Great Feminazis Of The Past 3.0

Dorothea Binz

Dorothea Binz (March 16, 1920 - May 2, 1947) was an SS supervisor at the Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Second World War. Dorothea was one of the more depraved and cruel creatures to serve in the camps.

Born to a middle class German family in Dusterlake, Germany (near Fürstenberg and Ravensbrück itself), Binz went to school until the age of fifteen. Afterwards she spent some time as a maid but soon dreaded her job and applied with a local SS office and was sent to Ravensbrück on September 1, 1939 to undergo guard training.

Binz served as an Aufseherin under Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, a woman named Small, and Erna Rose. She worked in various parts of the camp; in the kitchen, laundry, etc. Her one single duty after 1942 was overseeing the camp's bunker where women prisoners were tortured and killed.

In January 1943, Dorothea Binz was promoted to Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress) because of her unyielding abuse. As a member of the command staff, she oversaw the training and assigned duties to over 1,000 female guards between 1943 and 1945. "Thea" trained some of the most cruel female guards including Ruth Closius. Most of the SS Aufseherin went on to dedicate themselves to over 200 other women camps across Poland, Germany, Austria and far eastern France. Eventually the well seasoned female matron reigned over a concentration camp kingdom of over 100,000 women and child prisoners. Her only superiors were Lagerleiterin Erna Rose, Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld and the commandant, Max Kögel . In 1944, Ravensbrück received horrendous amounts of women and children from Auschwitz Birkenau, Majdanek, Plaszow, Stutthof and various slave labor camps in Poland. Binz commanded the women throughout the mass shootings and mass killings in the gas chambers as well as through starvation, neglect, severe abuse and cold.

Binz's behavior in the Ravensbrück camp was atrocious. The young woman beat, slapped, kicked, shot, whipped, stomped and abused the women continuously. Whenever she appeared at roll call, "silence fell." She always carried a whip in her hand as well as a big German Shepherd on a leash. At a moment's notice she would kick a woman to death, or select her to be killed. French prisoners nicknamed her "La Binz" (The Binz).

The young SS woman also had a boyfriend in the camp, an SS officer named Edmund Bräuning . The two would go on romantic walks around the camp and watch a woman get flogged. Then they would stroll away laughing. The two lived in a house right outside the camp walls together until Edmund was transferred to Buchenwald in late-1944. There is even one report that Binz used an axe to chop a Polish prisoner to death on a wood chopping kommando.

Dorothea fled Ravensbrück during the death march and was captured on 3 May, 1945 by British officers. She spent some time in the Recklinghausen camp (which used to be a Buchenwald subcamp). Finally she was tried by a British court with other SS men and women at the Ravensbrück Trial. She was hanged at Hameln, Germany on 2 May, 1947 for war crimes.