The execution of women by the Nazis during World War II
CUNTICA
This is a tribute to the amazing courage of so many young women during
World War II who were put to death for plotting and fighting against
the Nazis, as resistance fighters, partisans and activists in towns
and concentration camps.
It is estimated that more than 4,000 women of various ages were hanged
by Nazi forces between 1939 and 1945. Many more were shot or
guillotined and many were tortured before minimal or non-existent
trials. They could be sentenced to death by People's Courts and
executed within prisons, by the commandants of concentration camps or
by military commanders in the field and summarily executed, usually in
public. Some of these "field" executions were documented and
photographed. A lot of the photographs were private snaps taken by
individual soldiers and discovered after they had been captured or
killed. Hanging was the preferred method for the execution for
partisans as it produced more of a public spectacle than shooting and
was used to terrorise the local populace as well as entertain the
troops. Guillotining within prisons was used for German citizens
convicted of treason and other offences after trial by the People's
Courts.
Executions in the field.
A gallows was used when the Nazis wanted to make a particular example
of the prisoner and these were usually crude and simple structures
that did not have a trapdoor or drop. They typically consisted of just
a post with a short beam projecting from the top cross braced to the
upright. Trees or balconies were also used as was any other structure
that was available, e.g. the roof beams of a barn.
Prisoners were never hooded and rarely blindfolded. Their hands were
normally tied behind their backs with cord but their legs usually left
free. They were given little or no drop, partially to prolong the
pleasure of the soldiers and because their cruel and slow deaths would
act as a stronger deterrent to the local people who were often made to
witness the event. Typically a thin rope was used, fashioned into a
simple slip knot. It was not unusual for prisoners to kick and
struggle after suspension and to lose control of their bladders and
bowels. The bodies could be left hanging for several days as a grim
reminder to others. In cold weather, they were sometimes left hanging
for a week while in summer they would be taken down sooner, perhaps
two to three hours after the hanging.
Masha Bruskina.
Masha Bruskina was a Russian teenage female partisan. She was a 17
year old Jewish high school graduate and was the first teenage girl to
be publicly hanged by the Nazis in Belorussia (Byelarus), since the
German invasion of Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941. Her
execution and that of the two men hanged with her took place on the
26th of October 1941 in the city of Minsk. In the photos of her, you
will see that she has blond hair, but her natural colour was dark. She
dyed her hair when she started to work for the underground. Witnesses
to her hanging, testified that Masha struggled hard and lost control
of her bladder and bowels. After hanging for 3 days, she and the men
were taken down and only when her body was traditionally washed before
her burial by local people and members of her family, did her dark
hair show up. She worked as a nurse in a military hospital and was a
member of an underground cell which aided Soviet officers hospitalised
there to escape and join the partisans. The members of this cell were
informed on and quickly rounded up. Masha and two of her male
comrades, Volodya Sherbateivich and Krill Trous, were sentenced to
death. They were led through the streets with Masha wearing a large
placard proclaiming that they were partisans and hanged one at a time,
Masha first, by the 707 Infanteriedivision, who meticulously filmed
the proceedings. Click here for photographs.
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya & Vera Voloshina.
Zoya Kosmodemjanskaja was another Russian partisan. She was born on
the 14th of September 1923 and belonged to the Diversionsabteilung no.
9903 of the Soviet secret police (NKVD), which ran some 400 agents.
On the night of the 27th of November 1941, Zoya, together with two
comrades, set fire to a building in the village of Petrischtschewo
near Moscow. German soldiers quickly caught one of them - Wassilij
Klubkow. Under interrogation he betrayed Zoya. She was arrested and
tortured before being sentenced to hang.
Eighteen year old Zoya was executed near Moscow, on the 29th of
November 1941. Round her neck was hung a sign describing the reason
for her execution. Just before she was pushed off the stack of boxes
they had placed under the simple gallows, she told the soldiers, "You
can’t hang all 190 million of us." Her partly clothed body was left to
rot in the snow. Click here for photographs.
