The HORRORS Of The Female Bergen-Belsen Guard Executions JJ

On the 13th of December 1945, 6 months after World War II in Europe had come to an end, there were a number of female guards who had worked inside of some of the most horrific concentration camps of World War II who were brought to an execution chamber. These women faced their execution with varying degrees of panic.

The three women executed that day were Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Johanna Bormann. They had all worked inside of Auschwitz and also Bergen-Belsen. And they were known for being horrific sadists who brought suffering and death to many people. The female guards were executioners in their own right, and they had pulled the trigger, sent people to death chambers, and beaten innocent civilians until they succumbed to their injuries.

But the executions that took place of the female Belsen guards within Hameln prison were not straightforward, and they were worse than many of the witnesses claimed that day. But what specifically happened within the execution chamber? As the Second World War turned against the Germans, there were a number of women who went to work inside of the concentration camps.

They were recruited to cover the gaps in male guards who were sent to the front lines to fight against the Soviets in the East and later the Western Allies. But there were a number of women who were career female guards, and they worked inside camps such as Auschwitz for many years, and they cultivated fearsome reputations for themselves based upon many years of cruelty, violence, torture, and execution.

Lots of female guards were trained at camps such as Ravensbrück near to Berlin by more senior women. But at the end of the war, a number of female guards accompanied huge movements of people from camps which were near to the Allied front lines, and they were actually marched away towards camps within the German heartlands.

These were very much death marches, and a number of female guards tried to escape, but others remained at the sites and camps as they were there to maintain law and order. In the final months of World War II in Cyberg and Belsen, a large camp found in Lower Saxony, the prisoners were suffering greatly. Every single day, hundreds of prisoners who had been forced marched from other camps were dying from a combination of diseases such as typhus or dysentery.

In April 1945, the allies were on the horizon and they were negotiations with the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, to hand over Bergen Belsen without a fight. Inside the camp were thousands of dying prisoners and also 13,000 unburied corpses laying everywhere. But also, there was a commandant, Josef Kramer, and a number of female guards.

What was found was truly harrowing and the liberators were horrified by the sights of Belsen. A news reporter from Britain claimed about the camp that, I quote, “Here, over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which. The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful ghostly procession of emaciated aimless people with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them.

Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live.” But as mentioned, there were a number of female guards who worked at the camp who were actually arrested and captured by the liberators. In particular, there were three women who for their crimes at Belsen and also Auschwitz were condemned to death at the Belsen trials for many different crimes.

These were as mentioned, Irma Grese, Johanna Bormann, and Elisabeth Volkenrath. Each of them were tried for crimes at Belsen and also Auschwitz. That was a key point. And they were said to have been of the worst female guards of the whole of the war. Irma Grese was in her early 20s when she committed many of her crimes, and she was an ardent Nazi who had for many years been an integral part of Nazi youth groups.

She transitioned to become a member of staff within the camps. Specifically, she was known for taking the lives of inmates. One of her most notable duties was taking part in selections within Auschwitz. Grese would parade the yards when the trains arrived, and those prisoners who she didn’t like the look of or who she deemed were not fit enough to work were sent straight to the gas chambers within minutes of arriving.

Grese was known for sending women to the chambers if she was jealous of their looks and appearance. She also shot inmates who were in her work detachments whenever she felt like it, almost for sport. Her crimes were endless, and she even got a kick from watching disturbing medical operations and procedures. Grese was seized within Bergen-Belsen after she had moved to the site to stay with her new lover, and she was known for continuing her crimes also at Belsen.

What shocked the world with her capture though was her blonde hair and good looks, and also her youthfulness, as she was in her early 20s when she was brought to trial, and she seemed completely unrepentant for her crimes and just coldly blamed others when evidence was brought against her. Tried alongside Grese was another senior female supervisor, Elisabeth Volkenrath.

She too was in her 20s when she was brought to the Belsen trials and was captured, but she had also worked inside of Auschwitz as well as Belsen. She was known for selecting prisoners to go to the gas chambers, too, and she was inside of Auschwitz the senior Oberaufseherin, the supervising wardress for all of the female prisoner barracks within Auschwitz.

Volkenrath regularly got involved at roll call, and also she was known for hanging and executing prisoners who had infringed on the camp’s rules. She was seen patrolling the site with various weapons, which were then used upon inmates. Volkenrath tried to claim at trial that it was, I quote, “Really awful in the camps, but it was awful for us, too.

