Johanna Langefeld: Oberaufseherin, KL Ravensbrück

[rappcom]

Does anyone have facts on Johanna Langefeld, Chief Oberaufseherin of Ravensbrück concentration camp ? She obviously had a soft reputation with inmates as well as Aufseherins under her control, and as most readers of this forum know, that was surely a rare trait for a female concentration camp leader/guard.

Are there any interesting facts that any readers out there can share with me about her life etc. ? I would be very much appreciative of your input.

[David Thompson]

rappcom -- I'm going to transfer this thread to the ABR section on the SS and Police. The readers there are usually well-informed on biographical details, and hopefully they can help.

[rappcom]

Thanks so much David. I`m sort of new at this forum outlay, and can surely use any help and direction that you can provide. Thanks again.

[Helge]

Johanna Langefeld

(March 5, 1900 - January 26, 1974) was a female supervisor at two concentration camps during the Nazi Regime.

Born on in Essen-Kupferdreh, Germany, Johanna Langefeld later married and had a son. In 1940, she lost her husband on the Russian front and needed to support her and her son, so she volunteered to be a camp guard. She began her training in Ravensbrück, as she stated after the war, "to help the poorest of the poor."

In 1941, Johanna was promoted to SS-Oberaufseherin and became head of all prisoners and female guards at Ravensbrück. Prisoners recounted Johanna with mixed feelings. She saved the life of a Polish woman who was to be executed, but showed no adverse reaction when a prisoner was beaten in front of her.

In March 1942, Johanna was selected to become head of the Auschwitz I camp in newly occupied Poland. There she tried to take control of the women's camp and get absolute power. The then commandant, Rudolf Höß, did not accept this and the two butted heads. Höß was unimpressed by the women guards and saw them as incompetent and untrustworthy.

After the war, Höß recounted in his memoires that they had been:

"spoiled rotten in Ravensbrück. Everything had been done to persuade them to stay in the KZ women's auxiliary. They were given good food and extremely good lodging. They also made a salary which could never be met in civilian life. From their very first days in Auschwitz, many of them wanted to run back to the quiet and comfortable life of Ravensbrück. There were only three or four competent ones, and the rest were driven crazy by the others who ran around like excited chickens."
Höß also wrote that the morale among the female guards was low. Many of them eventually stood before an SS court for stealing from the camp's supply huts. Eventually Höß had enough of the power struggle and sent Langefeld back to Ravensbrück in October 1942. That same month the Auschwitz women's camp was moved to the Auschwitz Birkenau camp 3 km away and Maria Mandel became the new female camp leader. Back at Ravensbrück Langefeld served as chief wardress along with several other women.

In April 1943, Johanna became deputy wardress under Lagerführerin Erna Rose. In November1944, Langefeld began helping select out women in barracks to be gassed. In April 1945, Johanna successfully negotiated the release of over 1,000 female concentration camp prisoners to the Swedish Red Cross via Denmark. Along the way over thirty of the women died in air raids.

After the war Johanna was never prosecuted for war crimes. She was praised for her kindness and consideration in the camps, but attacked by Höß in his memoires. Johanna Langefeld died at her home in Augsburg, Germany on January 26, 1974, at the age of 73.

http://www.fold3.com/page/286092756_fem ... entration/

[AVV]

Hello!

In 1940, she lost her husband on the Russian front

Are you sure about the date? May be, it happened in 1941?

Best regards, Aleks

[Helge]

If I do not commit the error to the right person in the photograph is Folke Bernadotte.

[Helge]

Hello!

In 1940, she lost her husband on the Russian front

Are you sure about the date? May be, it happened in 1941?

Best regards, Aleks

Surely it is 1941! Thanks Aleks

[Helge]

Johanna Langefeld (5 March 1900 - 26 January 1974) was a German female guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps.

Born in Kupferdreh (now in Essen, Germany), Johanna Langefeld was brought up in a Lutheran-Protestant, nationalistic family. Her father was a blacksmith. In 1924 she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in 1926 of lung disease. In 1928 Langefeld fell pregnant with another man, left him soon after and moved to Düsseldorf where her son was born in August of that same year.
Langefeld was unemployed until age 34, when she began to teach domestic economy in an establishment of the city of Neuss. From 1935 onwards, she worked as a guard in a so-called Arbeitsanstalt, (working institution) in Brauweiler. In fact, this was a prison for prostitutes, unemployed and homeless women and other so called 'antisocial' women, who were then later imprisoned in concentration camps. From 1937 on, Langefeld was a member of the Nazi party.