During Zoya's interrogation, she used the name of Tanya (a popular
Russian first name) as an alias and her real name was only discovered
much later. Even in the newspaper article, where her execution was
described in full detail, the author calls her Tanya. Zoya adopted
this name from a woman called Tanya (last name unknown) who was one of
the heroes of Civil War in Russia (1918-1922) and had been hanged by
the White Guards. Zoya was posthumously decorated a Hero of the
Soviet Union as was her brother, Shura, for his service in the Red
Army tank corps. Vera Voloshina served in the same partisan group as
Zoya and was described as a pretty 23 year old blonde. She had been
wounded in the shoulder during a gun fight with German soldiers and
captured. After torture, Vera Voloshina was also publicly hanged,
later the same day.
Klava Nazarova.
Klava Nazarova was hanged in 1942 and is one of the 3 women who were
later made Heroes of Soviet Union. The other two were Zoya (above) and
Maria Kislyak (see below).
Klava was born in 1918 and was 24 when she died. She was said to be
quite an attractive girl. Klava was a Komsomol member and when the
Germans occupied her town of Ostrov in Russia in 1941, she and her
friends organised an underground resistance squad. On November the
7th 1942, Klava and another girl, Nura Ivanova with two young men,
Nikolai Mikhailov and Konstantin Dmitriev, and the parents of another
organisation member, husband and wife Nadezhda and Ivan Kozlovskiy,
were all arrested. After torture, they were each sentenced to death.
The Nazis made a big show of the hangings to intimidate the town's
people. On December the 12th 1942, a wooden gallows was erected in the
town square of Ostrov and the townsfolk were forced to watch the
proceedings. The executions were divided into 3 parts.
Klava and Nura were first to suffer. The girls were led out and the
soldiers hoisted Klava onto a stool beneath the beam. She was wearing
a light grey coat without a hat or scarf and her hands were tied
behind her back. The executioner put the noose around her neck and one
of the officers took pictures of her. a moment before the stool was
removed from under her feet, Klava, screamed to the crowd: - Farewell!
We'll win! We... The next moment she was hanging. Nura was then hanged
beside her.
From Ostrov a procession of soldiers went to the next village, Nogino.
The executioners stopped at a barn in Nogino and put up two nooses on
a crossbeam. Here they hanged Ivan and Nadezhda Kozlovskiy. Nadezhda
was said to have been almost unconscious before she hanged.
The final pair of this series of executions took place in the village
of Ryadobzha where Nikolai Mikhailov and Konstantin Dmitriev were
hanged together.
Maria Kislyak.
Maria Kislyak was born in March 1925, in the village of Lednoe in the
Kharkov region of the Ukraine. The village had been occupied by the
Germans during 1943. Maria and her school friend, Fedor Rudenko, who
were both Komsomol members, hatched a plan to murder a German officer
as an act of revenge for the cruelty inflicted by the Nazis on the
local people. The plan was for 18 year old Maria, who was very pretty,
to make friends with a German Lieutenant. She suggested to this man
that they went for a walk in the countryside to which he naturally
agreed. Outside the village, Fedor was waiting for them and came up
behind the soldier and hit him over the head with an iron crowbar.
Maria was arrested the next day and violently beaten during her
interrogations but maintained her innocence throughout. As they could
not prove anything, they finally let her go.
Several months later, Maria and her friends murdered another officer
in the same way. This time the Germans arrested nearly 100 inhabitants
as hostages and declared that they would execute them all if the
murderers didn't come forward. The following day Maria and her friends
gave themselves up to the Gestapo and confessed to the murder. Maria
claimed that she was the leader of the group.
On June the 18th, 1943, Maria, Fedor Rudenko and their comrade Vasiliy
Bugrimenko (both 19) were publicly hanged on the branch of an ash
tree.
Three nooses dangled from the branch each with a box under it. The
prisoners were made to step up onto the boxes, the executioner noosed
them and then boxes were kicked out from under their feet leaving them
to slowly strangle to death.
Click here for photograph.
Lepa Radic.
Seventeen year old Lepa Radic was also publicly hanged from the branch
of a tree, in Bosanska Krupa in Bosnia in January 1943, for shooting
at German soldiers. She was made to stand on a large chest, her hands
were tied behind her and she was noosed with a thin cord. The chest
was pulled away leaving her suspended. Click here for photographs.
General.
The reasons for executing young girls in public were several fold.
