Imagine being a Jew during the Holocaust and stepping off of a cattle car after the third transfer from a concentration camp. The doors open and you look up to see a woman, and you are relieved it is not an evil male S.S. officer. Then you are in shock because you realize this woman is actually also an S.S. officer. This woman, Maria Mandel, was responsible for over 500,000 deaths at Auschwitz and was a top ranking official there (Wetherell). There is a misconception that only men carried out evil acts during the Holocaust, but this woman, Mandel, earned the nickname “The Beast.” Up until 1942, Adolf Hitler’s empire of concentration camp officers were primarily male (Riddle). That all changed in 1942 when the first female guards were assigned …show more content…
to Auschwitz and Majdanek (Riddle). After some time, there were more than 3,500 female concentration camp guards, a small portion of the nearly 55,000 guards who served in the concentration camps in total (Riddle). The S.S. were looking for single women who were between 21 and 45 (Riddle). Training begin at the Ravensbruck Camp outside of Berlin for the new recruits. The S.S training lasted anywhere from a month to six months. Following this, the women would be sent to one of the camps for their job assignments. The recruits would learn how to maintain work speed for the laborers and how to punish prisoners during their training. The head wardresses taught recruits in group classes (Riddle).
Many might suspect that the women were more lenient with the prisoners, but that is not so. The female guards were just as corrupt as the men.
One individual woman, Maria Mandel stood out from the rest due to her dreadful work, perhaps the most evil of all the female guards and the top ranking official at Auschwitz. Maria Mandel was born in Austria at Munzkirchen in January 1912 and joined the SS in 1938 (Wetherell). From October 1938 to May 1939 she was Aufseherin (female guards) at KZ Lichtenburg and then from May 1939 to October 1942 she was Aufseherin (female guards) in KZ Ravensbrück (Wetherell). She was then transferred as an Oberaufseherin (female supervisor) to KZ Auschwitz where she worked until November 30, 1944 (Wetherell). She was moved on to KZ Mühldorf where she continued until May 1945 (Wetherell). Maria Mandel performed Horrendous acts every time she entered these concentration
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camps. Maria Mandel is believed to have been directly responsible for the orders to kill over 500,000 female Jews, Gypsies, and political prisoners (Wetherell).
Mandl worked in Auschwitz and was a top ranking official there. Mandel’s most famous nickname is “The Beast” because of her frightful actions. She would often choose a Jew to serve as her personal pet, having the individual accomplish wearisome tasks until she was tired of him or her. Next, she would have “the pet” executed. When it was time for the prisoners to line up, she would wait for one to look at her, and then she would have him or her executed (Bard). Perhaps the most evil of all the female guards was Maria Mandel, she performed evil acts, and even used her passion for music o exploit her
prisoners. Maria Mandel founded the women’s orchestra in April 1943 while she was the commandant of Auschwitz (Bard). Only female Aryans were allowed to participate in the women’s orchestra during the first month of its existence. To complete the ensemble, Jews were allowed to participate in the orchestra after some time. The orchestra started with just a bass drum and cymbals but gradually grew to include guitars, mandolins, a cello, a few violins, a piano, and a few singers (Bard). The women of the orchestra were forced to play during the intimidating roll-calls, and they had to eerily play when new arrivals were sent to directly to the gas chambers to their untimely deaths. They also had to play during the terrifying selections when the less healthy and sick were separated. Those selected were headed for a certain death (Bard). The prisoners of Auschwitz knew one day Mandel would suffer defeat, it was only a matter of time. The United States Army arrested Mandl on 10 August 1945. Interrogations reportedly revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work in the camps. She was handed over to the People’s Republic of Poland in November 1946, and in November 1947 she was tried in a Kraków courtroom in the Auschwitz Trial and sentenced to death by hanging. As a woman she could never outrank a man, but her control over both female prisoners and her female subordinates was absolute. Maria Mandel is truly the face of evil.
Across the country the ratio of male inmates to women is huge. According to “Criminal Justice a brief introduction” by Frank Schmalleger It states that the ratio that for every 15 male inmates there is only one female. But that doesn’t mean that the number of female inmates aren’t rapidly increasing. Even though there are similarities within both men and women’s prisons they are still in ways different.
