On the morning of December 13, 1945, six months after the war in Europe had ended, three women were led into the execution chamber of Hamelin Prison. They had served as guards in some of the most horrific concentration camps of the Nazi regime, and now they were about to die for it. The women were Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Johanna Borman. All three had worked at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and all three had earned reputations as sadists who brought suffering and death to countless people.
They had selected prisoners for the gas chambers, fired at innocent civilians as if for sport, and beaten victims until they succumbed to their wounds. But the executions at Hamelin were not simple affairs, and what happened inside that room was far more harrowing than many witnesses later claimed. As the tide of the war turned against Germany, women were recruited in large numbers to fill the gap left by male guards sent to the front lines. Many received their training at camps like Ravensbrück near Berlin, learning from more experienced women.
But as Allied forces closed in, the guards accompanied massive transports of prisoners on forced marches deeper into German territory. These were death marches, and while some guards fled, others remained at the camps to maintain order. In the final months of the war, Bergen-Belsen in Lower Saxony was a scene of unimaginable suffering. Hundreds of prisoners who had been marched from other camps were dying daily from typhus and dysentery.
In April 1945, with the Allies approaching, negotiations were underway with Heinrich Himmler to surrender the camp without a fight. Inside, thousands of prisoners lay dying, and 13,000 unburied corpses were scattered across the grounds. The camp commandant, Josef Kramer, was still there, along with a number of female guards. What the liberators found when they arrived was horrifying.
A British reporter described the scene: “Here, over an acre of ground, lay dead and dying people. You could not tell which was which. The living lay with their heads against the corpses, and around them moved the ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do, with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the horrors around them. Children were born here, tiny withered things that could not live.
” The female guards who had worked at the camp were arrested by the liberators. Among them were Grese, Volkenrath, and Borman, who were tried for crimes committed at both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. They were considered among the worst guards of the entire war. Irma Grese was in her early twenties when she committed many of her crimes.
A fervent Nazi who had been active in Nazi youth organizations for years, she became a camp employee and was known for taking the lives of prisoners. One of her most notorious duties was participating in selections at Auschwitz. When trains arrived, Grese would walk the lines, and prisoners whose appearance displeased her, or whom she deemed unfit for work, were sent directly to the gas chambers within minutes. She was known to send women to the gas if she was jealous of their beauty.
She also shot prisoners in her work groups at will, as if for sport. Her crimes were countless, and she even enjoyed watching disturbing medical procedures. Grese was captured at Bergen-Belsen, where she had moved to stay with a new lover, and where she continued her crimes. What shocked the world when she was captured was her blonde hair, her beauty, and her youth.
She was in her early twenties when brought to trial, and she appeared completely unrepentant, coldly blaming others when evidence was presented against her. Standing trial alongside Grese was Elisabeth Volkenrath, another senior overseer. She too was in her twenties when arrested and brought to the Belsen trials, and she too had worked at both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She was known for selecting prisoners to send to the gas chambers.
At Auschwitz, she held the position of Oberaufseherin, the supervisor responsible for all the women’s barracks. Volkenrath regularly participated in roll calls and was known for carrying out hangings and executions of prisoners who broke camp rules. She was often seen moving through the camp carrying various weapons, which she used against inmates. At her trial, she claimed that the situation was “terrible in the camps, but it was terrible for us too.
” The judges showed her no sympathy. The third woman condemned alongside them was Johanna Borman, slightly older than the others. She had spent many years inside the concentration camp system, originally volunteering to work at one of the first women’s camps to earn more money. At Auschwitz, she was known as “the woman with the dogs,” encouraging her large, vicious animals to attack inmates at various times of the day.
These animals caused deaths, and Borman was the one who instigated such attacks. She was also known as “the weasel” and sent prisoners to their deaths in the gas chambers. The executions of Grese, Volkenrath, and Borman took place in the early hours of December 13, 1945, in the execution chamber of Hamelin Prison. The hangman was Albert Pierrepoint, a skilled and highly experienced British executioner.
He had met with the women beforehand to measure their height and weight, then determined the length of the drop needed to break their necks when they fell through the trapdoor. The women were held in small cells alone, in the standard condemned prisoner arrangement, before Pierrepoint, his assistant, and a group of prison officials called their names one by one. The women were executed first, before the men, as a form of courtesy. The condemned male guards were forced to hear the trapdoor open and the necks break in the adjacent execution chamber before facing the same fate.
The first woman executed was Elisabeth Volkenrath, which was surprising given that Irma Grese was younger. Volkenrath was taken from her small cell, her hands tied behind her back outside the cell due to its cramped space. She was then led to the execution chamber and onto the scaffold. Pierrepoint guided her to a chalk mark on the floor above the trapdoor.
He listened to her final words, placed a white hood over her head, and secured the noose. Moments later, he pulled the lever, the trapdoor opened, and Volkenrath fell to her death. The same procedure was repeated with Irma Grese and Johanna Borman. Some witnesses claimed Grese’s last words were “schnell,” meaning “quickly,” pleading with Pierrepoint to end her life fast.
Others claimed she went to her death screaming and resisting, aware of what was to come. The executions were brutal but quick. Pierrepoint had been deliberately chosen for his skill with the long drop method, the British hanging technique that breaks the condemned person’s neck and ends life in seconds. The intent was not to prolong suffering but to cause death as quickly as possible.
When the women reached the end of their fall through the trapdoor, their bodies jerked and their necks broke, thanks to Pierrepoint’s expert placement of the noose. His calculations ensured death came rapidly. The executions were carried out away from the eyes of the world, unlike those at Nuremberg. Only a few people witnessed them, which prevented the accused Nazis from making a final stand before the global media, which could have broadcast their last moments and possibly generated sympathy for their cause.
The women who were executed had worked at Auschwitz and Belsen, and the evidence proved they had sent prisoners to the gas chambers. There were other female guards, like Herta Bothe, who had worked at Bergen-Belsen and escaped execution because they had not worked at Auschwitz, despite having caused enormous death and suffering at other camps. The story of the executed Belsen guards did not end with their deaths. The bodies of the three women were buried immediately in the yard of Hamelin Prison after the executions.
But when the time came to return the prison to German authorities in the 1950s, the bodies were exhumed, placed in new coffins, and reburied in a nearby cemetery called Hamelin Am Felde. Today, the remains of Irma Grese, Johanna Borman, and Elisabeth Volkenrath still lie there. Their graves have no markers identifying them. They are buried in a single mass grave alongside the male guards as well.
The real crimes of these women and their brutality had led them to the gallows within months of the end of World War II. Their crimes were countless and arguably among the worst committed against humanity within the concentration camp systems established by the Nazis.