Bormann, Johanna “Wiesel” or “Weasel”.

Bormann, Johanna “Wiesel”, born 10-09-1893 in Birkenfelde, East Prussia. Little is known about her childhood and education. She was then still an ordinary German girl, living in anonymity and not yet realizing that Germany was on the eve of a terrible period. According to a number of sources, Bormann was very religious and came from a very religious family. She is even said to have worked as a missionary for a while, although no clear evidence of this was ever found. She was then still an ordinary German girl, living in anonymity and not yet realizing that Germany was on the eve of a terrible period. In any case, she did not join the SS until 1938, in her middle age. In her own words, she did this ‘to earn a little more money’.

She, at the age of 45, became a prison guard at several Nazi concentration camps, and was executed as a war criminal at Hameln after a trial in 1945. In any case, she did not join the SS until 1938, in middle age  Bormann was already 45 at the time, a notable difference with most other camp guards who, like Irma Grese and Binz, Dorothea “Theodora”, were very young. At her trial, Bormann said she had joined the Auxiliary SS ” to earn more money”. She first served as a kitchen assistant at the Lichtenburg concentration camp, in Lichtenburg, Saxony under SS Oberaufseherin Gerda “Jane” Bernigau with 49 other SS women. In February 1945 Bernigau accompanied male SS leaders from Gross Rosen to Reichenau, where she fled from during May 1945 and was never prosecuted for war crimes. After the war she lived in West Germany and according to the German historian Isabell Sprenger, Bernigau was several times interrogated by the authorities, for the last time in 1976. In 1939, Johanna Bormann was assigned to oversee a work crew at the new Ravensbrück women’s camp near Berlin. In March 1942, Bormann was one of a handful of women selected for guard duty at Auschwitz in Poland. Short in stature, she was a small and slim woman, but full of aggression and cruelty. Prisoners were beaten, beaten and abused with the regularity of the clock. She was constantly accompanied by her large dogs and created devilish pleasure in releasing the animals from the defenseless prisoners. was known for her cruelty. Victims called her “Wiesel” and “the woman with the dogs.” The nickname ‘the woman with the dogs’ did not come out of the blue. Bormann loved to let her large German Shepherd loose on the prisoners. She was therefore rarely seen without the company of the animals. The prisoners knew that at any time, just because she felt like it, she could decide to have her dogs attacked. Countless prisoners were horribly beaten and mutilated by the large dogs. In at least two cases, the victims did not survive.

In October 1942, Bormann went to Auschwitz-Birkenau as an Aufseherin. Her supervisors included  Maria Mandel.  Mandl was hanged on 24-01-1948, aged 36,  Margot Drexler, and Irma Grese,   Johanna was eventually moved to Budy, a nearby sub camp where she continued her abuse on the prisoners. In 1944, as German losses mounted, Bormann was transferred to the auxiliary camp at Hindenburg in Silesia. In January 1945, she returned to Ravensbrück. In March she arrived at her last post, Bergen-Belsen, near Celle, where she served under Josef Kramer , Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath   (all of whom had served with her in Birkenau.)

After the war, several survivors testified that Bormann regularly designated and selected prisoners for the gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Dora Silberberg, a Polish man of Jewish origin, survived the hell of Bergen-Belsen. She later testified about the cruelty of Johanna Bormann. One day her friend Rachella Silberstein had been too sick and weakened to go to work. But that was not included in Bormann:

Bormann was the supervisor that day. When she saw that my girlfriend was sitting down, she resolutely approached her and snarled her to go to work. She was too sick to even respond. I tried to explain to her that Rachella was unable to work because of the severe pain. Bormann looked at me and suddenly hit me straight in the face with a clenched fist. I felt the teeth come loose in my mouth. She barked at me that I had to go back to work.

But that wasn’t enough. She let go of her huge dog on my girlfriend. The beast took her by the legs in his mouth and dragged her around the entire workshop, until she lost consciousness. In the evening she was carried away and taken to the hospital bar. The next morning I learned from a security guard that my girlfriend was dead. ”

On 15-04-1945, the British army took Bergen-Belsen, finding over 10,000 corpses and 60,000 survivors. Anne Frank, her sister Margot and their mother died in Bergen Belsen.

Death and burial ground of Bormann, Johanna “Wiesel” or “Weasel”.

The liberators forced all SS personnel to carry the dead. Bormann was later incarcerated and interrogated by the military, then prosecuted at the Belsen Trial, which lasted from 17-09-1945 to 17-11-1945. The court heard testimony relating to murders she had committed at Auschwitz and Belsen, sometimes unleashing her “big bad wolfhound” German shepherd on helpless prisoners. She was found guilty and hanged (along with Grese and Volkenrath) on 13-12-1945. Her executioner, Albert Pierrepoint

  , later wrote, “She limped down the corridor looking old and haggard. She was 42 years old (actual age, 52), standing only a little over five feet. She was trembling as she was put on the scale. In German she said: ‘I have my feelings’

The British judge, Major General Horatio Pettus Mackintosh Berney-Ficklin  who feared German martyrdom, ordered that Irma and the other hanged were buried in the Hamelin prison yard.

In 1954 Irma Grese is reburied in holy ground at Am Wehl Cemetery. The graveyard had graves with crosses but after many discussions about the Neo Nazi visits, on 05-03-1986 all 200 Iron Crosses were removed and the graveside is now a grass field. General Berney-Ficklin retired from the army on 14-01-1948, due to disability. He moved with his new wife, the daughter of a Russian General, to Cape Town, South Africa, where he died on 17-02-1961, at the age of 68

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