Emma Zimmer was 60 years old when she was hanged at Hamelin prison on September 20, 1948. The former Nazi guard had served at multiple concentration camps, including Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, where survivors testified to her brutal treatment of prisoners.
Zimmer was born on August 14, 1888, in Hazmersheim, then part of the German Empire. She was the oldest child of a pharmacist and his wife. By the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Zimmer was 44 years old.
The Nazi regime valued women for their activism and their biological role in creating a racially pure population. Nazi population policy encouraged racially pure women to bear as many children as possible. While propaganda emphasized a woman's place in the home, an estimated 13 million German women were active in Nazi party organizations.
Many served as welfare workers, teachers, nurses, and auxiliaries in the armed forces and police. Others, like Zimmer, served as guards in concentration camps. A minority of German women who resisted the regime or were branded biologically inferior faced persecution, including forced sterilization and incarceration.
Zimmer became a guard at Lichtenburg concentration camp in 1937. The camp was housed in a Renaissance castle and was among the first concentration camps built by the Nazis. From 1937 to 1939, it held only female prisoners.
One of the camp's most prominent prisoners was Olga Benario Prestes, a German communist activist. In May 1939, when Lichtenburg was closed, Prestes, Zimmer, and the remaining staff and prisoners were sent to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Ravensbrück opened in May 1939 and was the only major women's camp established by the Nazis. Some 132,000 women from all over Europe passed through the camp, including Poles, Russians, Jews, Romani people, and others. Over 92,000 of those women perished.
The camp was staffed by SS men and by 100 to 150 female supervisors. These supervisors were either SS volunteers or women who had taken the job for good pay and working conditions. Ravensbrück also served as a training center for female SS guards, where about 3,500 women learned how to handle prisoners.
At Ravensbrück, Zimmer became a guard in the bunker, the punishment block. She was known in the camp for being brutal and sadistic in her duties. Holocaust survivor Maria Vidmeyer recalled how Zimmer would beat prisoners with anything at hand without reason.
Vidmeyer described an incident in which Zimmer grabbed a young Polish woman having hysterical fits during a winter morning roll call. Zimmer threw the woman into the water repeatedly. The Polish woman was then expected to work outside without changing clothes and died shortly after.
In mid-1940, Zimmer was promoted to deputy head warden. In October 1942, she became head warden. Her new duties included selecting inmates to be killed at the Bernburg euthanasia center, one of six gassing installations for adults established as part of the Nazi euthanasia campaign.
The program, codenamed T4, also dealt with seriously ill concentration camp inmates who were unable to work. By the spring of 1942, 1,400 women from Ravensbrück had been killed at Bernburg. A total of 9,384 handicapped people from welfare institutions and nursing homes, as well as around 5,000 prisoners from six concentration camps, were killed there using carbon monoxide gas.
In October 1942, Zimmer was deployed to Auschwitz-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland. Birkenau was the largest of more than 40 camps and sub-camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. It was divided into 10 sections separated by electrified barbed wire fences patrolled by SS guards.
At Auschwitz, Zimmer was notorious for her brutal and sadistic behavior toward prisoners. One Holocaust survivor remembered her as an old and mean SS woman who was vicious and dangerous. Zimmer would frighten prisoners with threats, proclaiming in a sadistic voice, "I will report you then you will go away you know where, just one way up the chimney."
From May 1943, Zimmer headed the postal censorship office in the women's camp at Auschwitz. In September 1943, she was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class without swords. At the end of 1943, she was released from concentration camp service, whether due to old age or alcohol consumption is not known.
From June 1944, Zimmer lived in Schlüchtern, where she was arrested after the end of the Second World War. She was tried at the seventh Ravensbrück trial, which started on July 2, 1948. The charges against her and five other female camp wardens were mistreatment of inmates of Allied nationality and participation in the selection of inmates for the gas chamber.
On July 21, 1948, the military tribunal sentenced Zimmer to death by hanging. Albert Pierrepoint carried out the execution at Hamelin prison. There were no tears shed.