Hermine Ryan-Braunsteiner

Origins, education, occupation Hermine Braunsteiner was born on July 16, 1919 in as a daughter of a qualified butcher Friedrich Braunsteiner and his wife Maria. She was the youngest of seven children in this catholic family. She spent her childhood with her siblings and parents in Vienna. They lived in three room professional apartment belonging to the brewery her father worked for, as a carter or driver. Her mother earned their living as a laundrywoman. The family home was ‘apolitical’ and was marked by good family relationships and strict catholic upbringing. In the years 1925-1933 Braunsteiner attended a public elementary school and after finishing it she got admitted to high school where she spent the next four years. She was a good student and wanted to achieve something. Her dream was to work as a nurse, but unfortunately she had to give it up because she could not find a place to learn. Due to financial reasons she had to help at home; after working at home for six months she started a job at the brewery in May 1934. Then she worked as a cook at baron Bachhofen. Thanks to her salary she was able to support her family. When her father died from cancer and mother stopped getting the annuities, she became the only provider for the family. Hermine Braunsteiner was ambitious and she wanted to achieve something more in her life, so to free herself from the difficult life situation in Vienna she left for the Netherlands to her sister. She wanted to find a job there to improve her financial situation; unfortunately, she didn’t get a job permit and went back to Vienna after three months. She got hired in the Bachhofen Brewery as an unqualified worker. It didn’t last long because in 1937, thanks to her friend’s help, she found a job in as a housekeeper at an American engineer’s house. She stayed there until May 1938 and then came back to Vienna. In the meantime, and German Reich connected and Braunsteiner was scared that, in case of a war, she could be interned. She returned to work at the brewery, where she received a small salary. She tried to get education as a nurse but she didn’t succeed. Following her friend’s advice, she signed in the Viennese employment bureau. She got assigned to an ammunition factory located at the German Reich territory, in Grüneberg next to . In August 1938, she began to produce bullets in the factory. She was living at a police officer’s house in Fürstenberg Mecklenburg. Out of 16 marks of weekly earnings, she paid 5 of the rent and spent the rest to buy a travel ticket to work and to support her mother, who lived in Vienna.

1

Her work at the factory, besides from being hard, didn’t give her enough money and prospects for a good life, which is why she worked there only till August 1939. At the age of 19, Braunsteiner applied for the position of a supervisor at a concentration camp located near the town of Ravensbrück. It was a much better offer than the last one because the salary was 60 marks, livelihood was free and the work conditions, as well as the distance from her house to work, were much better.

Career in the concentration camps system On August 15, 1939, Hermine Braunsteiner began to work at the concentration camp in Ravensbrück. She imagined the concentration camp as an institution serving to reeducate the students in the spirit of National Socialism. In Ravensbrück, she was first trained in so called Strafkomando (punitive commando). Then, equipped with a uniform, she began her own supervision over a smaller work commando. From the beginning of 1941, until the end of her stay in Ravensbrück, she took over the management of the so-called Kleiderkammer (clothing magazines). From November 16, 1942, Braunsteiner together with a supervisor Elsa Ehrich and eight other women got relocated to Majdanek. Then, as all supervisors sent to , she was directed to the camp at ‘Alter Flughafen’ (an old airport). She worked there in a clothing establishment, where the prisoners sorted and repaired clothes. From the beginning of January 1943, she stayed at the female field at Majdanek, where Polish prisoners where directed. Because of the workload and frequent assemblies, Braunsteiner had been repeatedly replacing the main supervisor Ehrich. She was present almost always at gas executions of prisoners. She lived in a room together with the main supervisor and ate with her in an officer casino. They had been spending also a part of their spare time together, because they were privately friends, as Braunsteiner described. In the middle of May 1943, Braunsteiner was promoted from the ‘simple’ supervisor to the heads of the office manager (Rapportführerin) in the female field and also the deputy of the head supervisor - Ehrich. As a Rapportführerin she was reliable and during assemblies she always controlled the number of prisoners. When the main supervisor was absent, Braunsteiner conducted assemblies and assigned prisoners to individual work commandos. She was also responsible for so-called inside service, controlling the neatness and cleanliness in the prisoner barracks. She was also responsible for the procedures of new prisoners arriving at the camp and transports of prisoners to other camps.

