Luise Danz

Luise Danz in 1947.

Luise Danz (born December 11, 1917) was a Nazi German concentration camp guard in World War II. She was born in Walldorf (Werra) in Thuringia. Danz was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on August 20, 1957.

Camp work

On January 24, 1943, at the age of 25, Danz was conscripted as an SS-Aufseherin within the Nazi concentration camp system at Ravensbrück. She served as guard in several camps in occupied Poland, such as at Majdanek (1943-April 1944), Kraków-Płaszów (April 1944), Auschwitz-Birkenau (May 1944-January 1945) and also at Malchow (subcamp of Ravensbrück). In 1943 she received an award from Nazi Germany for her camp service. From 1 March 1943, she completed a three-week course on guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and was on March 22, 1943 in the concentration camp Majdanek added. There she oversaw the women's camp work details in the tailoring, the camp kitchen, the nursery and in the clothing store. During the evacuation of Majdanek at the end of April 1944 Danz was in the Plaszow concentration camp. Halina Nelken remembered her in Plaszow: "Danz, tall, slender, and with a gaunt, boyish face was a specialist in punching jaws with her fist and at the same time bringing her knee up into a stomach. The woman she was mistreating fainted immediately."

Capture and trials for war crimes

At the end of the war in 1945, Danz tried to slip into obscurity, but was discovered, captured and arrested on 1 June 1945 in Lützow and put to justice at the Auschwitz Trial by Poland for crimes she had committed while on duty in the vast German camp system. At her 1947 trial she was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was then released early in 1956 after serving nine years.

See also

• Female guards in Nazi concentration camps