They were viewed as terrorists by the Germans (which in a sense they
were), the hangings served as a grim example to the local population -
if the Germans would hang a teenage girl then they would hang any
adult, and finally that the executions provided a morbid entertainment
for the soldiers.
Lots of men were hanged too and many men and women were shot. But
hanging was always preferred for young girls for the reasons above.
Many of these young people met their deaths with amazing courage. They
were very brave anyway to do the things they did against the Nazis.
Many of them also demonstrated a strong streak of defiance - they were
not going to let the hated enemy soldiers see them cry or break down.
I am sure they were very frightened - knowing that they would have a
cruel and degrading death in public but they resolved to hide their
fear. The last words of several of them indicate this defiance.
I think there may well also have been a sense of martyrdom. They would
have seen the appalling treatment of their people by the Nazis and
decided to avenge it and didn't mind dying for what they believed in,
having done so.
Executions in the concentration camps.
Every concentration camp had a gallows and these were used to make an
example of prisoners who had tried to escape or committed certain
offences against the camp rules or members of staff. It was normal for
all the camp inmates to be paraded and made to watch the hangings.
In addition to hangings, many prisoners were shot and Auschwitz had a
"death wall" where these executions were carried out. Click here for
photographs. Guillotining was not used in the camps and the gas
chambers were not seen as a method of execution but rather as a method
of extermination.
Roza Robota & Ala Gertner.
Roza Robota was a Polish Jew who was an underground activist in the
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. She was a member of the Birkenau
Sonderkommando. In 1944, this group planned an uprising in the women’s
camp at Auschwitz. The plan was to blow up one of the crematoria which
it was hoped would lead to a general uprising in the camp.
Using dynamite that had been smuggled in stick by stick by girls who
worked in the ammunition factory, they managed to blow up Krema IV
(Crematorium 4) on October the 7th, 1944.
Ala Gertner, was a 32 year old married woman, who also became part of
the resistance movement in the camp and recruited Estera Wajcblum and
Regina Safirsztajn because they had access to explosives. They passed
whatever they could steal to Ala, who transferred it to Roza, who in
turn, gave it to other members of the Sonderkommando in preparation
for the operation.
Roza and her 3 comrades, Ala, Regina Saperstein and Estera Wajcblum
were arrested, interrogated and condemned for the theft of the
explosives. All 4 went to the gallows on January 6th, 1945. They were
led out and made to stand on folding chairs placed under the beam.
Once they had been noosed and their death sentences read out to the
assembled inmates, the chairs were taken away and they were left
suspended. Roza's last word prior to her execution was, "Nekama!"
Revenge! She enjoined the other inmates to "Be strong, have courage".
Mala Zimetbaum.
Twenty two year old Mala Zimetbaum was another Polish Jew who been
interned at Auschwitz. She was the first woman to escape from the camp
but she and a young soldier named Edek, who absconded with her, were
soon caught and returned to Auschwitz. Both were sentenced to hang in
front of the assembled inmates. She was led out and mounted the
gallows but while her sentence was being read out, she slashed her
wrists with a razor blade she had concealed up her sleeve. As the
guards tried to take the blade from her, Mala slapped one across the
face with her bloodied hand and yelled, "I fall a heroine and you will
die as a dog." She was not hanged but bled to death, dying on her way
to the crematorium on a handcart pulled by women prisoners. Mala's
story became a legend at Auschwitz as a symbol of courage and
defiance.
Click here for photographs of these brave women.
Child hanged.
There is eyewitness testimony of how a female guard named Braunsteiner
ordered a 14 year old girl to be hanged in one concentration camp. An
SS man was told to get a stool so the girl could step up into the
noose dangling from a simple crossbeam gallows. She had the man ask
the girl in her own language if she understood that she was going to
be hanged. The girl said she understood it but didn't cry or scream.
Moments later the stool was removed leaving her hanging.
Executions in Berlin's Plötzensee prison.
Plötzensee prison in Berlin was designed by architect, Ludwig
Alexander Herrmann, and was constructed between 1869 and 1879 to serve
as the new state prison. It occupied a plot of 62 acres with a 6 meter
high perimeter wall. Within the walls were 5 three story prison
buildings which were originally designed to hold 1,400 prisoners.
