7 Ordinary Women Who Became Cruel Nazi Torturers: Living Beasts

In the shadows of the Holocaust, where Nazi horror reached its zenith, soul-stirring stories emerge. Seemingly harmless women—devoted daughters, humble workers, and loving mothers—crossed the threshold of humanity to become ruthless executioners. These seven figures, drawn from the darkest archives of World War II, reveal how fanaticism and absolute power can pervert the ordinary into pure monstrosity. What drove them to whip, torture, and kill without mercy? Their accounts, corroborated by survivor testimonies and subsequent trials, paint a disturbing portrait of the banality of evil.

Wanda Klaff, born in 1922 in Danzig, led a prosaic life in a jam factory before marrying young. In 1944, Nazi conscription took her to Stutthof, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become an Aufseherin (female prison guard). There, this Germanized Polish woman delighted in beating female prisoners to death with a cane. Survivors described her as a “sadistic little vixen” who enjoyed watching women suffer. At her trial in 1946, Klaff coldly denied everything: “I was just following orders.” The gallows awaited her as justice.

Herta Ehlert, a 27-year-old Berliner in 1942, left her job as a telephone operator to join the female guard corps. At Ravensbrück and later Burgau, this mother of two oversaw selections for the gas chambers. She kicked faces with her boots and set dogs on the weak. “The prisoners were like cattle,” she declared in her defense during her trial in Hamburg in 1946, where she was sentenced to life imprisonment, though released in 1955 for “good behavior.” Her transformation from housewife to executioner sends a chill down your spine: where does obedience end and pleasure begin?

Herta Bothe, the “woman with the whip,” came from a poor family in Hamburg. At 22, she entered Stutthof in 1942, where her sadism flourished. She whipped pregnant women until they miscarried and forced prisoners to dig their own graves. Transferred to Bergen-Belsen, she continued her reign of terror. At her trial in Lüneburg, Bothe wept: “I was young and didn’t know.” Sentenced to ten years, she was released in 1951. Survivors swore that her laughter echoed through the nights of agony.

Maria Mandl, nicknamed “The Beautiful Beast of Auschwitz,” was an Austrian woman from Linz with a background in commerce. In 1942, as head of guards at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she oversaw death marches and selected victims for lethal showers. She enjoyed concerts performed by prisoner orchestras while thousands died. “I am the beautiful beast that everyone is afraid of,” she boasted to subordinates. At her trial in 1948, she was executed by hanging. Her elegance concealed a heart of stone.

Alice Orlowski, a 30-year-old accountant from Düsseldorf, joined Gross-Rosen in 1942. In this hellish place, she kicked women until their ribs were broken and forced them to lick filthy floors. Transferred to Stutthof, she continued her brutality. “I hate them all,” she confessed in a fit of rage during the Danzig trial in 1946, where she received a life sentence, later commuted. Her unremarkable face contrasted sharply with the ferocity she unleashed in the shadows.

Joanna Bormann, the “Beast of Bergen-Belsen,” was born in 1893 in Hamburg. A widow with children, she entered Lichtenburg in 1938 and was later transferred to Auschwitz. She would unleash starving dogs on female prisoners and strangle them with her bare hands. At Bergen-Belsen, her cruelty was legendary. During the Belsen trial in 1945, she murmured, “I have my feelings.” The gallows silenced her voice forever on December 13th of that year.

Finally, Irma Grese, the “Hyena of Auschwitz,” the 19-year-old daughter of a milkman in 1942. In Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, this athletic blonde whipped prisoners with a spiked whip and shot those who collapsed from exhaustion. Impeccably dressed, she collected jewelry stolen from the dead. At her trial, she smiled: “I did it for Germany.” At 22, she was hanged in 1945. Her youth amplifies the horror: evil knows no age.

These women, recruited out of economic necessity or fanatical ideology, rose through the ranks in camps like Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Stutthof, where more than 120,000 prisoners suffered at their hands. Survivors like Selma van de Perre, in her book “My Name Is Selma,” describe them not as demons, but as “ordinary women doing diabolical things.” That is the true terror: the monster dwells in the everyday.

Today, while the world forgets, these stories warn us. Nazism was not the work of extraterrestrials, but of people like us, seduced by power. Recent research confirms that thousands of Aufseherinnen participated, and few paid the price. Let us reflect: what separates us from them? Eternal vigilance against the hatred that beats in silence.