10: Dorothea Binz
Binz started her job at a concentration camp and quickly rose through the ranks. She became Deputy Chief Wards at Ravensbruck and later Buchenwald. The prisoners describe her as "unyielding". Binz was known to beat, shoot, and whip the females she managed. She is reported to have chopped a prisoner to death with an axe during a forced labor assignment. She was caught, tried,and executed for her crimes.
9: Juana Bormann
Bormann worked at the most notorious of Germany’s camps among them Ravensbruck, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where she was stationed at the end of the war. She was well known for having a German shepherd attack her prisoners. After the war she was convicted of murder and executed.
8: Greta Bosel
Bosel was a nurse by profession at Ravensbruck as a "work Imput overseer." She was one of the people who decided which prisoners would be immediately gassed and which ones would be sent to work in camps. Later, she was executed for maltreatment, murder, and for being part of the selection process.
7: Herta Bothe
Bothe served the majority of the war at the Stutthoff camp near Danzig. She was captured at Bergen-Belsen. Her crimes were overseeing a wood detail after evacuating Stutthoff in the face of the advancing Soviets.
6: Hildegard Lächert
Lächert's reputation was for brutality while working at Ravensbruck, Majdanek and Auschwitz. After the war, she was sentenced to fifteen years for her service at Auschwitz.
5: Wanda Klaff
A latecomer, Klaff had worked in a jam factory until she was assigned to Stutthoff in 1944 where she served until the end of the war in 1945. Arrested by Polish officials that same year she was tried and later executed for her crimes. At her trial she is quoted as saying, “I am very intelligent and very devoted to my work in the camps. I struck at least two prisoners every day.”
4: Alice orlowski
Orlowski worked at Nazi concentration camps, developing a reputation for sadism. She was well known for whipping prisoners across the eyes which was not only painful but made the prisoners unfit for work and caused their extermination. She was also known for throwing the children on top of the other prisoners being sent to the gas chambers in a “space saving operation.” After the war she got imprisonment rather than execution and was released after only serving ten years. In 1976, during a second trial, she died at the age of 73.
3: Maria mandel
Mandel worked at a variety of camps before she was named female commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She is believed between 1942 and 1945 to have been directly responsible for the deaths of 500,000 prisoners. Mandel is known to have selected Jews to serve as her “pets.” When she tired of them, she sent them off to the gas chambers. Following her trial, Mandel was executed for her crimes on January 24, 1948.
2: Ruth Neudeck
Arriving as late as1944 Neudeck rose through the ranks and being assigned the rank of camp leader at one of Ravensbruck’s sub camps. One of her prisoners testified that they witnessed her slit the throat of another prisoner with the sharpened edge of a shovel. After the war she fled but was captured, tried and later executed.
1: Elisabeth Volkenrath
After training under Dorothea Binz (#10) she served at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz-Birkenau before being appointed senior supervisor at Bergen-Belsen. Well known to have participated in the execution of prisoners, at her trial she was convicted and, like her teacher, executed.
Koch was not a guard. Her husband Karl Koch was the commander of Buchenwald and later Majdanek. Using the power that his position granted her, Koch developed a reputation for cruelty which was nothing short of unbelievable. Koch was known to meet prisoners upon their arrival to inspect them for interesting or attractive tattoos. If she saw some that caught her eye, she had the prisoner executed, skinned and their skin made into items such as lampshades or book covers. Her collection was used against her at her trials. Being a rare civilian exception, Koch was tried for war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was serving out that sentence when she committed suicide in 1967.