Maria Mandl (, ; sometimes erroneously spelled Mandel; 10 January 1912 – 24 January 1948) was an Austrian-born Holocaust perpetrator and convicted war criminal. From 1942 until her arrest in 1945, she served as the (camp leader) at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. She also held positions at the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück camps as (overseer) and (head overseer), respectively.
Mandl was born in Münzkirchen, Austria-Hungary, into a middle-class Catholic family affiliated with the Christian Social Party (CSP). Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, she moved to Munich and found work as an at the Lichtenburg concentration camp. There, she subjected prisoners to fatal beatings and floggings. In 1939, she was transferred to Ravensbrück, where she was promoted to . She oversaw the training program for prospective and worked alongside Dorothea Binz in the camp's punishment block. Mandl's final promotion came in 1942, when she was transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau and given the position of under the command of Rudolf Höss. As the Red Army advanced toward the Auschwitz complex in late 1944, Mandl was transferred to the Mettenheim camp. In May 1945, as the United States Air Force invaded and bombed the area, Mandl fled with her lover, Walter Adolf Langleist, and a Jewish prisoner known as Mose. After evading arrest for three months, Mandl and Langleist were apprehended by the American military police in August 1945 at Langleist's home in Hof.
Mandl was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków in December 1947. Based on the number of death lists she signed, it is believed that she had been complicit in the deaths of approximately 500,000 prisoners during her tenure at Birkenau. In January 1948, she was executed by hanging at the age of thirty-six. Her last words were "" ("Poland lives").
Early life
Maria Mandl was born at 10:00 pm on 10 January 1912 in Münzkirchen, Austria-Hungary, into a middle-class Catholic family. She was raised on a farm, which was regarded by locals as the largest in the municipality, and had three older siblings: Georg, Anna, and Aloisia. Her father, Franz Mandl, was a shoemaker who worked out of his own shop and was opposed to the Nazi Party, instead supporting the Christian Social Party (CSP). Her mother, Anna Streibl, was a housewife who suffered from depressive episodes and had a nervous breakdown during Mandl's childhood. In the 2014 documentary Pechmarie: The Life of Maria Mandl, former Münzkirchen mayor Martin Zauner described the Mandls as "a good, Catholic family" who were "definitely against the Third Reich".
On 20 July 1924, at the age of twelve, Mandl was withdrawn from school without completing an exit exam to help on the family farm. In 1927, she was admitted to a Catholic boarding school in Neuhaus am Inn, from which she graduated. A former classmate of Mandl's, Paula Bauer, described her as having been "cheerful" and "very nice". After graduating in 1930, Mandl struggled to find work locally, prompting her to move to Brig, Switzerland, where she found a position as a housekeeper and cook for thirteen months. She eventually became homesick and returned to Münzkirchen to live with her parents. In 1934, she found work as a chambermaid at a private villa in Innsbruck, but in 1936 once again returned home due to her parents' declining health. That same year, she was hired at the local post office and became engaged to a soldier.
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Mandl's engagement ended, and she lost her job at the post office. As a Third Reich soldier, her fiancé believed that her family's affiliation with the CSP could harm his reputation and affect his chances of finding employment in the civil service in the future. Mandl had been fired from her job for similar reasons; her family was openly opposed to the Third Reich, and she herself had no allegiance to the Nazi Party.
Employment in concentration camps Lichtenburg (1938–1939) In September 1938, Mandl moved to Munich to live with her uncle, a police constable, with the intention of having him get her a position in the police force. None were available, however, and he instead encouraged her to apply for the position of at the Lichtenburg concentration camp in Prettin. Mandl would later claim after her 1945 arrest that she had only taken the job because the salary was higher than that of a nurse, and that she had known "nothing" about concentration camps.
Mandl began working at the camp on 15 October. She completed a training program structured around Nazi ideology and took a twenty-question exam on geography, history, and dates significant to the Nazi Party. During her first three months as , she was under the supervision of an experienced guard. Mandl had undergone training with her cousin, Maria Gruber, but the latter resigned early on because she was disgusted by the violence at the camp.
Mandl worked under Max Koegel and Johanna Langefeld. According to testimonies from survivors Emilie Neu and Lina Haag, Mandl subjected prisoners to whippings, beatings, and strenuous exercises—a practice referred to as "sport" in both victim and perpetrator accounts. In one incident, Mandl struck a prisoner repeatedly with a metal key until she lost consciousness, then dragged her across the camp and put her in a solitary cell. Another survivor, unnamed, recalled an encounter with Mandl when the woman was still new. The survivor had told the latter that she was "too pretty to play supervisor," to which Mandl replied, "No I swore the oath to the , I'm staying".