2

Her professional degree and salary were similar to other supervisors, but from the point of view of the others she was privileged as a confidant and deputy of Ehrich. Due to her reliability, she became one of the main helpers of the main supervisor and accordingly received more important tasks to do. She was awarded the War Military Cross of Second Class at Majdanek. During her stay in the Lublin camp, she was ill for a longer time (for about eight of fifteen months of her service). On February 2, 1943, she was sent with typhus to a military hospital and then from the middle of April to the middle of May she stayed with Ehrich, for a treatment at health resort in upper Bavaria. From June 21 to July 2, 1943, she stayed at a military hospital with symptoms of tonsils inflammation and then from October 15, 1943 with symptoms of bronchitis. After two months of treatment and a military leave, she was moved to Ravensbrück again, where she started her service (the beginning of January 1944). Despite of her short stay at the camp (caused by repeating health related absences), she belonged to the famous and well known supervisors in the camp. She came back to Ravensbrück as the main supervisor of over 14 SS-women and the head of the Genthin sub-camp, where she served until May 1945. After the surrendering of Genthin camp on May 7, 1945, she escaped from the Soviet troops to the western zones of occupation.

Braunsteiner’s biography after 1945 After the war, Braunsteiner reached Stendal and after three months of work on a farm in Bavaria in October 1945 she came back to her mother in Vienna. She worked as a housekeeper until January 1946. On May 6, 1946, Braunsteiner was first arrested by the Austrian police in connection with her activities in the camp. Then she was passed to the Ally authorities. She stayed at many internment camps and also in the captive camp until April 18, 1948. After being released, she worked for 11 months as a kitchen help in English barracks next to Villach. On April 7, 1948, she got arrested there due to her activity as a camp supervisor in Ravensbrück. On November 22, 1948 she was convicted for her camp activity. Because of abusing the prisoners and violation of humanity and dignity, Braunsteiner got sentenced for three years of tough penitentiary. Since the detention ward and detention center for interned were included she served her sentence only until the breakthrough of April and May 1950. She was accused of crimes at Majdanek but because of the lack of evidence she got acquitted of those accusations by the court. After being released again, Braunsteiner worked in Vienna as a housekeeper for a Dane family. After six months – in summer, she returned to Kärnten,

3

(Austria) where she worked at a hotel in Veldem by the lake Worthersee and then, in winter, at a seed warehouse. In the middle of 1950s she met her husband Russel Ryan, a qualified car mechanic, who stationed as an American soldier in Austria. In October 1958 she expatriated herself to Canada with him. A week later they got married in Halifax and Braunsteiner took her husband’s name – Ryan. The couple was childless. Considering that her husband was an American, she had no problems with travelling to the USA. They both settled in New York, where Russel worked as a precise mechanic and Hermine in a jersey factory. On January 15 th , 1963, Hermine Ryan-Braunsteiner was granted an American citizenship losing Austrian one at the same time. In 1964, she was found herself in America. Thanks to clues of , the first press release about Hermine as a Ravensbrück and Majdanek supervisor appeared together with information about her trial in Vienna in 1949. Hermine Ryan-Braunsteiner did not include this information in the application for granting her American citizenship. Citizenship and Immigration Services initiated action depriving her of American citizenship. On the September 28, 1971, Hermine gave up her American citizenship. The American office filed a relevant document on the banishing of Braunsteiner from the United States, and on the basis of the arrest warrant of March 6, 1973, in connection with a later trial at the National Court Dusseldorf on March 21, 1973, Braunsteiner was arrested and expelled to four months later. From August 7, 1973, to April 7, 1976, she was in custody because the German authorities were afraid of her escape. Her husband managed to collect 17 thousand dollars of among his New York neighbors and thanks to that Hermine was released. After attempting to intimidate the witness, Braunsteiner was arrested again and stayed in prison from December 8, 1977 to January 9, 1978. On June 13th, 1979, she was accused of murder and placed in detention because of the risk of escape. Ryan-Braunsteiner was given a double life imprisonment in Düsseldorf and she stayed at a women prison in Mülheim until April 1996. After being released (she was given clemency by the Prime Minister of North Rhine Westphalia Johannes Raua), Braunsteiner lived in Linden district in . She had her shin amputated, so she moved in a wheelchair. She also suffered from diabetes and arthritis. After leaving the prison, she lived with her husband Russel in an apartment financed by the social care division of a retirement home lead by the Evangelic Church. She died in 1999.

