Aufseherin was the position title for a female guard in Nazi concentration camps. Of the 50,000 guards who served in the concentration camps, training records indicate that approximately 3,500 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of Aufseherin translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen, Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts.
Margot Elisabeth Dreschel, also spelled Drechsler, or Drexler, was a prison guard at Nazi concentration camps during World War II. For her role in the Holocaust, she was sentenced to death and hanged.
Juana Bormann was a German prison guard at several Nazi concentration camps from 1938, and was executed as a war criminal at Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany, after a court trial in 1945.
Dorothea Binz was a Nazi German officer and supervisor at Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Holocaust. She was executed for war crimes on May 2, 1947.
Gerda "Jane" Bernigau was an SS Oberaufseherin in Nazi concentration camps before and during World War II.
Greta Bösel was a Nazi German nurse and camp guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was arrested and tried for her role in the Holocaust, found guilty of war crimes, and subsequently executed.
Ruth Closius-Neudeck was a Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) supervisor at a Nazi concentration camp complex from December 1944 until March 1945. She was executed for war crimes for her role in the Holocaust.
Johanna Langefeld was a Nazi German guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz. She was arrested and imprisoned for her role in the Holocaust, but she escaped prison and was never tried.
The Hamburg Ravensbrück trials were seven trials for war crimes during the Holocaust against camp officials from the Ravensbrück concentration camp that the British authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Hamburg after the end of World War II. These trials were heard before a military tribunal; the three to five judges at these trials were British officers, assisted by a lawyer. The defendants included concentration camp personnel of all levels: SS officers, camp doctors, male guards, female guards (Aufseherinnen), and a few former prisoner-functionaries who had tortured or mistreated other inmates. In total, 38 defendants were tried in these seven trials; 21 of the defendants were women. One of the defendants died during the trial. Twenty of the defendants received death sentences. One defendant was reprieved while two others committed suicide before they could be executed. The remaining 17 death sentences relating to these trials were carried out on the gallows at Hamelin Prison by British hangman Albert Pierrepoint.
Elfriede Hildegard Mohneke was a guard at two Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
Alice Orlowski was a German concentration camp guard at several of the Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Poland (1939-1945) during World War II. After the war, a Polish court convicted of her crimes against humanity, and she served 10 years in prison in Poland. In 1973, Orlowski, now 70 and living as a pensioner in West Germany, muttered that only "half the work" had been finished, referring to the Holocaust. She was promptly arrested, convicted of making antisemitic remarks, and sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Luise Danz was a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II. Danz was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on 20 August 1957.
Vera Salvequart was a Sudeten German nurse and kapo at Ravensbrück concentration camp from December 1944 to 1945. In 1947, she was executed for war crimes during the Holocaust following the Ravensbrück Trials.
Lotte Toberentz, born Maria Charlotte Toberentz was the head overseer of the Uckermark concentration camp for girls, a subcamp of Ravensbrück concentration camp, in its early years. From December 1944 to April 1945 she was Lagerführerin of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Franz Bernhard Lucas was a German concentration camp doctor.
Ravensbrück was a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück. The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 of the total were Jewish. Eighty-five percent were from other races and cultures. More than 80 percent were political prisoners. Many prisoners were employed as slave laborer by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, the Nazis undertook medical experiments on Ravensbrück prisoners to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides.
Anna Friederike Mathilde Klein was a Nazi German concentration camp guard and chief warden at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was tried for her role in the Holocaust, but acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Johanna Braach was Chief Secretary in the "Reich Central Office for combating the juvenile delinquency" and Deputy Head of the girls' concentration camp at Uckermark.
Gertrud Elli Heise was a female guard and later, SS overseer at several concentration camps during the Second World War. Heise was born in Berlin, Germany. She was tried for war crimes in 1946.
Adolf Ludwig Winkelmann was an SS Hauptsturmführer and was employed as a doctor in several Nazi concentration camps including the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