Ravensbrück (1939–1942) On 15 May 1939, Mandl was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she continued to work under Koegel and Langefeld. She assisted with roll calls, overseeing work details, and handling attack dogs. Whilst stationed at work details, Mandl was known to have physically and verbally abused prisoners if she believed them to be working too slowly. She also took on a leading role in the camp's training program upon its official designation as the training site for prospective . In the summer of 1939, she trained Hermine Braunsteiner, who later described Mandl as having been "very strict" and "unfavorable" during her training, recalling instances Mandl hit prisoners.
In early 1940, Mandl, along with Dorothea Binz, was assigned to the on-camp jail referred to as the "cell block" or "punishment block". It was here that prisoners were flogged, receiving twenty-five strikes on their buttocks. Austrian survivor Marko Feingold later recalled how he and his brother endured this abuse five times per day, receiving twenty-five strikes every time. In an interrogation following her arrest, Mandl claimed that prisoners in the block were only kept in cells for up to a month and were provided with coffee and bread every day. However, survivors' testimonies contradict this statement, describing how food had been withheld.
In 1941, Mandl became a member of the National Socialist Women's League. In April 1942, she was promoted to the rank of following Langefeld's transfer to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in March, as the latter had been unable to maintain "brutality and structure" within the camp.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau (1942–1944)
In October 1942, Mandl was sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where she succeeded Langefeld in rank for the second time upon being promoted to the position of . She resided in on-camp housing, with gynecologist Carl Clauberg as her neighbor. In this position, her only superior was Rudolf Höss, who regarded her highly. On 27 March 1944, he gave her a salary increase of 100 as well as control of all the female subcamps in the Auschwitz complex, including Hindenburg O.S., Lichtewerden, and Rajsko. During this period, Mandl promoted Irma Grese to the position of and appointed Therese Brandl as her secretary. In November, Mandl was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class.
The cruelty Mandl had subjected prisoners to in Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück continued. At Birkenau, when new prisoners arrived, she used a cane to extract expensive items and jewelry hidden in women's vaginas. She took these items back with her to Münzkirchen when visiting her family and kept them hidden inside a drawer. According to survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Mandl would stand in front of the camp's front gate whilst prisoners were lined up. If a prisoner made eye contact with her, they were removed from the line and killed. She also tested prisoners returning from outside work details by holding a cane fifty centimeters above the ground and forcing every person to jump over it. Those who succeeded were allowed to proceed to roll call, while those who failed were sent to the gas chamber. Moreover, survivor Regina Lebensfeldová-Hofstädterová, who had been a typist in the camp's political department, stated that Mandl referred to prisoners as (dung beetles). Over the next two years, Mandl signed death lists on a weekly basis and partook in selections alongside SS doctors.
Mandl provided care to a select few children in Birkenau, giving them extra food and engaging them in activities like dancing and singing. Survivor Ella Lingens-Reiner has attested to this, having recalled witnessing two children leaving Mandl's office with cookies and chocolate. Lingens-Reiner has also stated that Mandl once asked a pregnant German prisoner to give her the child after its birth, because she herself was not able to have children. Her alleged infertility has since been suggested as an explanation as to why she behaved differently towards the children at the camp. Conversely, she had also carried a two-year-old Polish boy to be killed in the gas chamber herself after having clothed and fed him for several days.
The Women's Orchestra and Alma Rosé
In April 1943, Mandl, with Franz Hössler, began organizing the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz after seeing the success of men's orchestras in the main camp. Mandl instructed block leaders and other prisoners assigned to internal work details, such as in the political unit, to recruit prisoners who could play an instrument. Zofia Czajkowska, who had been a music teacher, was chosen by Mandl to be the orchestra's first conductor, partly because her surname sounded like "Tchaikovsky".
The orchestra performed at the entrance of Birkenau as prisoners left for and returned from work details. The orchestra also performed in the hospital block and in the showers. Concerts were also held for SS members every Sunday for the camp personnel. During the winter season, members of the orchestra were not required to stand outside for roll calls and were instead counted inside their barracks. They were also allowed to shower daily and were given proper bedding, as well as tables to eat on. For concerts, women were given uniforms consisting of a dark blue skirt, white blouse, black stockings, and a gray-and-blue striped jacket made from the material of their prison uniforms. By the end of June, the orchestra had grown to twenty members, and by 1944, it had reached its peak of forty-two.