Hermine Braunsteiner Was Born on July 16, 1919 in Vienna As a Daughter of a Qualified Butcher Friedrich Braunsteiner and His Wife Maria
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Hermine Ryan-Braunsteiner Origins, education, occupation Hermine Braunsteiner was born on July 16, 1919 in Vienna 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 England as a housekeeper at an American engineer’s house. She stayed there until May 1938 and then came back to Vienna. In the meantime, Austria 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 Berlin. 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 Lublin, 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 Simon Wiesenthal, 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. United States 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 Germany four months later.