Hermine Braunsteiner
Encyclopedia
Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was a female camp guard
Female guards in Nazi concentration camps
Of the 55,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 3,700 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück...

 and the first Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 war criminal to be extradited from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Early life

She was born in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, the youngest child in a strictly observant Roman Catholic working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 family. Her father Friedrich Braunsteiner was a chauffeur
Chauffeur
A chauffeur is a person employed to drive a passenger motor vehicle, especially a luxury vehicle such as a large sedan or limousine.Originally such drivers were always personal servants of the vehicle owner, but now in many cases specialist chauffeur service companies, or individual drivers provide...

 for a brewery and/or a butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

. Hermine lacked the means to fulfill her aspiration to become a nurse, and worked as a maid. From 1937 to 1938 she worked in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 for an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

's household.

Heinkel

In 1938 the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

 made her a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 citizen, and she returned to Vienna. Late that year she moved and found work at the Heinkel
Heinkel
Heinkel Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight.-History:...

 aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...

 works in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

.

Ravensbrück

At the urging of her landlord, she applied for a better paying job with better working conditions, supervising prisoners, quadrupling her income in time. She began her training on August 15, 1939, as an Aufseherin under Maria Mandel
Maria Mandel
Maria Mandel was an Austrian SS-Helferin infamous for her key role in The Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where she is believed to have been directly responsible for the deaths of over 500,000 female prisoners.-Life:Mandel was born in Münzkirchen,...

 at Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....

. After some years a disagreement with Mandel led Braunsteiner to request a transfer.

Majdanek

On October 16, 1942, she took up her duties in the apparel factory at Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...

, located near Lublin, Poland. It was both a labour camp (Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....

) and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager). She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943 under Oberaufseherin Elsa Erich along with five other women.

Her abuses took many forms in the camp. She involved herself in "selections" of women and children to be sent to the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...

s and whipped several women to death. Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich, Hildegard Lächert
Hildegard Lachert
Hildegard Martha Lächert was a notorious female guard, Aufseherin, at several German World War II concentration camps. She became publicly known for her service at Ravensbrück, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau...

, Marta Ulrich, Alice Orlowski
Alice Orlowski
Alice Orlowski was a high-ranking SS official at many of the Nazi German camps in occupied Poland during World War II....

, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, Erna Wallisch
Erna Wallisch
Erna Wallisch allegedly was a female guard in two Nazi concentration camps, and at one time was the seventh most wanted war criminal still at large by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.- Early life :...

 and Elisabeth Knoblich, Braunsteiner was infamous for her wild rages and tantrums. According to one witness at her later trial in Dusseldorf, she "seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers”. Other survivors testied how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname "The Stomping Mare". (In Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

 "Kobyła", in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 "Stute von Majdanek".)

She received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class, in 1943, for her work.

Ravensbrück again

In January 1944, Hermine was ordered back to Ravensbrück as Majdanek began evacuations. There she was promoted to supervising wardress at the Genthin
Genthin
Genthin is a town in the Jerichower Land district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the Elbe-Havel Canal, approx. 50 km northeast of Magdeburg, and 27 km west of Brandenburg....

 subcamp of Ravensbrück, located outside Berlin. Witnesses say that she abused many of the prisoners with a special whip she carried.

Post war Austria

On May 7, 1945, Hermine Braunsteiner fled the camp ahead of the Soviet Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

. She then returned to Vienna, but soon left, complaining that there was not enough food there.

The Austrian police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 arrested her and turned her over to the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 military occupation
Military occupation
Military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The territory then becomes occupied territory.-Military occupation and the laws of war:...

 authorities; she remained incarcerated from May 6, 1946, until April 18, 1947. A court in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 convicted her of torture, maltreatment of prisoners and crimes against humanity and against human dignity at Ravensbrück (not Majdanek), then sentenced her to serve three years, beginning April 7, 1948; she was released early in April 1950. An Austrian civil court subsequently granted her amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...

 from further prosecution there. She worked at low level jobs in hotels and restaurants until emigrating.

Emigration and marriage

Russell Ryan, an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, met her on his vacation in Austria. They married in October 1958, after they had emigrated to Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. She entered the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in April 1959, becoming a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 citizen on January 19, 1963. They lived in Maspeth, Queens
Maspeth, Queens
Maspeth is a small community in the borough of Queens in New York City. Neighborhoods sharing borders with Maspeth are Woodside and Sunnyside to the north, Long Island City to the northwest, Greenpoint to the west, East Williamsburg to the southwest, Fresh Pond and Ridgewood to the south, and...

, where she was known as a fastidious housewife and friendly neighbor.

Discovery

Nazi hunter
Nazi hunter
A Nazi-hunter is a private individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, SS members and Nazi collaborators involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity...

 Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....

 had followed her trail from a tip in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 to Vienna to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then, via Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, to Queens. In 1964 Wiesenthal alerted the New York Times that Braunsteiner might have married a man named Ryan and might live in the Maspeth area of the Borough of Queens in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. They assigned Joseph Lelyveld
Joseph Lelyveld
Joseph Lelyveld was executive editor of the New York Times from 1994 to 2001, and interim executive editor in 2003 after the resignation of Howell Raines. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.In all, Lelyveld worked at...

