Maria Mandel
| Maria Mandl | |
|---|---|
Mandl after her arrest by US troops, 1945
|
|
| Born |
10 January 1912 Münzkirchen, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 24 January 1948 (aged 36) Kraków, People's Republic of Poland (present-day Kraków, Poland) |
| Cause of death | Capital Punishment (hanging) |
| Other names | Maria Mandel The Beast |
| Occupation | Prison Guard |
| Employer | Aufseherin, Lichtenburg, Oberaufseherin, Ravensbrück, Lagerführerin, Auschwitz II Birkenau, women's camp at Birkenau, Dachau concentration camp. |
| Home town | Münzkirchen, Austria |
| Political party | NSDAP |
Maria Mandl (also spelled Mandel; 10 January 1912 – 24 January 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 complicit in the deaths of over 500,000 female prisoners.
Mandl was born in Münzkirchen, Upper Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, the daughter of a shoemaker.
After the Anschluss by Nazi Germany, Mandl 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 15 May 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 floggings.
On 7 October 1942, Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of the women camp under 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 and Raisko.
...
Wikipedia