Maria Mandl had many nicknames. Some called her Mandelka, others Oberka, others Mancia. Most often, however, she was referred to as "The Beast" because of the inhumane behavior she displayed toward prisoners. What crimes did Maria Mandl commit and how was she brought to justice? We invite you to watch the following video. Warning.
This material has controversial and shocking content, and therefore inappropriate for some viewers. However, this content finds confirmation in the historical sources and scientific studies on the basis of which this material was created. The film is educational and intended for viewers over 18 years of age. "The heroine" of today's episode was called a beast for a reason. Her psychopathic tendencies surpassed in their cruelty even the most ardent SS men. Maria Mandl or Mandel is credited with being responsible for sending nearly half a million people to their deaths. It is difficult to tell the story without emotion. Especially since there was no indication of what a cruel person in the camp structure this girl of only thirty years could be. Born in Münzkirchen on January 10, 1912, Maria did not show any psychopathic deviations in her youth - in any case, we know nothing about them, although we do know that there were mental illnesses in her family. She made the decision to work in the concentration camp system not because of her love for National Socialism, but pure pragmatism, or to be more precise, high wages. I chose this job because I had heard that janitors in concentration camps earn a lot, and I expected to earn more than I could earn as a nurse. After all, if I hadn't gotten a former job in a concentration camp, I would have been trained as a nurse. Before I took service in the Lichtenburg camp, I did not know what concentration camps were and what their facilities were," we can read in the minutes of her interrogation in 1947. The nature of this statement is frightening. Had it not been for her work in the camp, Maria Mandl would have become a nurse. As if the choice between saving or killing people was something absolutely... normal? This daughter of a shoemaker named Franz and Anna ( born Streibl), she graduated from an eighth-grade elementary school, followed by four grades of vocational school. She recalled her childhood well: my childhood and youth up to the age of 16-17 were the most beautiful years of my life, she recalled at the hearing. After finishing school, however, she was unable to find a job, and the family was haunted by a serious problem, namely her mother's mental illness, which Maria began to care for, grabbing various odd jobs at the same time. In 1937, she managed to get a permanent job at the post office in her hometown, but was fired from it after the Anschluss of Austria - during her interrogation, she claimed that this was due to the fact that she was not a declared National Socialist. She probably noticed at the time that her lack of direct ties to the Nazi movement was a brake on any career. Thus, in 1938, Maria Mandl joined the female auxiliary staff, or SS-Gefolge, and in the same year expressed her desire to work at the concentration camp. She was unmarried and childless, so nothing stood in her way. On October 15, 1938, she was assigned to one of the first concentration camps in the Reich, which was located in Lichtenburg, Saxony. Maria was one of about fifty female workers who controlled nearly 400 German women. These were prisoners of the so-called "antisocial" type. "asocial" women, including prostitutes and criminals. She worked there for less than a year, until the camp was liquidated. On May 15, like the inmates of the liquidated camp, Maria Mandl was transferred to the newly established Ravensbrück Concentration Camp near Berlin. Her career progressed. At first Mandl worked as a private supervisor, and from April 1942 she was appointed SS-Oberaufseherin, or senior supervisor. Maria Mandl must have attracted the attention of her superiors - for on October 7, 1942, she assumed the position of SS-Lagerfuhrerin, or head of the Auschwitz II - Birkenau women's camp. In practice, this meant that her immediate superior was none other than the camp commandant Rudolf Hoss, and she reached the highest possible position in the hierarchy of German concentration camp administration. The Beast's duties - for that is what Mandel was already called - also included controlling the female sub-camps of Auschwitz located in such places as Hindenburg and Lichtenwerden. Accountability only to Hoss meant that, in reality, Maria Mandel was the mistress of life and death of all female prisoners, which she used to her advantage. The list of her crimes is extremely long, and the following stand out among them all: single-handedly signed orders sending some 500,000 women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers. She showed particular cruelty to children, She personally carried out the selection of sick female prisoners, earmarking them for death in the gas chambers approached pregnant women with particular sadism, selecting them to receive phenol injections or, worse, for medical experiments, She sometimes acted in collaboration with another criminal - Irma Grese - with whom she shared not only beauty, but also psychopathic tendencies. The two aufzejers may have had something more in common than a business relationship, after all. For Grese's lesbian predilections were widely known. The hypotheses are all the more plausible because Maria Mandl just might have liked it - with all the abhorrent baleful atrocities she inflicted on others. As the French Jewish woman Fania Fenelon, one of the prisoners and a member of the orchestra founded in the camp by the Beast, recalled: [Beast] is not yet thirty, very pretty, tall, slim and impeccable in her uniform [...]