Hildegard Lächert | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1920-03-19)19 March 1920 |
| Died | 14 April 1995 (aged 75) |
| Criminal status | Deceased |
| Motive | Nazism |
| Convictions | Poland Crimes against humanity West Germany Accessory to murder |
| Criminal penalty | Poland 15 years imprisonment West Germany 12 years imprisonment |
Hildegard Martha Lächert (19 March 1920 – 14 April 1995)[1] was a female guard, orAufseherin, at severalconcentration camps controlled byNazi Germany.[2] She became publicly known for her service atRavensbrück,Majdanek andAuschwitz-Birkenau.
Lächert became a mother aged 18 and again aged 23, both children conceived in non-marital relationships.[3]
In October 1942, at the age of 22, Lächert, aGermannurse,[4] was called to serve at Majdanek as anAufseherin. During her time in Majdanek, Lächert was recalled as having been extremely brutal. Lächert was disciplined by her SS superiors at least three times, albeit all for administrative offensives. She spent five days in jail for violating a curfew, and another eight days in jail for losing her pistol.
In 1944, after the birth of her third child, Lächert served at Auschwitz concentration camp. She fled the camp in December 1944 ahead of the advancingRed Army. There are reports that her last overseeing jobs were atBozen, a detention camp in northernItaly,[5] and at theMauthausen-Gusen concentration camp inAustria.[1]
In July 1945, Lächert, whose crimes had not been discovered yet, returned to Berlin and worked in an American hospital until October, after which she returned to Austria to continue nursing. On 30 March 1946, Austrian police officers arrested Lächert since she had previously worked with the SS. She was transferred to British custody, and then extradited toPoland in December.
In November 1947, the former member of theSchutzstaffel (SS) appeared in aKraków,Poland courtroom, along with 40 other SS guards in theAuschwitz trial. Lächert sat next to three other former SS women,Alice Orlowski,Therese Brandl, andLuise Danz. Because of herwar crimes in Auschwitz andPłaszów, the former guard and mother of two surviving children was given a sentence of 15 years in prison. Lächert was released from prison under an amnesty on 7 December 1956. Lächert subsequently received 6000 DM from the West German government as an allegedprisoner of war. After her release, Lächert briefly worked with the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), West German spy agency and theCIA,[5] which at the time was routinely interviewing Nazi war criminals who had been released from prisons in Eastern Europe. Lächert's work with the agencies ended after only a few months since she was quickly deemed useless.[1]
In August 1973, Lächert was arrested by West German officials, and questioned about her past in Majdanek, due to the upcomingthird Majdanek Trial. Lächert was released, but then rearrested as a suspect in June 1979 and put on trial. The same year, she ran in theEuropean Parliament election for Erwin Schönborn's far-right Aktionsgemeinschaft Nationales Europa in the European elections, placing 4th on the group's list.[1]
The testimonies heard concerning Lächert'ssadistic behaviour were extensive and detailed.[5] One former prisoner, Henryka Ostrowska, testified, "We always saidblutige about the fact that she struck until blood showed," giving her the nickname "Bloody Brigitte"[6] (Krwawa Brygida inPolish). Many other witnesses characterized her as the "worst of the worst" or "the most cruel"Aufseherin, as "Beast", and as "Fright of the Prisoners." Another survivor, Maria Kaufmann-Krasowski, testified that when Lächert assigned her to wash floors she beat her with a whip and referred to her as "a piece of filth."[7] For her part in selections to the gas chamber, complicity to the murder of 1196 prisoners, releasing her dog onto pregnant inmates[3] (in one example ‘targeting the most vulnerable parts of her body in an act of cruel desecration and killing of her unborn child’[8]) and her overall abuse, the court sentenced her to 12 years imprisonment[9] in theMajdanek trials.[6] Prosecutors had requested a life sentence.
Lächert never had to serve this time, since her imprisonment in Poland and the time she spent in custody awaiting trial were allowed as time served. She died in 1995.[10][11]
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