Theodora 'Dorothea' Binz was born to a lower middle class German family in Försterei Dusterlake, north of Berlin, on the 16th of March 1920. The daughter of a forester, she grew up in the woods around Furstenberg, where she attended village schools.
At ten, she and her friends joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), the female wing of the Hitler Youth. At school, she was forced to follow the Nazi curriculum.
In her teens she went down with tuberculosis, spent months in a clinic and missed out on schooling. Through no fault of her own, she left school with few, if any, qualifications.
Stigmatised as a carrier of TB and barred from many jobs due to the danger of contagion, on leaving school she worked as a kitchen maid.
When the chance came to become a guard at Ravensbrück, the new women's concentration camp opening nearby, she jumped at it.
Aged 19, she would not have known what she was getting into. The following advertisement was used to recruit female volunteers at Ravensbrück.
Recruitment advertisement for female volunteers at Ravensbrück
Prior to 1944, candidates could not become an SS Aufseherin if they had any criminal convictions. [1] This recruitment criterion, which gave the job an air of respectability, coupled with an advertisement that fails to give a true impression of the nature of the work could easily have tempted any naive young girl to apply to become an SS Aufseherin (wardress).
Theodora Binz joined the staff of Ravensbrück in April 1939 and trained to become an Aufseherin. In August 1943, Binz was promoted to Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress). She was also put in charge of the Bunker, the camp's punishment block.
Discipline and order were prerequisites to running an orderly camp where everyone was expected to conform to the rules and regulations - not just the inmates, but the staff included. This applied not just to Ravensbrück, but to all other camps as well.
For example - at Auschwitz, an Aufseherin named Buchhalter, was punished because she sent letters written by prisoners to their relatives without permission. She also had a love affair with a male prisoner. She was given twenty-five lashes with a whip, which had to be administered by the wardresses. The commandant Rudolf Hoess read out the judgement and said to all the wardresses that this woman was being punished by order of Reichsführer Himmler. [2]
Although, for the most part, punishments at Ravensbrück were not carried out by Theodora Binz herself - as head of the punishment block - she was present when punishments took place and thus became the main figure of hate within the camp.
It's alleged that at Ravensbrück, the young Binz abused women continuously. When she appeared at the Appellplatz (roll call), silence fell. She carried a whip in one hand, along with a leashed German Shepherd in the other, and allegedly, at a moment's notice would kick a woman to death or set her dog on her.
The following incident is reported in a book called The Scourge of the Swastika:
"A case in point was an occasion when Binz came upon an Arbeitskommando (work detail) in a woods outside the camp. Binz observed a woman that the Aufseherin felt was not working hard enough (which, in camp parlance, was referred to as being "Arbeitscheu," or "work shy"). Theodora Binz walked over to the woman, knocked her to the ground, and then took a pickaxe and proceeded to chop the prisoner with it until the lifeless body was little more than a bloody lump. (!) Once this matter was finished, Binz cleaned her shiny boots with the dry portion of the corpses' skirt. She then mounted her bicycle and leisurely peddled her way back to Ravensbrück - all as if nothing happened."The Scourge of the Swastika was written by 'Lord Russell of Liverpool', one of the most notorious German-haters of the 20th century! His book doesn't reveal to the reader where he obtained his information. The alleged victim is not named, the date the alleged incident took place is not given, and there is no reference to any death report. The only logical conclusion is that the story is a complete fabrication.
Another alleged incident involving Binz is told in the book Ravensbrück: An Eyewitness Account of a Women's Concentration Camp by Germaine Tillion. A member of the French resistance, Tillion was sent to Ravensbrück on 21 October 1943. The incident occurred after a flogging that took place in the Ravensbrück bunker. According to Tillion:
"After one such flogging, my friend ventured a look through a gap in the floorboards; by then, the punishment was over, and the prisoner was lying half-naked with her face to the floor, obviously unconscious and covered in blood from her ankles to her waist. Binz looked at the woman, and without saying anything, stood on top of her blood-covered-calves, her heel on one calf, and the tips of her toes on the other, and began rocking back and forth by shifting her body weight from her toes to her heels. It's possible the woman was already dead; in any case, she was not conscious, because she displayed no reactions. After a while, Binz left; her boots were covered in blood."Note that Tillion doesn't name the friend who she claims witnessed the incident. This type of evidence, known as Hearsay Evidence, would never be admissable in a court of law.
Tillion's friend claims to have witnessed the incident from the Bunker where she had been imprisoned for an extended period. The Bunker was a punishment block where prisoners were kept in solitary confinement for acts of resistance or sabotage.
Therefore, the woman who claims to have witnessed the incident had been sent to the Bunker, probably by Binz, and most likely invented the story in revenge for her own punishment. The story was soon spread around the camp, making Binz appear subhuman.
It should be pointed out that flogging and whipping were accepted forms of punishment at that time. Those forms of punishment were commonplace in British prisons in the 1930s and 1940s and in penal institutions all over the world.