4

Braunsteiner at Majdanek After joining the SS, she fulfilled herself as a supervisor. Her ambition was very visible, because she was able to achieve her plans, both professional as well as private ones. This is how the second instance court described the motives of her conviction. She got a chance to get promoted (inside the SS supervisor hierarchy) through eager fulfillment of her responsibilities which gave her a hope for a better future. Braunsteiner decided to make use of it. She showed her superiority towards the prisoners by treating them brutally and inhumanely. She was seen as one of the most effective supervisors at Majdanek, she used every opportunity to harass and humiliate women. Not only did she beat them, but also stepped on them with a metal fitting of her shoes – which became her identification. Among the Polish-speaking prisoners she got an infamous name ‘mare’. The women at the camp described her as: inhuman, cruel, brutal, sadistic and causing frantic fear. Among the witnesses there were many of these who personally got hit or stepped on by Braunsteiner. Some of them also talked about being hit with her hands and a quirt. Women also testified that Braunsteiner was often accompanied by a German shepherd which she used to bait the prisoners. The prosecutor Ambach said that even her nickname ‘mare’ differentiated her from other SS supervisors. For example, supervisor Emilie Macha was nicknamed ‘Mutti’ (‘mummy’). It was because of her earlier friendly and maternal character. Also an earlier friend of Hermine – Hermine Bötchter was called ‘pearl’ because of her relatively human behaviour. The court noted that all testimonies of witnesses were not examples of single ‘inappropriate behaviour’, but typical examples of selfish and merciless treatment of the prisoners. The prisoners’ testimonies were confirmed and completed by Braunsteiner’s earlier friends. Erna Wallisch saw how she was shoving the prisoners, Rossa Süss and Charlotte Mayer describes her as ‘strict for prisoners’ . According to the prosecutor Ambach’s opinion, her behaviour that he observed could have been the way it was at Majdanek. ‘,It seems to me , says Ambach in his final speech, that the accused Ryan-Braunsteiner did not change her attitude. Her contemptuous, full of hatred face expression she used to intimidate the prisoners, strikes the eye.’ In 1977, Braunsteiner experienced two mental breakdowns. On June 23, 1977, the Polish witness (a woman) gave a testimony. She talked about how Hermine shot a Jewish boy in the back when he wanted to avoid the death in . During her testimony she was pounding her hands against the table and screaming: ‘This woman should be telling the truth. I did not shoot any boy.’ She was stamping and going into convulsions and a few weeks later

5

– on December 8, 1977, she reacted in the same way. During a break in the trial she offended one of the witnesses – Dnuta Brzosko-Mędryk, saying: ‘you, liar, you should be telling the truth.’ The testimony of Mrs Brzosko- Mędryk seriously convicted the accused and was a basis to expel her from the USA. When judging the situation, prosecutor Ambach stated that ‘Braunsteiner, similarly to when being at the camp, used a contemptuous voice and turned to the witnesses on the first name basis.’