” But the judges had absolutely no sympathy for her. The final woman condemned at trial alongside Grese and Volkenrath was the slightly older Johanna Bormann. Bormann had spent many years within the concentration camp system, and she originally signed up to work inside one of the earliest female camps to earn more money.

She worked at various sites, and at Auschwitz, Bormann became known as the woman with the dogs, as she would encourage her large dogs or beasts to maul and attack inmates at various times of the day. These animals did inflict death, killing prisoners. Her actions were very much public murder, and Bormann was the one who instigated this sort of crime.

She was known as a weasel, too, and also sent inmates to their deaths within the gas chambers. The executions of the female condemned free guards at Bergen-Belsen, Grese, Volkenrath, and Bormann, all took place in the early hours of the 13th of December, 1945. They were conducted within Hameln Prison’s execution chamber by specifically British executioner Albert Pierrepoint, a very skilled and experienced man, and he previously had met with the women to calculate their height, weight, and then the long drop measurement needed to snap their necks

as they plunged through the gallows. Then, the women were locked inside small chambers on their own, almost on a death row system, before one by one, Pierrepoint, his assistant, and a group of prison officials called their names. The women were executed first instead of the men, as this was said to have been somewhat courteous.

And the condemned male guards were actually forced to hear the trapdoor spring open and the snap of the neck from the nearby execution chamber before they too went the same way. The process was relatively straightforward. The first woman actually executed was Elizabeth Volkenrath, which is surprising based on the fact that Irma Grese was younger.

She was fetched from her small cell and her arms were secured behind her back just outside because of the space in her cell being too small. After this, she was led into the execution chamber and was then led over to the gallows. The noose was ready for her and Pierrepoint shuffled Volkenrath over a chalk mark on the floor, which was over the trapdoor.

He then heard her final words and statements and placed a white cap over her head. After this, Pierrepoint secured the noose and he then quickly, seconds later, pushed the lever, releasing the trapdoor, and Elizabeth Volkenrath plunged to her death. The exact same process was repeated for Irma Grese and Johanna Bormann.

Grese allegedly said her final words of “Schnell”, meaning quick, pleading for Pierrepoint to bring her life to an end quickly. Other witnesses claimed that she went to her death kicking and screaming, putting up a bit of a fight as she knew what was going to happen. Now, the executions were rather ruthless and also brutal.

They were quick and Pierrepoint was purposely chosen because he was experienced, but also he was very adept at using the long drop method, the British hanging method, which snapped the necks of the condemned and brought their lives to an end within seconds. The aim of these executions wasn’t to prolong suffering, but was to bring death as quickly as possible.

As the women hit the bottom of the drop after passing through the trapdoor, their bodies jerked and their necks snapped with Pierrepoint skillfully placing the noose at the correct points. His expert calculations had already ensured that death was brought about quickly. The executions were also performed away from the eyes of the world’s witnesses, unlike what happened at Nuremberg.

There were very few people who saw the executions take place and this prevented the Nazi defendants from making a last stand in front of the world’s media who could then report their final moments and possibly garner sympathy for their cause and also their fates. But also one thing to consider is that the women who were executed had all worked at Auschwitz as well as Belsen and they had all been proven by evidence to have sent prisoners to the gas chambers.

There were actually a number of other female guards who probably should have been condemned for their actions, women such as Herta Bothe who worked inside of Belsen. But they escaped execution because they hadn’t worked at Auschwitz despite also working at other camps and inflicting a massive amount of death and suffering.

This wasn’t the end of the story for the executed female Belsen guards though. The bodies of the three women were all buried after execution immediately in the courtyard of Hamelin prison. But then when the time came to give the prison back to the German authorities in the 1950s the bodies of the women were dug up and they were then placed in new coffins and were then moved and buried in the nearby Hamelin Am Walde cemetery.

Today the remains of Irma Grese, Johanna Bormann, and Elisabeth Volkenrath are still buried there and their remains are not identified by grave markers. They’re buried in one single mass grave along with the male guards too. However, the true crimes of the women and their brutality saw them go through the gallows within the nearby prison just months after the end of World War II.

And their crimes were endless and were arguably some of the worst committed against people within the concentration camp systems set up by the Nazis. Thank you for watching. If you found this video interesting, maybe click subscribe. Once again, thank you so much for giving your time up to watch one of these videos.