These buildings, together with the workshops, other smaller buildings
and a church, were separated by open courtyards creating a totally
self-contained environment for the inmates.
It can still be visited and there is a memorial centre to those who
died there.
In the years 1928 to 1932, the number of executions in the whole of
Germany had dropped to 2 or 3 a year but with the rise of the National
Socialist party in 1933, there was a sudden increase in the
application of the death penalty. Before 1933, only murder and high
treason were capital crimes and in Berlin, beheading (with the axe)
was the only lawful method of execution. (Other states used beheading
with the axe or the guillotine). One of the last executions by the axe
in Plötzensee were those of the Baroness Benita von Falkenhayn and her
friend Renate von Natzner , who were convicted of spying and beheaded
by the executioner, Carl Gröpler, on the 18th of February 1935. In
all, 45 people were beheaded in the prison courtyard between 1933 and
1936. Only 36 had been beheaded here in the period 1890–1932, all
for murder.
There were 64 executions in Germany in 1933, 79 in 1934, 94 in 1935
and 68 in 1936.
When Hitler came to total power, he decided that criminals and those
who opposed his regime should suffer death by either guillotining or
from 1942, hanging, and he ordered the construction of 20 guillotines.
Hitler also greatly increased the list of capital crimes. Between 1933
and 1944, a total of 13,405 death sentences were passed. Of these,
11,881 were carried out. In 1940 alone, some 900 German civilians were
put to death. In 1941, the minimum age for execution was reduced to
just 14 years.
The execution rate had risen to over 5,000 by 1943. Between 1943 and
1945, the People's Courts sentenced around 7,000 people to death. In
the first few months of 1945, some 800 people were executed, over 400
of them being German citizens.
Condemned prisoners were kept in a large cell block building (House
III) directly adjacent to the execution building. They spent their
final hours shackled in special cells on the ground floor, which was
known as the ”house of the dead,” before being led across a small
courtyard to the execution chamber which was located in a separate two
roomed brick building. Plötzensee's guillotine was delivered on the
17th of February 1937 from Bruchsal prison in Baden. In late 1942, a
steel gallows beam was erected in the existing execution chamber, and
originally had 5, later 8 hooks, for attachment of nooses. The two
execution areas were separated by curtains.
Between 1933 and 1945, some 2,891 people were decapitated or hanged in
this building. Many of them were opponents of Hitler's National
Socialist government. They had been sentenced to death by the People's
Courts, having been found guilty of various offences against the
regime. Some of them had belonged to Communist resistance groups,
others to the Harnack/Schulze-Boysen Organization (the Red Orchestra),
and still others to the Kreisau Circle. On the 20th of July 1944, an
attempt was made on Hitler's life by a group of army officers led by
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. The attempt failed, and between the
8th of August 1944 and the 9th of April 1945, a total of 90 people
were executed in Plötzensee for their parts in the conspiracy. For a
list of their names go to http://www.gedenkstaette-ploetzensee.de/13_e.html
Click here for a photograph of the death house.
Initially Roettger, the executioner, normally came twice a week and
carried out his work in the early evenings. Guillotinings could be
carried out at 3 minute intervals. Hangings were notably cruel, the
prisoner was led in with their hands tied behind them and made to get
up onto the two step step-up, the executioner following them and
placing the thin cord slip knot around their neck. They were not
hooded or blindfolded. The executioner got down and simply pulled the
step-up from under them leaving them suspended with little or no drop.
Second and subsequent prisoners had to witness the struggles of the
first before it was their turn. On the night of the 7th–8th September
1943, 186 prisoners were hanged in groups of 8 at a time to prevent
their escape from the prison following heavy damage by an Allied
bombing raid in which the guillotine was destroyed. A further 60 were
to be hanged over the next few nights.
Some individual cases.
Lilo Hermann.
Liselotte “Lilo” Hermann was a 29 year old German student. She passed
information she had received from Artur Göritz about Hitler’s secret
rearmament program and the production of armaments in the Dornier
plant in Friedrichshafen and about the construction of an underground
munitions factory near Celle to the Central Committee of the German
Communist Party in Switzerland. She was arrested in December 1935 and
finally sentenced to death for high treason by the “People’s Court” in
Berlin on the 12th of June 1937, becoming the first woman to be
condemned for this offence by the Third Reich. She was guillotined
together with her accomplices, Stefan Lovasz, Josef Steidle, and Artur
Göritz, on the 20th of June 1938.
