Dorothea Binz

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Dorothea (Thea) Binz (March 16, 1920 – May 2, 1947) was an SS supervisor at Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Second World War. She is said to have been depraved and cruel.

Born to a middle class German family in Dusterlake, Germany (near Fürstenberg and Ravensbrück itself) Binz attended school until she was fifteen. Afterwards she spent time as a maid but disliked the job, applied at a local SS office and was sent to Ravensbrück on September 1, 1939 to undergo training as a guard.

Binz served as an Aufseherin under Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, and Erna Rose. She worked in various parts of the camp including the kitchen and laundry. Later she is said to have supervised the bunker where women prisoners were tortured and killed.

In August 1943 Binz was promoted to Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin (Deputy Chief Wardress). Her abuse was later described as unyielding. As a member of the command staff between 1943 and 1945 she directed training and assigned duties to over 100 female guards at one time. Binz reportedly trained some of the cruelest female guards in the system, including Ruth Closius. These SS Aufseherinnen went on to over 200 women's camps across Poland, Germany, Austria and eastern France. Eventually she was responsible for over 50,000 female and underage prisoners. Her superiors were Lagerleiterin Erna Rose, Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld and the commandant, Max Kögel. In 1944 Ravensbrück received vast numbers of women and children from Auschwitz Birkenau, Majdanek, Plaszow, Stutthof and various slave labor camps in Poland. Binz supervised mass shootings and killings in the gas chambers as well as mass deaths by starvation, neglect, severe abuse and cold.

At Ravensbrück, the young Binz is said to have beaten, slapped, kicked, shot, whipped, stomped and abused women continuously. Witnesses testified that when she appeared at the Appellplatz, "silence fell." She reportedly carried a whip in hand along with a leashed German Shepherd and at a moment's notice would kick a woman to death or select her to be killed. French prisoners nicknamed her La Binz (The Binz).

Binz had a boyfriend in the camp, SS officer Edmund Bräuning. The two are said to have gone on romantic walks around the camp to watch women being flogged, after which they would stroll away laughing. They lived together in a house outside the camp walls until late 1944 when Edmund was transferred to Buchenwald. There is one report Binz used an axe to chop a Polish prisoner to death during a wood chopping kommando (forced labour assignment).

Binz fled Ravensbrück during the death march, was captured on 3 May 1945 by the British in Hamburg and incarcerated in the Recklinghausen camp (formerly a Buchenwald subcamp). She was tried with other SS personnel by a British court at the Ravensbrück Trial and was hanged at Hameln, Germany on 2 May 1947 for war crimes.

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