The final judgment was carried out at precisely 10:38 AM on December 13, 1945, when the trapdoor swung open beneath Johanna Bormann, the woman prisoners had dubbed “The Woman with the Dogs of Auschwitz.” The execution at Hamelin Prison, performed by British hangman Albert Pierrepoint, brought a definitive end to a reign of terror characterized by savage canine attacks and cold-blooded participation in the machinery of genocide. Witnesses reported that the 52-year-old former guard, who weighed just 101 pounds, trembled violently as she was led to the gallows, a stark contrast to the brutal figure who had once stalked the Birkenau compound with her German Shepherd at her side.
The execution came after a lengthy trial where the true extent of Bormann’s crimes was laid bare for the international community. Unlike many of her younger counterparts who were indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology, Bormann was a woman of faith who had performed missionary work before joining the SS in March 1938 for purely financial reasons. However, her transition from religious devotion to barbaric cruelty shocked even seasoned prosecutors at the Belsen Trials.
Testimonies painted a picture of a woman who derived genuine pleasure from inflicting suffering, using her position of authority to terrorize prisoners who were already enduring the hellish conditions of the concentration camp system.
The origins of her monstrous behavior can be traced back to her initial posting at Lichtenburg, the first women’s concentration camp, where she began working in the kitchens. When the camp transitioned and prisoners were transferred to Ravensbrück near Berlin, Bormann followed, continuing her work as a kitchen overseer. It was here that she began to demonstrate the sadistic tendencies that would define her legacy, though it was her transfer to Auschwitz in May 1943 that would cement her place in history as one of the Holocaust’s most feared female guards.
At Birkenau, the main extermination center of the Auschwitz complex, Bormann found her true calling in the brutal hierarchy of the camp system.
Prisoners immediately recognized her as a unique threat, giving her the nicknames “The Weasel” and “The Woman with the Dogs.” While many female guards were known for their cruelty, Bormann’s advanced age and life experience before the Nazi regime made her behavior particularly disturbing. She was not a young woman corrupted by propaganda; she was a mature adult who consciously chose to embrace evil.
Her small, slim stature belied an aggression that manifested in daily beatings and psychological torture that left prisoners in constant fear of their lives, knowing that any interaction with her could result in severe injury or death.
Perhaps the most damning evidence presented at trial concerned Bormann’s active participation in the selection processes alongside Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death.” Witnesses testified that she would point out prisoners during the dreaded selections, deciding who was fit enough to continue working and who would be sent directly to the gas chambers.
This was not passive complicity but active engagement in murder, as she helped Mengele choose victims for his barbaric medical experiments and worked alongside Dr. Fritz Klein in making life-or-death decisions that sent thousands to their deaths within minutes of her judgment.
The use of her dog became her signature method of terror, and the testimony regarding these attacks was among the most harrowing presented during the proceedings. One witness described how Bormann set her German Shepherd on a prisoner with a swollen leg who couldn’t keep up with the work detail, watching with apparent pride as the animal ripped the woman apart. Another account detailed how she threw a prisoner to the ground by her hair before allowing the dog to bite her so severely that she bled profusely, after which the victim was sent to Block 25, which meant immediate transfer to the gas chambers.
The dog attacks were not isolated incidents but a systematic tool of terror that made Bormann one of the most hated figures in the entire camp.
Her cruelty extended beyond the use of her dog, with testimony revealing that she would beat prisoners for wearing cleaner clothes than she deemed appropriate, force them to perform exhausting exercises until they collapsed, and then beat their helpless bodies with rubber or wooden sticks. One particularly disturbing incident involved Bormann beating women caught stealing vegetables in the pigsty, while another showed her striking a woman so hard that two teeth were knocked out before setting her dog on the victim’s friend, who died two days later from her injuries. The endless tales of barbarism painted a portrait of a woman who seemed to have completely abandoned any semblance of human decency.
When the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, they found a camp in a state of absolute horror, with thousands of unburied corpses and a typhus epidemic killing hundreds daily. Bormann, who had been transferred there after her time at Auschwitz, was among the SS guards who attempted to hide among the prisoners to escape their fate. The liberators were forced to confront the true evils of the Nazi regime, and the scenes captured on film would shock the world.
Bormann was eventually identified and arrested, forced to participate in dealing with the consequences of the atrocities she had helped perpetrate.
At her trial, Bormann maintained a defiant posture, claiming that she was merely trying to maintain order in the camps. She admitted to hitting prisoners but denied the more serious accusations, including her involvement in selections and setting her dog on prisoners. She insisted that the dog was simply a pet and that attacking prisoners would have violated camp rules.
Perhaps most incredibly, she claimed that although she saw the lorries taking prisoners to the gas chambers, she did not know where they were going or that they were heading to their deaths. The judges were not convinced by her protestations of ignorance, particularly given the overwhelming evidence of her active participation in atrocities.
One of the most bizarre revelations to emerge from the trial was that the pigs under Bormann’s care were fed significantly better than the prisoners themselves, highlighting the complete inversion of values within the camp system. The prosecution argued that this demonstrated her utter contempt for human life, treating animals with more compassion than the people under her authority. The judges found her guilty of crimes against humanity, and despite a mitigation speech that portrayed her as a sad, lonely middle-aged woman ground down by camp conditions, she was sentenced to death by hanging.
Bormann reportedly left the courtroom in a dreamlike trance and chose not to appeal her sentence. She was transferred to Hamelin Prison, where she awaited execution alongside other convicted war criminals from the Belsen Trials. Albert Pierrepoint, the famous British executioner, was brought in to carry out the sentences, and he calculated that a drop of eight feet eight inches would be necessary to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Bormann given her height and weight.
The executions were carried out on December 13, 1945, with the women going first before the men. Bormann was led to the gallows just before 10:38 AM, a cap was placed over her head, and she was shuffled onto the trapdoor marked with a chalk X before the drop killed her instantly.
Her remains were cremated, bringing an end to a life that had become synonymous with the worst excesses of the Holocaust. The story of Johanna Bormann serves as a chilling reminder that evil can manifest in ordinary people who choose to embrace cruelty. Unlike many war criminals who shared characteristics of inner turmoil and sadness, Bormann seemed to have found satisfaction in her role as a tormentor, willingly using her dogs to rip prisoners apart and participating in selections that sent thousands to their deaths.
Her execution was not merely punishment for her crimes but a statement that such barbarism would not go unpunished, even as the world struggled to comprehend the scale of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.