Deeds at Majdanek During Majdanek trials in Düsseldorf, Ryan-Braunsteiner was accused of numerous crimes which were previously dismissed. Summing up all the cases, she was accused of mass murder (she killed at least 1181 people and she participated in another 705 murders). Finally, in the next three of the nine counts of the indictment a sentence was stated by the court. Ryan was declared guilty on two counts and acquitted on three others. The remaining counts of indictment were acquitted due to insufficient evidence of a charge. She also participated in the next three trials in Düsseldorf, but she could not be prosecuted in these counts of. She was also not prosecuted for thirteen further offences which were not the subject of the trial but were mentioned in the indictment. In the third case, Ryan-Braunsteiner was prosecuted for the following crimes: charge of participating in the selection on the roll-call square and murdering 80 people; so-called ‘Kinderaktion’ – first ‘children action’ took place in May 1943, Herminie was accused of complicity in the murder of at least one hundred and two people; selection on the roll-call square in August 1943, Ryan-Braunsteiner was accused of mass murder on approximately one thousand people.

Selection of the Jewish women in May 1943

After the suppression of the Uprising (the uprising started in , 1943) a large part of the surviving Jews was transported to the concentration camp at Majdanek. Thousands of men, women and children were transported immediately after the outbreak of the uprising to the camp in Lublin until around mid-May 1943. Among them there was a group of about three hundred women and girls, who were later placed in a female barrack in Lublin. One afternoon, shortly after May 15, 1943, after the arrival of the last transports from Warsaw, these female prisoners were selected. Among them there were those ‘no longer worth living’ – that was the term used to describe prisoners who were not able to work and who were searched for and murdered by gassing. The management of the selection of the

6 prisoners to be killed belonged to the first camp doctor, Dr Blancke, and probably another camp doctor, Dr Rindfleisch, took part in it. In addition, there was a group of SS and female supervisors who took part in the selection. Then (selections) were carried out by the women prisoner functionaries from the so-called camp office. Among the supervisors who took part in the selections, there were chief supervisor Erich and Hermine Braunsteiner, who, like Hildegard Lächert, had returned shortly beforehand from sanatorium treatment in Bavaria. Dr Blancke's ‘ability to work’ criterion was the condition of women's legs. When the legs were swollen, reddened, ulcerated or frostbitten, the female prisoners were considered to be ‘no longer worth living’, which is why women were forced to uncover their legs in the roll- call square. Along with Dr Blancke, several SS officers were then passing through the ranks of standing prisoners and chose the prisoners to kill. They did that by looking at the prisoners and they also looked for women who were ill or who looked bad for other reasons. Braunsteiner, along with other SS members, searched for women in rows and led them the field’s entrance. The women knew what fate awaited them, therefore, they tried to escape and hide. The SS officers then were closing the route to the escaping prisoners, beat them with a whip and led them back to the entrance. Then the women were led to a selection square, the so-called ‘rose garden’ (Rosengarten), and after a short time they were killed by cyclone B in the gas chamber behind the barrack of the female bathhouse barrack. The court reported at least 50 deaths and the prosecutor's office reported 80 deaths. An eyewitness (Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk) testified that between 80 and 100 women were probably killed in this action. Ryan-Braunsteiner did not specifically comment on the allegations made against her, unless they were not consistent with the facts in principle. Even though she did not denied that such selections had taken place, she often repeated that she was unlucky enough to be the companion of the senior supervisor Ehrich in the camp, and that the responsibility for these selections could not rest only on a ‘such a small supervisor as she’ , but above all on those who gave the orders.

First Children Action In the second half of May 1943, the so-called ‘first children action’ took place at Majdanek. The victims were Jewish children and several mothers who arrived with a transport from the Warsaw ghetto at the end of April or the beginning of May. They were not killed immediately, because the technical possibilities for extermination were not advanced enough. These children were placed for some time in a fenced barrack on female field. As part of the