Mildred Harnack.
Mildred was born Mildred Fish in Milwaukee USA on September 16th,
1902. In 1926, she married Arvid Harnack, whom she met while studying
literature at Wisconsin University. In 1929, she and her husband moved
to Berlin where she was a lecturer at the university. They became
friends with Martha Dodd and were often invited to receptions at the
American Embassy where she met many influential Germans. When the war
started, Arvid and Mildred supported the resistance movement against
the Nazi regime through their friendship with Harro Schulze-Boysen and
the spy ring known as "The Red Orchestra". On September 7th, 1942, she
was arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters. At her trial in
December 1942, she was sentenced to 6 years in prison for "helping to
prepare high treason and espionage". On December 21st, Hitler rejected
the sentence and ordered another trial which took place in January
1943 and resulted in a death sentence. At 6.57 p.m. on February the
16th, 1943, Mildred Harnack was guillotined, becoming the only
American woman to be executed for treason in World War 2. (By
September 1943, all 51 members of the “Red Orchestra” had died, two by
suicide, 8 on the gallows and 41 guillotined, including Harro Schulze-
Boysen and his wife Libertas on the evening of the 22nd of December
1942).
Eva-Marie Buch.
Eva was a bookseller and also worked for the Schulze-Boysen-Harnack
resistance group. She was arrested on October 10th, 1942 for passing
messages to French slave workers in factories. On February 3rd, 1943,
she was sentenced to death by the People's Court and was reportedly
hanged on August the 5th of that year. (It is more likely that she
was guillotined, however, as this was the normal method for women.)
Cato Bontjes Van Beek.
Cato was born in 1921 and grew up in Bremen, the daughter of an
artist. In 1942, she joined the resistance group and spy ring "Rote
Kapelle" but left after only 6 weeks because of disagreements within
the group. When the German authorities investigated the group, her
name was discovered and this was enough evidence on which to arrest
her, charge her with treason and sentence her to death. She was
guillotined in the early evening of August the 5th, 1943.
Elizabeth Gloeden.
Elizabeth Charlotte Lilo Gloeden was a 31 year old Berlin housewife,
who with her mother and husband, helped shelter those who were
persecuted by the Nazis, by hiding them for weeks at a time in their
flat. Among those they took in was resistance leader, Dr. Carl
Goerdeler and the Mayor of Leipzig. Elizabeth, her mother and husband,
were all arrested by the Gestapo, and subjected to torture under
interrogation. On November 30th, 1944, all 3 were guillotined at two
minute intervals.
Gertrud Seele.
Gertrud was 28 years old at the time of her execution and was a nurse
and social worker. She had been born in Berlin and served for a time
in the Nazi Labour Corps. She was arrested in 1944 for helping Jews to
escape Nazi persecution and for "defeatist statements designed to
undermine the moral of the people". She was tried before the People's
Court in Potsdam and executed on the 12th of January 1945.
Ilse Stöbe.
Thirty one year old Ilse Stöbe worked for the German Foreign Secretary
during World War 2 and was also involved with "Rote Kapelle”. In the
spring of 1942, she warned the Soviets about the planned attack on
Russia but was ignored by the Soviet leaders. Her warnings were
intercepted by the Gestapo and she was arrested and charged with
treason. She was guillotined at 8.27 p.m. on the evening of December
22nd, 1942.
Sophie Scholl – guillotined in Munich.
Sophie Scholl was a 22 year old philosophy student at Munich
University and she, her older brother Hans and his friend, Christoph
were members of an anti- Nazi organisation called The White Rose. They
were caught helping to distribute an anti-Nazi pamphlet in the
university and were taken to Wittelsbach Palais, where they were
interrogated for 4 days by they Gestapo before coming to trial on
February the 22nd, 1943. They were quickly found guilty and sentenced
to death. All 3 were guillotined by Johann Reichhart in Munich's
Stadelheim prison within hours of the verdict on that same day. Sophie
was taken to the guillotine first and reportedly walked to her death
"without batting an eyelash". Her last words were "Die Sonne scheint
noch," which translates as "The Sun still shines." She is buried in
the Perlach Cemetery next to the prison.