, then a young reporter, to find "Mrs. Ryan." They first lived at 54-44 82nd St. in western Elmhurst and moved to 52-11 72nd St. in Maspeth. He found her at the second doorbell he rang, and later wrote that she greeted him at her front doorstep and said, "My God, I knew this would happen. You've come."

Braunsteiner Ryan stated that she had been at Maidanek only a year, eight months of which in the camp infirmary. "My wife, sir, wouldn't hurt a fly" said Ryan. "There's no more decent person on this earth. She told me this was a duty she had to perform. It was a conscriptive service." On August 22, 1968, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 authorities sought to revoke her citizenship because she had failed to disclose her convictions for war crimes; she was denaturalized in 1971 after entering into a consent judgment to avoid deportation.

Extradition

A prosecutor in Duesseldorf began investigating her wartime behavior, and in 1973 the German government requested her extradition, accusing her of joint responsibility in the death of 200,000 people.

The United States court denied procedural claims that her denaturalization had been invalid (U.S citizens could not be extradited to Germany), and that the charges alleged political offenses committed by a non-German outside West Germany. Later it rejected claims of lack of probable cause
Probable cause
In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which an officer or agent of the law has the grounds to make an arrest, to conduct a personal or property search, or to obtain a warrant for arrest, etc. when criminal charges are being considered. It is also used to refer to the...

 and double jeopardy
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...

. During the next year she sat with her husband in United States district court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

 in Queens, hearing survivors' testimony against the former SS guard. They described whippings and fatal beatings. Rachel Berger, alone among the witnesses, testified she would celebrate retribution against the former vice-commandant of the women's camp at Majdanek.

The judge certified her extradition to the Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....

 on May 1, 1973, and on August 7, 1973, Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan became the first Nazi war criminal extradited from the United States to Germany.

Return to Germany

She was remanded in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 in 1973, until her husband posted bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...

. The German court rejected Mrs. Ryan's arguments that it lacked jurisdiction, because she was not a German national but Austrian, and that the offenses alleged had occurred outside Germany. It ruled she had been a German citizen at the time, and more importantly had been a German government official acting in the name of the German Reich.

She stood trial in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 with 15 other former SS men and women from Majdanek. One of the witnesses against Hermine testified that she "seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers." Others spoke of vicious beatings. One witness told of Hermine and the steel-studded jackboots with which she dealt blows to inmates.

The third Majdanek trial (Majdanek-Prozess in German) was held in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

. It began on November 26, 1975, and lasted 474 sessions, Germany's longest and most expensive trial. All the defendants, including Ryan and Hermann Hackmann
Hermann Hackmann
SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Hackmann served as the lead guard in charge of protective custody at Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Hackmann came from Osnabruck and held the post of roll call officer at Buchenwald before Majdanek, at the age of 26...

, had been SS guards at Majdanek. The court found insufficient evidence on six counts of the indictment
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...

 and convicted her on three: murder of 80 people; abetting the murder of 102 children; and collaborating in the murder of 1000. On June 30, 1981, the court imposed a life sentence, a more severe punishment
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....

 than those meted out to her co-defendants.

Complications of diabetes, including a leg amputation
Amputation
Amputation is the removal of a body extremity by trauma, prolonged constriction, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on individuals as a preventative surgery for...

, led to her release from Mülheimer women's prison in 1996. Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan died on April 19, 1999, aged 79, in Bochum, Germany.

Aftermath

After the publicity surrounding Mrs. Ryan's extradition, the United States government established (1979) a U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations
U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations
The Office of Special Investigations was a unit within the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. Its purpose was to detect and investigate individuals who took part in state sponsored acts committed in violation of public international law, such as crimes against humanity.In...

 to seek out war criminals to denaturalize or deport. It took jurisdiction previously held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...

.

Further reading

May identify her as Hermine Braunstein.
.
  • Wolff, Lynn L. The Mare of Majdanek: Female Concentration Camp Guards in History and Fiction. University of Wisconsin. B.A., Senior thesis with honors 2001.
  • United States v. Ryan, 360 F. Supp. 265, 266 (E.D.N.Y. 1973).
  • Ryan v. United States, 360 F. Supp. 264 (E.D.N.Y. 1973), No. 73-C-439, 24 Apr. 1973; United States v. Ryan, 360 F. Supp. 265 (E.D.N.Y. 1973), No. 68-C- 848, 24 Apr. 1973.
  • In re the Extradition of Ryan, 360 F. Supp. 270 (E.D.N.Y. 1973), No. 73-C-391 (1 May 1973).
  • Staatsanwaltschaft Köln, Anklageschrift, 130 (24) Js 200/62 (Z), pp. 163, 281; Landgericht Düsseldorf, Urteil gg. Hermann Hackmarm u.A., 8 Ks 1/75, 30 June 1981, pp. 688–89.
  • Staatsanwaltschaft Köln, Anklageschrift gg. Hermann Hackmarm u.A., 130 (24) Js 200/62 (Z), 15 Nov. 1974, pp. 157–63.
  • Landgericht Düsseldorf, Urteil, 8 Ks 1/75, 30 June 1981, pp. 683–86.
  • Landgericht Düsseldorf, Urteil, 8 Ks 1/75, 30 June 1981 (2 vols.).
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