9. Dorothea Binz (‘The Binz’)
Though beginning her career at the age of 15 as a maid Binz was unwilling to die like every other old maid. She applied and was chosen as a trainee guard in 1939. Since then she had been steadily rising in her rank from supervising camp laundry & kitchen to the bunkers where women were tortured and killed. One cannot imagine or one does not want to imagine the horrors committed under her command during her deputy chief wardress-ship at Ravensbruck and later at Buchenwald. Witnesses have testified how this “unyielding” woman beat, stomped, shoot, whiped and slapped the female prisoners under her charge continuously.
She reportedly had a lover, an SS Officer and together they often strolled around the camp grounds laughing and amusing themselves with the sight of women being flogged. In another reported instance of her brutality she chopped a prisoner to a bloody lump with an axe because she wasn’t working hard enough. After the wars Binz was tried and executed for her crimes on May 2, 1947.
Discussion about this post