The hyena of Auschwitz: photos of cruel concentration camp guards will be auctioned off

A British lawyer who worked at the Belsen trial has preserved photographs of some of the most violent women of the Second World War. Documents and photographs from the archive helped the prosecution during the trial. Now these pictures will be sold at auction.

Source: Daily Mail

Irma Grese (left) and Hilde Lobauer (right).

A dream during the trial.

She went down in history as one of the most violent women of the Second World War. Known as the Hyena of Auschwitz, Irma Grese was one of the most feared guards in the infamous concentration camp.

A nymphomaniac with sadistic tendencies had intimate relations with the guards of the camp, selected prisoners for gas chambers and cruelly mocked prisoners.

Photos of her and other overseers who led the mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi death camps are presented in an archive that is being put up for sale.

Grese shortly after the outbreak of the war.

Dream (second from the left).

These brutal criminals were rounded up and captured when the British army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Three female overseers were executed for forming groups of prisoners for gas chambers, bullying and murder.

Another woman who was terrifying was Hilda Lobauer, mother of two children. She was a capo prisoner, that is, a privileged prisoner who worked for the administration, and supervised forced labor. She let the dogs loose on the sick and weak prisoners.

Another sadistic and ruthless warden who was feared by Bergen-Belsen prisoners was Irene Haschke. She mistreated the captive women.

As a result of the trial, Greze was hanged, and Lobauer and Haschke received 10 years in prison.

Photos of the three women are included in the archive of historical materials compiled by British lawyer Leo Genn, who worked as an assistant prosecutor during the Belsen trial. After working as a lawyer, Genn became a successful theater and film actor, but he kept an archive of photographs. It will be sold by the auction house Toovey. It is expected that the sale will bring from five to seven thousand dollars.

"The value and importance of this archive lies in its connection with Leo Genn, a famous theater and film actor who was an assistant prosecutor during the Belsen trial. The archive includes personal belongings, copies of signed witness statements and lawyer's notes made during the proceedings. The testimony reveals the horrors that took place behind closed doors and that the world did not know about at that time," said Nicholas Toovey from the Toovey auction house.

Photo of the overseers of Bergen-Belsen: Harry Kaufman, Herbert Boer, Bernard Blank, Heinrich Hoppenstedt.

The archive also has a photograph of Franz Stofel, the commandant of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, pictured with the camp guards.

Karl Schmitt, the defendant of the Nuremberg trials.

The archive also contains photographs of the Bergen-Belsen camp commandant Josef Kramer and the Nazi doctor Fritz Klein. Kramer and Klein were among 11 Nazis executed in 1945 after a British military tribunal. Nine other women and two men were jailed for up to 15 years.

Genn was assigned to investigate Nazi crimes in Bergen-Belsen. He was sent to Germany with several investigators to get the testimonies of thousands of survivors of concentration camps. The evidence of systematic genocide that Genn helped uncover led to the trial and execution of hundreds of perpetrators.