Maria Mandel 

During the visit to the Auschwitz Museum I learned about monstrosities that I did not even see in horrors movies . Here's one of them. 

Pic.1 Maria Mandel 

 Source: wikipedia.org 

  Who was she?: 

 SS supervisor (SS-Aufseherin) of the female SS support service in the Nazi concentration camps. Interestingly, the overseers were almost exclusively men- Maria Mandel asked to assign her to this matter. The reason she wanted to work there was allegedly earnings. She became the head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau women's camp in Brzezinka. Her only supervisor in Auschwitz was the camp's commander. She therefore had absolute power over the prisoners in the camp. 

What did she do?: 

She issued orders sending to death about 500,000 women and children of Jewish, Gypsy and Polish origin as well as political prisoners of various nationalities. She wore the nickname "the beast". During her rule, newborns and several months old babies were drowned and burned alive.

Her favorite activities were abusing pregnant women, which she condemned to death by injecting phenol. The victims died in unimaginable torment. The injection into the heart caused death in about half a minute. Unfortunately, when the heart was missed, and it happened often and not by accident - the victims died for a very long time. The corrosive substance was still digesting the living organism.

 She personally assigned the prisoners to pseudo-medical experiments, where the victims were going through another nightmares. She could torture sick mentally ill prisoners until they died of exhaustion and pain. Maria Mandel herself chose women who had to be forced to work in public homes. 

A brutal story:

  The birth of a child in a concentration camp bordered on a miracle. The enormous stress that prisoners were given was enough for a woman to miscarry. Food rations were so small that people often barely kept on their feet. The barracks have hardly ever been heated. To survive, one would heat one another. Pregnancy in such cases is a certain death.

It was not allowed to get pregnant, and it was also duty to inform the supervision that one of the prisoners was pregnant. A woman who was brought to the camp was already pregnant. The other women decided to help in the pregnancy. They believed that it would somehow survive - perhaps the war would end. Throughout the entire pregnancy period, a protruding belly was hidden - due to almost zero food rations, it was often not known about pregnancy. Many prisoners gave their food stings to a pregnant woman.

It survived until childbirth. The woman began to give birth. Unfortunately, not all the women in the camp were loyal.  

Pic. 2 Maria Mandel during the trial in Krakow (Poland) 

Source: wikipedia.org 

One of them decided that if she told Maria Mandel about the ongoing childbirth, she would gain in her eyes and gain additional benefits. She did the same - at the moment of the birth of the child, she ran to Maria Mandel with information about childbirth. The attendant listened to the woman and ordered her to go with her. When they got there, she let the childbirth end successfully. Then she ordered the informer to take the child and lead her out and the mother to go with them.

When they left, she ordered a woman carrying a baby to throw it on the ground, and then a flock of rats rushed to the child. All women, under the threat of death, had to watch as a newborn baby is torn apart and eaten alive by a flock of rats.  

Death: 

 She was captured on 10.08.1945 and then handed over to the Polish government. On December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to death by hanging and on January 24, 1948, she was hanged on the gallows in the Montelupich prison in Krakow. 

Maria Mandel in numbers: