Johanna Langefeld

Johanna Langefeld (5 March 1900 – 26 January 1974) was a German female guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz.

Born in Kupferdreh (now in Essen, Germany), Johanna Langefeld was brought up in a Lutheran, nationalistic family. Her father was a blacksmith. In 1924, she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in 1926 of lung disease. In 1928, Langefeld fell pregnant with another man, left him soon afterward, and moved to Düsseldorf, where her son was born that August.

Langefeld was unemployed until age 34, when she began to teach domestic economy in an establishment of the city of Neuss. From 1935 onwards, she worked as a guard in a so-called Arbeitsanstalt (working institution) in Brauweiler, which was, in fact, a prison for prostitutes, unemployed and homeless women, and other so called "antisocial" women, who were then later imprisoned in concentration camps. From 1937 on, Langefeld was a member of the Nazi party.

In March 1938, Langefeld applied for a job as a camp guard in the first SS concentration camp for women in Lichtenburg. After one year, she became the female superintendent of this camp, where she stayed until the camp population was transferred to Ravensbrück in May 1939. She was in charge of the selections in Ravensbrück during the so-called "14f13” murder campaign. In March 1942, Langefeld was assigned to build a new women's camp in Auschwitz. There, she selected prisoners for the gas chamber.

Rudolf Höß, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, recalled his relationship towards Johanna Langefeld as follows:

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