former SS guard . They described whippings and fatal beatings . Rachel Berger , alone among the witnesses , testified she would celebrate retribution against the former vice - commandant of the women ' s camp at Majdanek . The judge certified her extradition to the Secretary of State on May 1 , 1973 , and on August 7 , 1973 , Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan became the first Nazi war criminal extradited from the United States to Germany . Trial in Germany . She was remanded in Düsseldorf in 1973 , until her husband posted bail . The German court rejected Mrs . Ryan ' s arguments that it lacked jurisdiction , because she was not a German national but Austrian , and that the offenses alleged had occurred outside Germany . It ruled she had been a German citizen at the time , and more importantly had been a German government official acting in the name of the German Reich . She stood trial in West Germany with 15 other former SS men and women from Majdanek . One of the witnesses against Hermine testified that she " " seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers . " " Others spoke of vicious beatings . One witness told of Hermine and the steel - studded jackboots with which she dealt blows to inmates . The third Majdanek trial ( in German ) was held in Düsseldorf . It began on November 26 , 1975 , and lasted 474 sessions , Germany ' s longest and most expensive trial . All the defendants , including Ryan and Hermann Hackmann , had been SS guards at Majdanek . The court found insufficient evidence on six counts of the indictment and convicted her on three : murder of 80 people ; abetting the murder of 102 children ; and collaborating in the murder of 1000 . On June 30 , 1981 , the court imposed a life sentence , a more severe punishment than those meted out to her co - defendants . Complications of diabetes , including a leg amputation , led to her release from Mülheimer women ' s prison in 1996 . Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan died on April 19 , 1999 , aged 79 , in Bochum , Germany . After the publicity surrounding Ryan ' s extradition , the United States government established ( 1979 ) a U . S . DOJ Office of Special Investigations to seek out war criminals to denaturalize or deport . It took jurisdiction previously held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service .