On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. The Nazi regime quickly moved to restrict the civil and human rights of Jewish people, gradually excluding them from professions, businesses, and public spaces. Propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence and prepared the population for mass deportations and genocide.
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and incarceration sites. These locations were used for forced labor, detention, and the mass murder of millions. Among the perpetrators was Luise Danz, a woman whose cruelty became notorious across several concentration camps.
Luise Helena Elisabeth Danz was born on December 11, 1917, in the village of Walldorf, then part of the German Empire. She was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. After completing elementary school, she worked as a housemaid in a bakery in Brandenburg.
After World War II began in September 1939, Danz moved back to her parents’ home. In 1940, she began an apprenticeship at the post office, where she worked until 1943. During a holiday, she met a concentration camp doctor and began a relationship with him.
On March 1, 1943, Danz arrived at Ravensbrück, the only major women’s camp established by the Nazis, to begin a three-week course to become a guard. Female trainees were taught to see prisoners, particularly Jews, as enemies or vermin rather than human beings. The relationship with the camp doctor is believed to be the reason she pursued a career as a guard. Another motive may have been the money, as some guards earned nearly ten times what they made in previous civil service jobs.
After her training, Danz was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. She gradually transformed from a polite woman into a brutal overseer. She found pleasure in tormenting young and beautiful women, possibly out of envy, as she was described as boyish and did not attract much attention from men.
At Majdanek, Danz worked as an overseer of the gardening unit. She became known for harsh treatment of prisoners, often beating them with her fists, a rubber whip, or kicking them. If a prisoner did not work well in her opinion, Danz would record her number and file for punishment. The prisoner’s name would be read at roll call, and she would receive at least 25 lashes.
Female prisoners were not her only victims. According to Holocaust survivor testimonies, Danz would seize children from their mothers, strangle them, and then continue her duties as if nothing had happened.
By the end of April 1944, Danz arrived at the Płaszów concentration camp near Kraków in German-occupied Poland. Her reputation preceded her. On one occasion, she was walking through the camp with a doctor named Grina when a young female prisoner emerged from the laundry carrying a pot. The prisoner had cooked food in the laundry, which was forbidden.
Danz began beating the prisoner in the face with her fists. When the woman fell, Danz pulled her up by the hair and held her upright while Grina continued striking her. The prisoner was forced to hold the pot throughout the ordeal, which lasted over half an hour. When the woman fainted, Danz flung her to the ground and walked away.
There was hardly a day in the camp when Danz did not beat or abuse someone. She would often punch prisoners in the chin and knee them in the stomach. Many inmates concluded that she must have trained in boxing.
Dr. Ila Filipova, a Holocaust survivor, testified about her experience at Płaszów. In May 1944, she was selected for transport to a new camp in Vitar, about 15 kilometers from Kraków. She noticed a prisoner named Netar who was nine months pregnant. Dr. Filipova asked Danz to allow Netar to stay behind.
Danz responded by yelling and viciously beating both women with a leather whip and a rubber baton. Both fell to the ground covered in blood. Danz then delivered a forceful kick to Netar’s stomach. The women were transported to Vitar, where Netar gave birth prematurely. The baby was taken away and killed by Nazi guards.
Danz also terrorized prisoners in factories where they worked. One such factory was the enamel factory owned by Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved approximately 1,200 Jews by employing them. Although forbidden to enter the factory during working hours, Danz often stormed in and beat prisoners for no reason.
On one occasion, she beat a prisoner for washing her striped prison clothes in the factory. The beating was so brutal that order police officers rushed to the prisoner’s defense. Danz also forbade working prisoners from talking to each other and spent hours watching them for that purpose.
Danz was able to get away with her behavior partly because she was the lover of Philip Grina, who belonged to the command staff at Płaszów. She also became close friends with another sadistic guard, Alice Orlowski. Together, they took part in selections where prisoners were chosen for extermination based on appearance. Those selected were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered in gas chambers.
Danz and Orlowski also stole from prisoners. They would storm into barracks while prisoners were at work, plundering food, underwear, and even duvets. They concealed the stolen items in their coats or SS uniforms.
After the evacuation of Płaszów, Danz was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in September or October 1944. There, she oversaw a Jewish work detail in the camp laundry. She eventually rose to the rank of reporting officer for Hungarian Jewish women.
After the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Danz was transferred to Ravensbrück and then to its subcamp Malchow. There, she became camp commandant and served until early May 1945. At Malchow, she wore an SS uniform with insignia, high boots with spurs, and carried a revolver and bullwhip.
Prisoners at Malchow were fed very poorly. The daily ration consisted of a single slice of bread and watery soup made from potato peelings without salt. Although prisoners were dying of starvation, the food store rooms were later found to be filled to abundance. Whenever Danz saw prisoners searching for leftovers, she would beat them.
Some prisoners stole raw potatoes. Danz sentenced them to having their heads shaved. On one occasion, she forced a prisoner to stand in front of the kitchen in freezing winter weather, holding a carrot between her teeth for the entire day.
Towards the end of the war, Danz became friendly with Magda Hellinger, a young Jewish woman from Slovakia. Magda tried to convince her to change her behavior. During a conversation, Danz revealed she was worried about her brother on the Eastern front.
Magda arranged for a Romany fortune teller to meet Danz. The fortune teller told her that her brother was thinking about her and hoped she would be all right after the war. Afterwards, Danz’s behavior became less cruel.
Magda also asked Danz if she wanted a portrait of herself. Danz agreed, and Magda told a fellow prisoner who was an artist to paint it slowly, hoping to keep Danz away from the camp.
At the end of the war, Danz tried to disappear but was captured and arrested in June 1945. On December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in the first Auschwitz trial. Her imprisonment lasted until August 1957, when she was granted amnesty and released.
She started a new life, hoping her crimes would be forgotten. But in 1996, new evidence emerged. A teenage girl at Malchow had begged Danz to be allowed to stay with her mother during a death march. Danz kicked the girl to death on the spot.
German doctors declared Danz too old to withstand court proceedings, and the charges were dropped one year later. Luise Danz died in Walldorf on June 21, 2009, at the age of 91.