![]() | It has been suggested that this article be merged with Female guards in Nazi concentration camps . (Discuss) Proposed since March 2025. |
SS-Gefolge was the designation for the group of female civilian employees of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in Nazi Germany. SS-Gefolge members served in a limited capacity, as the organisation was not formally part of the SS. Members of the Gefolge worked in the Nazi concentration camps as guards and nurses. [1]
During the early stages of the war, the Gefolge was primarily staffed by volunteers, but as the war progressed, more women were conscripted or recruited from wartime factories with the false promise of high pay and easier working conditions. [2]
Most Gefolge recruits trained at Ravensbrück. Trainees spent anywhere from one week to six months receiving instruction on disciplinary techniques, subterfuge detection, and escape prevention. Showing sympathy for prisoners was forbidden, and any Gefolge member suspected of helping them received severe punishment. [3]
By mid-January 1945, around 3,500 women were on guard duty in the concentration camps, along with around 37,000 men. Based on the sparse literature on this subject, approximately 10% of the concentration camp guards were women. Besides 8,000 SS men, about 200 female guards were on duty in the Auschwitz concentration camp between May 1940 and January 1945. SS Gefolge Women were the main guards at female specific concentration camps of Ravensbrück, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen, and Bergen-Belsen. [2] Male SS members were not permitted to enter the female camps. [4]