Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was a Nazi Austrian SS Helferin and female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps, and the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States to face trial in West Germany.

Braunsteiner was known to prisoners of Majdanek concentration camp as the "Stomping Mare" and was said to have beaten prisoners to death, thrown children by their hair onto trucks that took them to be murdered in gas chambers, hanged young prisoners and stomped an old prisoner to death with her jackboots.

From 1937 to 1938, she worked in England for an American engineer's household.

In 1938, Braunsteiner became a German citizen after the Anschluss.

She returned to Vienna from England and the same year relocated to Germany for a job at the Heinkel aircraft works in Berlin.

At the urging of her landlord, a German policeman, Braunsteiner applied for a better paying job supervising prisoners, quadrupling her income in time.

She began her training on August 15, 1939, as an Aufseherin under Maria Mandel at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

She remained there after the start of World War II, and the influx of new prisoners from occupied countries.

After three years, a disagreement with Mandel led Braunsteiner to request a transfer in October 1942.

On October 16, 1942, Braunsteiner assumed her duties in the forced-labor apparel factory near the Majdanek concentration camp, established near Lublin, Poland, a year earlier.

It was both a labour camp (Arbeitslager) and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) with gas chambers and crematoria.

She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943, under Oberaufseherin Elsa Ehrich along with five other camp guards.

By then most of the Aufseherinnen had been moved into Majdanek from the Alter Flughafen labor camp.

Braunsteiner had a number of roles in the camp.

She involved herself in "selections" of women and children to be sent to the gas chambers and whipped several women to death.

Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich, Hildegard Lächert, Marta Ulrich, Alice Orlowski, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, Erna Wallisch and Elisabeth Knoblich, Braunsteiner became known for her wild rages and tantrums.

According to one witness at her later trial in Düsseldorf, she "seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers".

Other survivors testified how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname "The Stomping Mare" (In Polish "Kobyła", in German "Stute von Majdanek").

For her work, she received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class, in 1943.

In January 1944, Braunsteiner was ordered back to Ravensbrück as Majdanek began evacuations due to the approaching front line.

She was promoted to supervising wardress at the Genthin subcamp of Ravensbrück, located outside Berlin.

Witnesses say that she abused many of the prisoners with a horsewhip she carried, killing at least two women with it.

A French physician, who was interned at Genthin recalled the sadism of Braunsteiner while she ruled the camp: "I watched her administer twenty-five lashes with a riding crop to a young Russian girl suspected of having tried sabotage. Her back was full of lashes, but I was not allowed to treat her immediately."

On May 7, 1945, Braunsteiner fled the camp ahead of the Soviet Red Army.

She then returned to Vienna, but soon left.

On May 6, 1946, Austrian police arrested Braunsteiner and turned her over to the British military occupation authorities.

She was held in various internment camps until April 18, 1947.

Braunsteiner was re-arrested by Austrian officials on April 7, 1948.

On November 22, 1949, the Austrian People's Court in Graz convicted Braunsteiner of crimes against human dignity for non-fatal abuse in Ravensbrück, but acquitted of her crimes in Majdanek, including murder, due to a lack of witnesses.

Braunsteiner was sentenced to three years in prison and had her property confiscated.

With credit for time served, she was released from prison in April 1950.

Braunsteiner was told that she would not face further prosecution, and was later granted partial amnesty in 1957.

She worked at low-level jobs in hotels and restaurants until emigrating.

Russell Ryan, an American, met her on his vacation in Austria.

They married in October 1958, after they had emigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada.

Braunsteiner was convicted for her complicity in murders of over 1,000 people during the Holocaust, and sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Düsseldorf on April 30, 1981.

She was released on health grounds in 1996, and died three years later.

Braunsteiner was born in Vienna, the youngest child in a strictly observant Roman Catholic working class family.

Her father, Friedrich Braunsteiner, was a chauffeur for a brewery and/or a butcher.

Hermine lacked the means to fulfill her aspiration to become a nurse, and worked as a maid.