Adolf Hitler came into power of Germany in 1934. Wanting power, land and revenge, Hitler gets troops ready to attack. Hitler was a troop in WWI for Germany. Once the Germans lost the war, Hitler took that personally, and wanted revenge. After coming into power with his army of Nazis, Hitler is quick to blame Jewish people for all the harsh debt and corruption in Germany. The Germans believe him, causing them to hate Jewish people. The holocaust happened throughout 1933-1945, it ended when Hitler killed himself.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
Throughout the Nobel Peace Prize award winner Night, a common theme is established around dehumanization. Elie Wiesel, the author, writes of his self-account within the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Being notoriously famed for its unethical methods of punishment, and the concept of laboring Jews in order to follow a regime, was disgusting for the wide public due to the psychotic ideology behind the concept. In the Autobiography we are introduced to Wiesel who is a twelve year old child who formerly lived in the small village of Sighet, Romania. Wiesel and his family are taken by the Nazi aggressors to the Concentration camp Auschwitz were they are treated like dogs by the guards. Throughout the Autobiography the guards use their authoritative
...wise you were to bring your women into your military and into your labor force. Had we done that initially, as you did, it could well have affected the whole course of the war. We would have found out as you did, that women are equally effective, and for some skills, superior to males." (Albert Speer, head of Nazi war production)
When the author of Night, Elie Wiesel, arrives at Auschwitz, the Jewish people around him, the Germans, and himself have yet to lose their humanity. Throughout the holocaust, which is an infamous genocide that imprisoned many Jewish people at concentration camps, it is clear that the horrors that took place here have internally affected all who were involved by slowly dehumanizing them. To be dehumanized means to lose the qualities of a human, and that is exactly what happened to both the Germans and the Jewish prisoners. Wiesel has lived on from this atrocious event to establish the dehumanization of all those involved through his use of animal imagery in his memoir Night to advance the theme that violence dehumanizes both the perpetrator
In his book Night Mr. Elie Wiesel shares his experiences about the camps and how cruel all of the Jews were treated in that period. In fact, he describes how he was beaten and neglected by the SS officers in countless occasions. There are very few instances where decent humans are tossed into certain conditions where they are treated unfairly, and cruel. Mr. Wiesel was a victim of the situation many times while he was in the camps. Yet he did not act out, becoming a brute himself, while others were constantly being transformed into brutes themselves. Mr. Wiesel was beaten so dreadfully horrible, however, for his safety, he decided to not do anything about it. There were many more positions where Mr. Wiesel was abused, malnourished, and easily could have abandoned his father but did not.
For instance, throughout the book, she emphasises her point stating that women are not any different from men when it comes to violence, and they equally commit murder when given the opportunity in the right circumstance, but she refuses to acknowledge the male and female murder statistics. A modern statistical analysis which concludes, “Although women compromise more than half of the U.S population, they committed only 14.7% of the homicides noted during the study interval. In contrast to men, who killed non-intimate acquaintances, strangers, or victims of undetermined relationship in 80% of cases.” Although Hitler’s Furies is useful for learning the role women played in the Third Reich, it is a one-sided book with an agenda. Hence, it is not a book to be recommended for using as an academic source when examining the role of women in the Third Reich without prejudice.
Men and women were seen to live in separate social class from the men where women were considered not only physically weaker, but morally superior to men. This meant that women were the best suited for the domestic role of keeping the house. Women were not allowed in the public circle and forbidden to be involved with politics and economic affairs as the men made all the
Since the “new woman” ideal was unrealistic for many women, many could feel that they were not strong modern woman. Hitler and the Nazi party targeted that insecurity by boosting the importance of the role of a mother in Germany. Only by following the tradition lifestyle of a woman could they ever be equal with men in their contribution to the Nazi movement. Elsbeth Zander, a Nazi activist and leader of the German Women’s Order, addresses the role of women in 1926, where she explains the important impact of motherhood in Germany. Zander explains, “We women must, through our quiet, honest work, inspire the German male to do noble things once more!.” Which when analyzed critically, this quote truly means that women should be the behind the scenes of the movement, caring for the household and being strong in their soul, not actions. Propaganda supporting Nazi’s defination of womanhood was common, such as the “Healthy Parents- Healthy Children!” poster from 1934 Germany. The visuals of this poster, with an Aryan woman dressed femininely is shown happily with her many children and husband is in direct contrast to the visuals of a “new woman” who stood independently on her own, dressed androgynously. In this way, the Nazi party was not only setting the racial standard for Nazi Germany, but the gender
also managed to prove that they could do the jobs just as well as men
Auschwitz marked the first of several concentration camps Wiesel was exposed to that personified darkness and evil. It was on his first night there, he witnessed a furnace pit filled with burning babies. He was shocked and horrified at the inhumanity of Nazis. It was then he realized that he and the other prisoners were not at a labor camp but at a death camp. Dark, black smoke from the burning furnaces filled the air and sky, which made the atmosphere difficult for sunlight to penetrate and there was a permeating odor of burning human flesh. Darkness and gloom hung over the camp like a permanent nighttime. The men and boys were separated by work ability, the strong lived and the weak died. In these death camps, the prisoners were physically beaten and abused, starved and treated as inhuman. The acts of violence and horror we...
The Holocaust was a terrible time in history; many innocent people were killed, all because of their faith. The book Night by Ellie Wiesel portrays the vigorous journey Wiesel and his family undergo throughout this torturous time. The holocaust wasn’t just genocide against the Jews; it was also a long process of dehumanizing them too. Their valuables were taken and their heads were shaved stripping them of their identity.
If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort to mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform. Primo Levi, a survivor, gives account of his incarceration in the Monowitz- Buna concentration camp.
The conflict between security and service functions-- and the dangerous, overcrowded conditions in these facilities intensified hostile reaction (Jurik, N.C. 1985). On an informal level there is much of a boundary between the male inmates and the women that worked in the facilities. The more overcrowded and dangerous these facilities get, the harder it may be for the women in the workplace as security. Nancy felt with such resistance in the workplace of being a female correctional officer in mens prison, women were not going to perform adequately to all of the pressure. In addition, the combination to these old hostilities with the informal rules governing advancement further limited the opportunities available to female officers (Kanter, 1977; 264). Because this specific job field is so hostile and intimidating, researchers found that women were not getting promoted because of it. Which made it harder on women to do as well as they wanted knowing they were not going to get rewarded or promoted to a higher form of