Click here for a photo of Sophie.
Topaz
Here is a quote from "Ewige Front" by SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Albert
Hartl. It's what the National Socialists said about German women:
It is difficult to sum up in one word everything that German man
relates to the ideal image of women in terms of loftiness, nobility
and beauty. One of the most fitting words for the totality of all
virtues and advantages of the German girl and the girl woman is the
word charm.
Charm means a natural, uniform, physical beauty. Unhealthy
distortion of natural beauty, unnatural muscle athleticism, unnatural
castigation of body, unfeminine masculinization or spiritualization of
the body stand in contradiction to charm. This natural beauty is
shaped , promoted and preserved through robust movement in air, sun
and water. The charm of the female body radiates in fresh, happy games
and dances, in female physical exercise and gymnastics; it enlivens
celebrations and holidays, psychologically enriches the community and
transmits highest values above all to the man. For the girl and women
herself, however, there lies therein wellsprings for fulfillment and
perfection of her deepest essence. Genuine Nordic art of every
millennium displays a mirror of this female charm.
Charm simultaneously means a mental-psychological bearing which
expresses itself in manifold forms. Charm expresses the female
harmony of mental and psychological forces, the gentle harmony of
reason and mood. The meaning of all female life fulfills itself in the
kind, caring, loving and always helping mother and housewife. The art
of all German history has again and again celebrated precisely this
inexhaustible depth of German female feeling, of German mother's love,
of selfless, love-fulfilled devotion and the immeasurable wealth of
the German woman's soul. And if one speaks of charm of a girl or of a
woman, then the psychological sincerity is also expressed by precisely
this term.
The German women, however, should not and does not want to only be
a good mother and housewife. In the orient, the women was often only a
birthing machine and maid. The German woman wants to simultaneously,
knowing and understanding, stand at the side of her husband as comrade
and coworker. She wants to share the husband's cares, tasks, and work,
yes, she wants to stimulate and fertilize. The German women hence does
not exhaust herself in superficial beauty and fleeting charms. Rich
spirit and deep understanding for all things in life radiates from her
charm. She does not just take care of the table, rather she shapes the
culture of the house, the style of the residence, the family's manner
of life. Hence clear intellect and practical sense also radiate
simultaneously from the charm of the German girl and the German woman.
The women is the bearer of new life, the protector of her folk's
blood and kind for distant generations. She must guard the purity of
the blood, maintain discipline and proper manner, ward off poison and
decay. The most sacred obligation and greatest pride lies therein for
each girl and each woman. For each man this means immeasurable
responsibility toward his folk. The deepest essence and the most
beautiful decoration of female charm lies in this purity of blood and
kind. The woman becomes a participant in divine powers as the bearer
of new life. Through her own blood, she is inseparably bound to the
folk's eternal life.
The German world-view and life-view also grows from German blood and
German kind. The woman is the natural bearer and teacher of a
world-view and life-view to her children fitting for her kind. She
gives them life. But she is also the first, closest, natural one to
solve for her children the riddle of life, to lead them into the
little and larger worlds of divine creation. The woman opens the
child's eyes and their view for the manifoldness of this world and in
the process she herself becomes ever richer inwardly. She teaches to
differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, noble and
base, useful and harmful. But she also lets her children surmise the
eternal relationships of family, folk, homeland and Fuehrer, of
workers, peasants and soldiers, of war and peace and the eternal laws
of life. The woman also finally leads her children to the faith and
divine power, a "dear God", who lives above us. In this emersion in
natural, genuine and deep-wide, in this familiarity with the divine
order of creation, the woman herself finds that inner strength and
depth, that richness of heart, which especially typifies the German
woman.
Natural beauty and health, purity of blood, richness of feeling,
clear sense, genuine, deep world-view - those are the gifts and
advantages that radiate from the charm of the German girl and the
German woman.
To preserve and increase these advantages is the pride, the
striving and the obligation of each girl and each woman. To win and
keep such a girl and such a woman as the mother of his children and as
a life comrade, is the yearning and unconditional will of each man. A
folk, in which the radiance of this female charm is united with the
soldierly bearing of the man, will live and blossom forever.
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