About
Date of Birth: 16 March 1920
Date of Death: 2 May 1947
Nationality: German
Date of Death: 2 May 1947
Nationality: German
Before the Holocaust
Dorothea Binz was born into a
middle class family in Försterei Dusterlake; she attended school until she was fifteen years old until she entered into the profession as a maid. . However, she strongly disliked this position and in order to escape, she applied at a local SS office and was sent to Ravensbrück on September 1, 1939, to undergo training as a guard, where she became one of the most evil women associated with the concentration camps.
Life As a Guard
Binz served as an Aufseherin under Oberaufseherin Emma Zimmer, Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, and Anna Klein-Plaubel. She worked in various parts of the camp, including the kitchen and laundry. Later, she is said to have supervised the bunker where women prisoners were tortured and killed.
In August 1943, Binz was promoted to Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress). Her abuse was later described as unyielding. As a member of the command staff between 1943 and 1945, she directed training and assigned duties to over 100 female guards at one time. Binz reportedly trained some of the cruelest female guards in the system, including Ruth Closius.
At Ravensbrück, the young Binz is said to have beaten, slapped, kicked, shot, whipped, stomped and abused women continuously. Witnesses testified that when she appeared at the Appellplatz, "silence fell." She reportedly carried a whip in hand, along with a leashed German Shepherd and at a moment's notice would kick a woman to death or select her to be killed. French prisoners nicknamed her La Binz (The Binz).
Binz reportedly had a boyfriend in the camp, an SS officer named Edmund Bräuning. The two are said to have gone on romantic walks around the camp to watch women being flogged, after which they would stroll away laughing. They lived together in a house outside the camp walls until late 1944, when Bräuning was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp.
In August 1943, Binz was promoted to Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress). Her abuse was later described as unyielding. As a member of the command staff between 1943 and 1945, she directed training and assigned duties to over 100 female guards at one time. Binz reportedly trained some of the cruelest female guards in the system, including Ruth Closius.
At Ravensbrück, the young Binz is said to have beaten, slapped, kicked, shot, whipped, stomped and abused women continuously. Witnesses testified that when she appeared at the Appellplatz, "silence fell." She reportedly carried a whip in hand, along with a leashed German Shepherd and at a moment's notice would kick a woman to death or select her to be killed. French prisoners nicknamed her La Binz (The Binz).
Binz reportedly had a boyfriend in the camp, an SS officer named Edmund Bräuning. The two are said to have gone on romantic walks around the camp to watch women being flogged, after which they would stroll away laughing. They lived together in a house outside the camp walls until late 1944, when Bräuning was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the Camp
The same sources claim Dorothea Binz, head training overseer at Ravensbruck after 1942, trained her female students on the finer points of "malicious pleasure". One survivor at a camp stated after the war that the Germans brought a group of fifty women to the camp to undergo training. The women were then separated and brought before the inmates. Each woman was then told to beat a prisoner. Of the fifty women, only three had asked for a reason, and one had refused. The latter was subsequently imprisoned.
A case in point was an occasion when Dorothea came upon an Arbeitskommando (work detail) in a woods outside the camp:
"Dorothea observed a woman that she felt was not working hard enough. Dorothea 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, Dorothea 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."
A case in point was an occasion when Dorothea came upon an Arbeitskommando (work detail) in a woods outside the camp:
"Dorothea observed a woman that she felt was not working hard enough. Dorothea 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, Dorothea 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."
After the Holocaust
Binz fled Ravensbrück during the death march, was captured on May 3, 1945, by the British in Hamburg and incarcerated in the Recklinghausen camp (formerly a Buchenwald subcamp). Binz was tried with other SS personnel by a British court at the Ravensbruck Trial war crimes. She was convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently hanged at Hameln prison by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint on May 2 1947.