A lot of punishments could have been avoided if the prisoners had done what they were told. An incident, involving a Russian woman named Anna Stekolnikova, can be found in the book Is This a Woman: inside Ravensbrück: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm. A group of women were returning to camp after a day's work in the fields and were ordered not to talk. According to Anna Stekolnikova:
"I'd been digging sand at the bottom of the lake and we were coming back to the camp in ranks of five and someone asked me a question and my lips moved. Binz saw and shouted my camp number and called me out to stand on the little mound outside the hospital for several hours. It was always windy there and terribly cold, so the girls in my barracks kept food for me, but then Binz came over with her dog and the dog bounded up at me with its paws and knocked me over. And I fell and it began to go for me but Binz pulled it back. It was as if she had pity on me and she shouted to me: 'Weg' - on your way."The above incident is more believable than the others because, this time, the victim is named. It's claimed Binz hated Russians and yet the punishment handed out to Anna Stekolnikova is a slap on the wrist compared to what she could have received.
Even her relationship with Bräuning has been used to dehumanise her. Ridiculous claims have been made that the two lovers went on romantic walks around the camp to watch women being flogged, after which they would stroll away laughing.
A more reliable account of Theodora Binz can be found in the book, Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War against the Nazis by Countess Karolina Lanckorońska. Countess Lanckorońska was a Polish patriot who was arrested by the Nazis for being a member of the Polish resistance. A renowned art historian, the Countess, who wasn't Jewish, was sent to Ravensbrück in the summer of 1942.
Because of her high status as a member of the nobility, she was treated exceptionally well. Out in the garden of her hut she was often watched over by Binz, lounging in a nearby deckchair. To the Countess, Binz seemed a lonely person who posed her no threat. She would chat about this and that, and told the Polish Countess one day that she was a cook by profession, lived locally, and was 22 years of age.
As for Binz's dog, which the other prisoners claimed was a vicious attack dog, the Countess described it as a sad and scrawny mongrel who always seemed hungry. Whenever the Countess walked past it, the dog would fling itself at her, sniffing at her pockets in the hope of finding some food. "Isn't it nice to see how much he loves you," said Binz one day, with a smile.
When the dog died, Binz planted flowers on the grave but the camp inmates stole the flowers.
One day the Countess ordered a copy of Petrarch's sonnets. When the book arrived it was confiscated by the Commandant because it contained 'Catholic prayers.' After explaining to Binz these were not Catholic prayers but love poems, Binz allowed the Countess to keep the book.
Theodora Binz was sentenced to death at the first Hamburg Ravensbrück trial in 1947. Unfortunately the Ravensbrück trial transcripts are not readily available. Twenty seven years old at her trial, she denied participating in the maltreatment of prisoners and claimed to have performed only her duties. Without knowing what evidence was used against her, it's not possible to form an opinion on whether the death penalty was justified. She was executed on the gallows at Hamelin by hangman Albert Pierrepoint on May 2, 1947.
Just before the hood was put over her head, Theodora Binz uttered her last words. "I hope you won’t think that we were all evil people," she said, as she took off her necklace and handed it to her executioner.
After execution, her corpse was buried with the corpses of other alleged war criminals in a mass grave within the prison grounds. One hundred and fifty five alleged German war criminals were hanged in Hamelin Prison by Pierrepoint. The majority of those executed were members of Concentration Camp staff from Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme and Auschwitz.
In 1950, the British handed Hamelin Prison back to the Germans. There followed years of agitation by right wing elements in Lower Saxony to give the executed Germans a decent burial. The Lower Saxony Government finally gave in and allocated funds to pay for the reburials.
In March 1954, the German prison authorities set about exhuming the bodies from the prison yard, identifying the remains, and putting them in separate coffins for reburial in individual plots. A total of 91 bodies were reburied in hallowed ground in Hamelin's Am Wehl Cemetery.
The British High Commission at the time said it had 'no objection' to the reburials. Some German newspapers referred to the Germans as 'alleged war criminals' implying their guilt was not proven.
Cemetery officials said no memorials would be allowed on the graves but wooden crosses would be allowed if relatives paid for them.
Right up until the 1980s, there were local citizens’ initiatives to tend the graves and erect wooden crosses in memory of those executed.
The graves of executed concentration Camp staff in Am Wehl Cemetery.
Relatives of the deceased erected wooden crosses to mark the graves.
Relatives of the deceased erected wooden crosses to mark the graves.
In their book The Offenders, Giles Playfair and Derrick Sington mention a visit they made to the burial site in 1956. They describe the graves as neat ivy-covered mounds on which they saw pansies and montbretia. The cemetery keeper told them that some of the flowers had been brought by strangers.
In March 1986, on the orders of Hamelin Town Council, all the crosses were removed from the burial site, the ground was flattened and the site was left to grow wild.
References:
1. Ino Arndt..Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970), Nr IV, 105.
2. Testimony of Irma Grese at the Belsen Trial. Irma Grese was ordered by Hoess to deliver the last two of the 25 strokes.
The Beautiful Beast, Daniel Patrick Brown, Golden West Historical Publications, Inc.,1996
Ravensbrück: An eyewitness account of a women's concentration camp by Germaine Tillion, Anchor Books, 1975.
The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes by Lord Russell of Liverpool, various publishers, 1954
Michelangelo in Ravensbrück: One Woman's War against the Nazis by Countess Karolina Lanckoroska, Da Capo Press Inc., 2007
Daily Mail
If this is a woman: inside Ravensbrück: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm, Abacus, 2016
The Offenders by Giles Playfair and Derrick Sington, published by Secker and Warburg, 1957.
