Maria Mandl (Born in Münzkirchen, Austria on 10 January 1912 – 24 January 1948) was an Austrian SS-Helferin (“SS helper”) known for her role in the Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she is believed to have been directly complicit in the deaths of over 500,000 prisoners. She was executed for war crimes.

Became Nazi perpetrators –

After the Anschluss by Nazi Germany, Mandl moved to Munich, and on 15 October 1938 joined the camp staff at Lichtenburg, an early Nazi concentration camp in the Province of Saxony, as an Aufseherin, and worked with fifty other SS women. On 15 May 1939, along with other guards and prisoners, Mandl was sent to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin. She soon impressed her superiors and, after she had joined the Nazi Party on 1 April 1941, was elevated to the rank of a SS-Oberaufseherin in April 1942. She oversaw daily roll calls, assignments for Aufseherinnen and punishments such as beatings and floggings.

On 7 October 1942, Mandl was assigned to Auschwitz II-Birkenau as SS-Lagerführerin of the women camp under SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß. As a woman she could never outrank a male, but her control over both female prisoners and her female subordinates was absolute. The only man Mandl reported to was the commandant. She controlled all the female Auschwitz camps and female subcamps including at Hindenburg, Lichtewerden and Raisko.

Mandl promoted Irma Grese to head of the Hungarian women’s camp at Birkenau. According to some accounts, Mandl often stood at the gate into Birkenau waiting for an inmate to turn and look at her: any who did were taken out of the lines and never heard from again. At Auschwitz, Mandl was known as The Beast, and for the next two years she participated in selections for death and other documented abuses. She signed inmate lists, sending an estimated half a million women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers at Auschwitz I and II.

Mandl created the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz to accompany roll calls, executions, selections and transports. An Auschwitz prisoner, Mandl was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd class. In November 1944, she was assigned to the Mühldorf subcamp of Dachau concentration camp and Elisabeth Volkenrath became head of Auschwitz, which were liberated in late January 1945. In May 1945, Mandl fled from Mühldorf into the mountains of southern Bavaria to her birthplace, Münzkirchen.

Execution and death

After the war, Mandl fled to her native Münzkirchen. After her father refused to help her hide, Mandl sought her sister for refuge. Mandl was arrested by the United States Army on 10 August 1945. Interrogations reportedly revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work in the camps. In November 1947, Mandl was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal in the Auschwitz trial, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and Mandl was hanged on 24 January 1948.

Birth Chart of Maria Mandl-