Maria Mandl Maria Mandl ( also spelled Mandel ) ( January 10 , 1912 - January 24 , 1948 ) was an Austrian " SS - Helferin " infamous for her key role in The Holocaust as a top - ranking official at the Auschwitz - Birkenau extermination camp where she is believed to have been directly implicit in the deaths of over 500 , 000 female prisoners . Life . Mandl was born in Münzkirchen , Upper Austria , then part of Austria - Hungary , the daughter of a shoemaker . Camp work . After the Austrian " Anschluss " to Nazi Germany she moved to Munich , and on 15 October 1938 joined the camp staff as an " Aufseherin " at Lichtenburg , an early Nazi concentration camp in the Province of Saxony where she worked with fifty other " SS " women . On May 15 , 1939 she along with other guards and prisoners were sent to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin . She quickly impressed her superiors and , after she had joined the Nazi Party on 1 April 1941 , was elevated to the rank of a " SS - Oberaufseherin " in April 1942 . She oversaw daily roll calls , assignments for " Aufseherinnen " and punishments such as beatings and flogging s . On October 7 , 1942 , Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp in Poland where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as " SS - Lagerführerin " , a female commandant under ( male ) " SS - Kommandant " Rudolf Höß . As a woman she could never outrank a man , but her control over both female prisoners and her female subordinates was absolute . The only man Mandl reported to was the commandant . She controlled all the female Auschwitz camps and female subcamps including at Hindenburg , Lichtewerden , Budy and Raisko . Mandl took a liking to Irma Grese , whom she promoted to head of the Hungarian women ' s camp at Birkenau . According to some accounts , Mandl often stood at the gate into Birkenau waiting for an inmate to turn and look at her : any who did were taken out of the lines and never heard from again . In the Auschwitz camps Mandl was known as " The Beast " , and for the next two years she participated in selections for death and other documented abuses . She reportedly often chose so - called " pet " Jews for herself , keeping them from the gas chamber for a time until she tired of them , then sending them to their deaths . Mandl is also said to have enjoyed selecting children to be killed . She created the Women ' s Orchestra of Auschwitz to accompany roll calls , executions , selections , and transports . She signed inmate lists sending an estimated half a million women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers at Auschwitz I and II . For her services rendered she was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd class . In November 1944 , she was assigned to the Mühldorf subcamp of Dachau concentration camp , and Elisabeth Volkenrath became head of the crumbling Auschwitz empire of camps , which were liberated in early January 1945 . In May 1945 , Mandl fled from Mühldorf into the mountains of southern Bavaria to her birthplace of Münzkirchen , Austria . Arrest and execution . The United States Army arrested Mandl on August 10 , 1945 . Interrogations reportedly revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work in the camps . She was handed over to the Republic of Poland in November 1946 , and in November 1947 she was tried in a Kraków courtroom in the Auschwitz Trial and sentenced to death . Stanisława Rachwałowa ( a Polish survivor of Auschwitz who was an inmate under Mandl ' s administration and , after the war , was arrested by Poland ' s post - war communist authorities as an " anti - communist activist " ) was imprisoned in the cell next to Maria Mandl and Therese Brandl . Rachwałowa was proficient enough in German to interpret for the wardens . She has stated that the last time she and the two German war criminals met - after they had been sentenced to death and several days before their execution took place - both asked her for forgiveness . Mandl was hanged on January 24 , 1948 at the age of 36 .