. Her face is radiant ... She is perfect. Too perfect. A perfect example of the master race. The perfect mother-parent - so what is she doing here? Mandel remained at Auschwitz until November 1944, when she was transferred as SS-Oberaufseherin to the Mühldorf camp, a sub-camp of the Dachau concentration camp. Faced with the end of the war, Mandel decided to flee from there and holed up in the nearby Alps with camp commandant Walter Langleist. Moments later, however, she decided to go to her hometown of Münzkirchen. She did not find hospitality there, however; her father, aware of the functions he held, refused to take her in. Mandel only found them at her sister's home in a nearby village called Luck. The calm did not last long, and already on August 10, 1945 Maria Mandl was captured by the Americans and subjected to a thorough interrogation. During this time, the Polish side conducted extradition activities, which were successfully completed in November 1946. Maria Mandl was brought before the Supreme National Tribunal - the entity responsible for trying the most degenerate functionaries of the Nazi regime. As a member of the Auschwitz Crew, her case was included in the so-called first Auschwitz trial, which took place in the building of Krakow's National Museum, which served as a casino during the occupation. The trial itself was, in a way, a supplement to the trial of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp commandant Rudolf Hoss, which had been conducted in Warsaw a few months earlier. Forty defendants stood trial, who nevertheless constituted a modest percentage of the total SS men involved in the operation of this hellhole. In addition to Beast, those standing trial included Hoss's successor as camp commandant Arthur Liebehenschel, in addition, the defendants included Schutzhaftlagerführer Hans Aumeier, camp Gestapo chief Max Grabner, and camp administration head Karl Ernst Möckel. The trial of the Auschwitz crew began on November 24 and lasted until December 22, 1947. At the beginning of the trial, all of the defendants - unlike Rudolf Hoss, who had been tried several months earlier - pleaded not guilty, with only a few women confirming that they had beaten prisoners - including Maria Mandl. The defendants obviously did not know how rich the Court's evidence was and how absurd it was becoming to deny the crimes they had committed. After all, the file included nearly 15,000 pages. In addition, before the Supreme National Tribunal, including the Hoss trial in these estimates, there were 9 expert witnesses and 219 witnesses, among whom we can mention such figures as boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski. The charges against the crew members were: responsibility for starvation in the camp, abysmal sanitary conditions, violence, executions, looting, Of the 40 defendants, there was only one acquittal - for doctor Hans Münch, whose innocence was unquestionable. 21 defendants, including Maria Mandl, were sentenced to death. Two others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, to which six other SS men were also sentenced. Eight received sentences of 15 years in prison, while the last three were sentenced to 10, five and three years in prison. Mendel awaited her sentence in a cell at the Montelupich Street prison in Cracow, where she was imprisoned along with Polish women involved in the underground. This, unfortunately, was the grim picture of post-war, communist-ruled Poland - people who had risked their lives in the fight against the Germans over the past years, but did not sympathize with communism - had to share a cell with their recent enemies. Such was the fate of Stanisława Rachwał, who spent three years in Auschwitz, and therefore not only knew very well who the Beast was, but also experienced its cruelty firsthand. One day Rachwal was instructed to give some information to the Germans, for she knew their language very well. Emotions, not surprisingly, took over then. This is exactly how Stanisława remembers that day: I was darkened with anger in my eyes. I felt like an angry dog that had been let off the leash and shouted at full volume: Attention! Achtung! They broke off in a flash and stood at attention like a wall. I stopped being a prisoner bound by the rules and regulations. The dam broke, and words of vile and boorishness collapsed, the kind we were fed at every turn. And excited by the moment, I got quite close to them and felt that I was about to start beating them. Over their faces, over their eyes. And suddenly I saw their horror. I did not hit. And such human shame overwhelmed me. A prisoner to be beaten? - Rachwal wrote. Upon returning to her cell, Ms. Rachwal simply wept. Like many other Polish heroes, she received a death sentence, but it was commuted to life imprisonment, and as a result of an amnesty she left prison after 10 years. The figure of Mrs. Rachwalowa, by the way, deserves a separate story - for her merits are so great and her attitude so unwavering that she is sometimes called , "Pilecki in a skirt". Maria Mandl, of course, had no reprieve, and the sentence remained in effect. She waited about a month for its execution. The death penalty by hanging was carried out in the prison courtyard at 7:09 a.m. on January 24, 1948. According to information given to prosecutor Brandys by prosecutor Pęchalski (who was not present, however, when the sentence was carried out), the last words of Maria Mandl, the Beast of Auschwitz responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, were the cry Es lebe Polen! (Long live Poland!). At least in this particular case, justice triumphed, which, after all, was not the rule in post-war reality. Thank you for your attention and see you in the next episode.
