Herta Ehlert

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Herta Ehlert (March 26, 1905 – April 4, 1997) was a female guard at many Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

[edit] Life

Ehlert was born as Hertha Liess in Berlin, Germany. She later married and became Hertha Ehlert.

[edit] Camps

On November 15, 1939, Ehlert became a camp guard and trained in Ravensbrück concentration camp. 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 Ravensbrück to undergo another training course, this time by Dorothea Binz.

During this time Ehlert divorced her husband. After the World War II, Ehlert described the "training course" at Ravensbruck as "physically and emotionally demanding." Ehlert was later moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp as an Aufseherin where she oversaw women commanding kommandos (slave laborers).

Ehlert later served as a guard at the Auschwitz subcamp in Rajsko, Poland, before she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she became deputy wardress under Oberaufseherinnen Elisabeth Volkenrath and Irma Grese.

[edit] Arrest and trial

When the British Army liberated the Belsen camp, Ehlert was arrested and tried at the Belsen Trial. She was sentenced to 15 year in prison. She was released on December 22, 1951. After the war Ehlert lived under the assumed name Herta Naumann.