Herta Ehlert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Herta Ehlert (born Liess, married Ehlert, divorced Naumann) was a female guard at many Nazi camps during the whole period of World War II.

Herta (Hertha) was born as Hertha Liess in Berlin, Germany on March 26, 1905. She later married and became Hertha Ehlert. On November 15, 1939, Herta became a camp guard and trained in Ravensbruck. In October 1942 she was moved as an Aufseherin to the Majdanek camp near Lublin. There she served in a few of its subcamps in Lublin. A few SS officers there noticed that she was too lenient, polite and helpful to the prisoners, so the SS sent her back to Ravensbruck to undergo another training course, this time by Dorothea Binz. During this time Herta divorced her husband and became Herta Ehlert. After the war Herta described the "training course" at Ravensbruck as "physically and emotionally demanding." Herta was later moved to Auschwitz as an Aufseherin where she oversaw hordes of women working on kommandos. Herta later served as a guard at he subcamp in Rajsko, Poland. Herta finally arrived at Bergen Belsen where she became deputy wardress under Oberaufseherinnen Elisabeth Volkenrath and Irma Grese. When the British Army liberated the Belsen Camp, Herta was arrested and tried at the famous Belsen Trial. She was sentenced to fifiteen year in prison and released on December 22, 1951. After the war she lived under the assumed name Herta Naumann.