7

‘final solution to the Jewish question’, the children were to be liquidated. Therefore, the chief supervisor Ehrich, has received adequate orders from the camp management. In order to carry out this plan, she was assigned several SS officers who were supposed, in particular, to ensure that the mothers would be separated from their children. Trucks were also made available in order to take the children to the ‘bath barrack’ , behind which the killing in the gas chambers took place. Because of the expected riots, the chief supervisor Ehrich has used all the SS officers at her disposal, including Lächert and Braunsteiner, who had previously served in the female field as a replacement. The action began with the arrival of trucks to the barracks with children. In that time, SS officers formed a line of posts covering the remaining parts of the V field. The children were pulled out of the barracks and placed on the trucks by the female supervisors and several female functionaries. The number of victims, as determined by the court, was at least 50 people, of which 45 were children between the ages of about 2 and 14 years old. The prosecutor assumed that there were 102 victims, including 100 children. Presumably, the actual number was much higher - up to several hundred and relatively many more than 100 children and women - as several witnesses testified. The children had to climb up to the loading surface of the car by themselves or, as in the case of small children, they were taken by the shoulders or legs and thrown onto the truck. Several mothers who did not separated with their children were loaded onto the truck together with them. Other children tried to run away. SS female supervisors, including Braunsteiner and other SS men, prevented the children from escaping, beat them and hit them with a whip, and then captured them again. Other mothers who were in another part of Field V, despite the ban on leaving the barracks, tried to get to their children, but they were stopped by beating and kicking and hitting with a whip. According to the court and prosecutor's office, Braunsteiner behaved particularly cruelly in the ‘children action’. She grabbed at least one small child by its arms or legs and, as stated in the sentence, ‘disregarding possible injuries, she threw it on the truck like a dead object or cattle for slaughter’ . The children were later murdered with their mothers in one of the gas chambers at Majdanek, which was confirmed not only by the eyewitnesses during the Düsseldorf trial, but also by the fact that a few days after the gassing in the crematorium, a larger number of children's corpses was burnt, and a pile of children's clothes grew up in the clothing warehouses. The Court also found that Braunsteiner's participation in the action was motivated by the 'special diligence in the carrying out of her duties' and 'the pursuit of a career' . She was

8 aware of the aim and the murderous nature of this act and did not hesitate to use force. However, whether Braunsteiner internally accepted and considered the Nazi regime's aim of killing Jewish children and the total extermination of Jews as her own - the judges were unable to prove it.

Selection in August 1943 Braunsteiner continued to participate in the selections on the roll-call square of the women's field (Field V) in August 1943. Again, Lächert and Braunsteiner, under the leadership of two SS physicians (Dr. Blancke and Dr. Rindfleisch), took part in the next crime. Moreover, the SS female supervisors chose themselves the Jewish women who were to be gassed on the same day or on the following night. In total, at least two groups of 500 Jewish women were selected. For that reason, Braunsteiner was blamed for a mass murder of 1000 people. However, there was no conviction and this event is only briefly documented in the records.

Braunsteiner's acts legal assessment In the legal assessment of the defendant's actions, the court found that Braunsteiner, motivated by ‘flagrant egotism’ , took part in the ‘planned execution’ of the murder in order to pursue a career. She was ‘submissive and willing to do her duty’. In the case of ‘children action’ she acted mercilessly and eagerly, she ignored any human and moral barriers. She did not act against herself and she was not forced to do so, she accepted the methods of the perpetrators, whose leaders were Hitler, Göring, Himmler and Heydrich. This was also supplemented by her personal and professional ambition - according to the jury, these were the striking features of Braunsteiner's character. She knew her possibilities of promotion and she followed her career path at Majdanek. Moreover, she got rid of all her inhibitions and renounced her humanity. By her brutality, especially visible during the ‘children action’, she exceeded all measures of the ordered participation. Therefore, as we continue to read in the justification of the sentence, she did not only support the harm done to other people, but she also put herself on a par with the perpetrators. Braunsteiner ‘was a co-perpetrator herself and she could not reliably invoke being merely a small cog in a large wheel of a very powerful state crime apparatus’. In accordance with a legal assessment, the judge sentenced the accused Ryan-Braunsteiner to life imprisonment for the collective murder in two instances, each time on at least 50 people.

9