The whip cracked against the stone wall of the punishment cell, and Dorothea Binz listened to the sound with the same satisfaction she always did. She was not yet twenty years old, and she had already earned her place as a guard in Ravensbrück concentration camp. The prisoners locked in solitary confinement rarely walked out alive; she made certain of that. Her superiors noticed, and in 1943 they promoted her to deputy chief wardress.

From that moment, the lives of thousands of prisoners in that factory of death rested in her hands. While the leading Nazis built their thousand-year Reich, others carried out the mad plans of their leaders. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda trumpet, claimed that everything was done for the Germans, for the benefit of the Germans, for the future of Germany alone. But the women who served in the camps showed what kind of future the Nazis were preparing for their homeland, and what they wanted to turn Germans into.

Dorothea Binz had been an ordinary German girl. After finishing her studies, she joined an auxiliary unit of the SS, as many young German women did at that time. At first she was only a dishwasher in the canteen of the Nazi troops. But the young Dorothea had ambitions and career aspirations.

She was sent to train as a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp. There she studied successfully and quickly showed the authorities her considerable abilities. In less than twenty years of age, she became a guard in the camp’s punishment cell. The conditions in solitary confinement were the equivalent of a death sentence.

Prisoners rarely came out alive. Dorothea worked hard to reduce the number of prisoners who survived the punishment cell, and her efforts were not in vain. The authorities noticed her and valued her skills. When she was appointed deputy chief wardress in 1943, the fates of thousands of prisoners came into her hands.

In such a position, Binz let herself loose. The girl simply could not pass by prisoners without striking them. For this reason, she always carried a whip, a club, or just a stick, and a fierce dog accompanied her everywhere. In a fit of rage—and such fits came over her often—she beat a female prisoner to death with a pickaxe that happened to be in her hand.

She also loved riding her bicycle, which she used to visit prisoner work sites. Often she would collide with one of the female prisoners as if by accident, then burst out laughing. That was her own way of joking. She would often order a prisoner to be brought to her office or to an empty cell.

There Binz locked the woman inside, forced her to strip naked, and began torturing the poor creature, striking her with the whip and trying to shove a stick into sensitive places, committing other atrocities as well. As she confessed in a narrow circle of fellow guards, all these cruelties gave her a feeling of spiritual satisfaction. A different supervisor, Irma Grese, left her bloody mark on three concentration camps: Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. She fully deserved her nicknames, the “Blonde Devil” and the “Beautiful Beast.

” The favorite activity of this Nazi torturer was beating prisoners, hunting them like ducks, and shooting them. Like Dorothea, she always carried a whip and a hungry dog, sometimes two. Her whip was made of braided leather, ordered specially by her. She always wore heavy boots, which she used to kick prisoners—men and women—who had fallen to the ground, until they died.

Yes, Grese also loved torturing men. Although she supervised the women’s section, at her request the supervisors from the men’s section brought her male prisoners to beat after humiliating them. She found particular pleasure in grabbing men’s genitals, causing them severe pain. She trained her hungry dogs to bite the genitals of men and women as a priority, as one might guess.

She found this highly amusing. It was said that Irma had relations with all the guards and supervisors of the camp where she worked. Apparently this also happened for spiritual fulfillment. The male guards, who were not known for innocence or self-restraint, called her among themselves the “insatiable whore.

”

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, a former fashion model, decided to build a dubious career as a supervisor in a concentration camp. Since January 1944, she served in the Stutthof concentration camp. The camp was small, but Barkmann still managed to develop her sadistic fantasies there. Just like the women mentioned above, Jenny-Wanda loved humiliating prisoners.

She beat many of them to death. She also selected prisoners for the gas chambers. Her choice determined whether a person would live another day or not. Apparently, this power over the life and death of others brought her a kind of satisfaction.

She would walk several times in front of the lines of prisoners, pointing her finger at the unfortunate prisoner she selected, which meant a death sentence. She walked back and forth slowly, passing the prisoners. Then she would suddenly turn, point her finger at the unlucky one, and say: “You. ” For her, it was a kind of game and entertainment.

Jenny was beautiful. She was known as the “Beautiful Ghost,” but more often she was called the “Deadly Ghost,” because she brought death to everyone she met. Ilse, the wife of the commander of the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Majdanek concentration camps, Karl Koch, was also a true Aryan and merciless toward the enemies of the Reich. She was very cruel to all her enemies, who were defenseless and powerless before her and her husband.

Ilse loved to rummage through the things taken from those newly arrived at the camp. As the first lady of the concentration camp, she could seize anything she liked. In this way, she provided herself with expensive clothes, as well as for her husband and children. A true example of a caring and hardworking German citizen and mother of a family.

Ilse also loved attending interrogations and the torture of prisoners. Apparently, this excited her psychologically as well. She did not hesitate to humiliate prisoners personally. And again, for some reason, she was mostly interested in the unfortunate prisoners’ genitals.

This lady loved inflicting much pain on prisoners by physically affecting the victims’ organs. Also, Frau Koch enjoyed products made from human skin. People even gave her the nickname “Lady of the Leather Lampshades. ” They say she personally participated in the processing of skin taken from prisoners.

Perhaps because of this, Ilse Koch had another nickname: the Witch of Buchenwald. Maria Mandl, head of the women’s section at Auschwitz-Birkenau, called the Beast, was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Mandl was obsessed with music. On her initiative, an orchestra was created that welcomed every new batch of prisoners with music.

A talented musician had a chance to survive in the conditions of the concentration camp. Mandl housed her female musicians in a separate section of the barracks where they were exempted from all other work and fed well. The treatment of the girls in the camp brothel was also somewhat less horrific. However, the fate of all other prisoners was misery and imminent death.

Mandl had another weakness. She loved to play with people as if they were animals. That is, she would take a liking to one of the female prisoners—it could be a girl, a woman with a child, or a small child. Maria Mandl began to care for such a prisoner.

She fed them well, dressed them in beautiful clothes, and took them for walks. However, this prisoner’s paradise did not last long. When she grew bored with someone, with a merciless heart she sent them, at best, to the barracks, and most often to the gas chambers. In this despicable way, she dealt with about one hundred prisoners.

Mandl ended her service as head of the women’s section at the Dachau concentration camp. American troops arrested Mandl in August 1945. In November 1946, the Americans handed her over to the Poles at their request. In December 1947, a Polish court sentenced her to death.

In January 1948, in execution of the court’s verdict, Mandl was hanged in Kraków prison. The list could go on for a long time. These are only a few examples of ordinary-looking women who turned into monsters.