HERMINE BRAUNSTAINER (b. Vienna, 1919-m. Bochum, 1999)
few weeks ago appeared on the network photographs depicting guardians of the Nazi death camps in their spare time. The message of those documents appeared to be the most horrible crimes that were committed by ordinary people, like everyone else. Personally, the pictures of these girls smiling happy and playing while one of his colleagues reminded me playing accordion another photograph he had seen for years. The picture that heads this blog entry, showed Hermine Braunsteiner, better known among the inmates of the extermination camp of Majdanek as "the horse" because I used to pick on, sometimes fatally, by kicking them. For the people of Queens (New York), where he lived in the sixties, was Mrs. Ryan, the perfect neighbor who takes care of your children when you have a night out, and welcomes new residents of the neighborhood with a apple pie and a smile. Hermine
Braunsteiner was born in Vienna in 1919 within a rigid Catholic family. Although his dream was to become a nurse did not seem to height, and ended up working as a maid and later in the Heinkel aircraft factory , where he joined the Nazi party. In 1939 he began his career as a guardian in prison Ravensbrück, near Berlin, where he quickly stood out for its cruelty and sadism. In October 1942 she was transferred to the Majdanek camp in Poland, because of differences with their bosses. In Majdanek took a little rise, and turned to the selections of prisoners to the gas chambers. In 1964, several survivors of the fields related to Simon Wiesenthal as he had killed a shot between the eyes of a child that his father sought to conceal, or seemed to enjoy especially with whiplash which the inmates in the face. His "hobby" for the beating but did not increase kicks and prisoners knew to be selected to live by the medical field does not mean anything, because it was the horse he used to have the last word. Wiesenthal said that during the Holocaust most of the guards were ordinary people who, overwhelmed by what he had lived, just let go. Braunsteiner not belong to that majority, was among those who enjoyed the work they had given the new Nazi order.
In 1944, When Majdanek was evacuated before the arrival of Red Army Braunsteiner returned to Ravensbrück, where he escaped in 1945 when they were about to enter the Russians. In 1946 he was imprisoned by the Allies, who released the following year. In 1948 he was the new Austrian state which condemned the crimes committed in Ravensbrück. Just spent a year in jail. In 1949 he was pardoned by the government and it seems that crimes committed in Poland were never taken into account so far.
Since his release he worked in the hotel until she married in 1959, Ryan Russell, an American electrician with which he moved first to Halifax (Canada) and finally New York. The new Mrs. Ryan got an American citizen in 1963.
and New York probably would have lived happily until the end of his days but for a casual conversation that Simon Wiesenthal had with several survivors of Majdanek who told him about the mare in Tel Aviv in January 1964. Wiesenthal managed to find it in no time thanks to a collaborator, and that same year reported to U.S. immigration service that Baraunsteiner had lied on his record for naturalization. Knowing that deporting an American citizen would be at least difficult, Wiesenthal also informed the press that immediately became interested in the case. In July Joseph Lelyveld, a young reporter for the New York Times , he visited her home in Queens and wrote an article that announced the case to the public. Despite everything Braunsteiner no nationality was withdrawn until 1971, after years of struggle that had the inestimable help of neighbors, unable to believe the accusations, testified in his favor, as well as several American neo-Nazi groups organized a fundraising campaign through publications such as the Liberty Bell magazine ; funds were used later to pay for defending and supporting the family during the trial. Once removed
nationality Poland, the Federal Republic Germany requested his extradition. Afraid of what could happen to the other side of the Iron Curtain, Braunsteiner agreed to be tried by the Germans. He was extradited in 1973 and the trial lasted from 1975 to 1981, in part by the number of witnesses (to be judged collectively several warders at Majdanek) and partly by the delaying tactics of the defense was to challenge the entire court.
On May 30, 1981 was sentenced to life imprisonment. He remained in prison until 1996, when it was released for health reasons. Suffered from severe diabetes was complicated, so we had to amputate a leg. Until his death in 1999 lived in Bochum, near Dortmund, with her husband who had waited in Germany that lasted all through his imprisonment and assistance from the American neo-Nazi and relief organizations such as Nazi criminals Stille Hilfe who ran Himmler's daughter.
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