Camp work

In March 1938, she applied for a job as a camp guard in the first SS concentration camp for women in Lichtenburg. After one year, Langefeld became the female superintendent of this camp. She stayed in that position until the camp population was transferred to Ravensbrück in May 1939.
The female superintendent (in German the actual term is Oberaufseherin) was the assistant of the so-called Schutzhaftlagerführer, the protective custody camp leader, who was the deputy of the Camp Commandant. According to the camp regulations, the Oberaufseherin should “consult the Schutzhaftlagerführer in all female matters.”
Johanna Langefeld was in charge of the selections in Ravensbrück during the so-called “14f13” murder campaign.
In the middle of March 1942, Langefeld was assigned to build a new women's camp in Auschwitz. There she selected prisoners for the gas chamber.
Rudolf Höß, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, recalled his relationship towards Johanna Langefeld as follows:

The chief female supervisor of the period, Frau Langefeld, was in no way capable of coping with the situation, yet she refused to accept any instructions given her by the leader of the protective custody camp. Acting on my own initiative, I simply put the women’s camp under his jurisdiction.
During the visit of Heinrich Himmler on July 18, 1942, Langefeld tried to get him to annul this order. In fact, Rudolf Höß admitted after the war that “the Reichsführer SS absolutely refused” his order and that he wished “a women's camp to be commanded by a woman”. Himmler ordered that Langefeld should stay in charge of the women’s camp and that in the future, no SS man should enter the female camp.
That same month, the Auschwitz women's camp was moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp three km away. Two weeks later, Langefeld had an injury of her meniscus and required a cartilage operation in the SS-Sanatorium Hohenlychen near Ravensbrück. During her stay there, she went to see Oswald Pohl, the chief of the SS-WVHA (Economy and Administration Head Office), in Berlin-Lichterfelde, and convinced him to transfer her back to Ravensbrück. Maria Mandel became the new Oberaufseherin of the women's prisoner camp in Auschwitz. Oswald Pohl instructed the Chief of Department D of his SS-WVHA (Economy and Administration Head Office), Richard Glücks, to order that duties of protective custody camp leaders in the Women's Camps be executed thereafter by the female superintendents, the Oberaufseherinnen.
Margarete Buber-Neumann, who became Langefeld's prisoner assistant in Ravensbrück, recorded that Langefeld was dismissed for excessive sympathy with Polish prisoners; she was separated from her son, taken under arrest to Breslau, where an SS tribunal prepared a trial against her. Langefeld never went to trial, and was released from her camp duties. She then moved to Munich and started to work for BMW.

Arrest and death

On December 20, 1945, Langefeld was arrested by the U.S. Army, and in September 1946, she was extradited to the Polish judiciary preparing a trial in Kraków against SS personnel in Auschwitz. On December 23, 1946, Johanna Langefeld escaped from prison. Due to her relatively positive treatment of concentration camp inmates, the escape was organized by the Polish staff of the prison where she was kept[2]. After the escape she hid in a convent, working in a private home.
Sometime around 1957, she returned illegally to live with her sister in Munich. She died in Augsburg, Germany on January 26, 1974, at the age of 73.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Langefeld

[Helge]

For the subject of this post is interesting:
http://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obc ... &startsz=x

[steve248]

The photo cannot represent Langefeld. By 1945 she was already out of the KZ service as shown in the post about by Helge.
Therefore she was not Oberaufseherin at FKL Ravenasbrück or present in the camp at the time of the white busses in 1945 and talking to its organizer Count Bernadotte when the photo was apparently taken.

The Oberaufseherin at this time was Luise Brunner.

[Helge]

The photo cannot represent Langefeld. By 1945 she was already out of the KZ service as shown in the post about by Helge.
Therefore she was not Oberaufseherin at FKL Ravenasbrück or present in the camp at the time of the white busses in 1945 and talking to its organizer Count Bernadotte when the photo was apparently taken.

The Oberaufseherin at this time was Luise Brunner.

In April 1945, Johanna successfully negotiated the release of over 1.000 female concentration camp prisoners to the Swedish Red Cross via Denmark. This deal was only possible with Folke Bernadotte. Where in this encounter was not known. We have to verify because the thing is, as you say, not entirely sure.

[steve248]

According to Silke Schaefer's dissertation on FKL Ravensbrück - which can be found on the web - she quotes Margerete Buber-Neumann for what happened to Langefeld in 1944-1945. After appearing before a SS- und Polizeigericht in Breslau in 1944, she was acquitted but released from KZ service. She then spent the following months of 1945 until the end of the war living in Munich with her son and sister, and working for BMW.

Therefore the photo in question does not represent Johannes Langefeld.

For an indentification of the Oberaufseherin or Aufseherin talking to Bernadotte, why not forward it to Insa Eschebach, director of the Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück who can also be found on the web.

[Helge]

According to Silke Schaefer's dissertation on FKL Ravensbrück - which can be found on the web - she quotes Margerete Buber-Neumann for what happened to Langefeld in 1944-1945. After appearing before a SS- und Polizeigericht in Breslau in 1944, she was acquitted but released from KZ service. She then spent the following months of 1945 until the end of the war living in Munich with her son and sister, and working for BMW.

Therefore the photo in question does not represent Johannes Langefeld.

For an indentification of the Oberaufseherin or Aufseherin talking to Bernadotte, why not forward it to Insa Eschebach, director of the Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück who can also be found on the web.

I thank you for the advice: we'll soon know who the woman in the photograph.
Thanks Steve248.

Helge

[Helge]

This is the origin of the photo : http://collections.yadvashem.org/photos ... _2893.html

Name: Count Bernadotte Folke, Deputy President of the Swedish Red Cross (on the right), inspecting the transfer of survivors from camp Ravensbrueck to Sweden, April 1945
Belongs to collection: Yad Vashem Photo Archive

[Vikki]

I've moved the thread to the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes section, where it will be more likely to receive more information.

~Vikki