The Number of Female Guards in Nazi Concentration Camps: A Reconstruction

Abstract

In the vast majority of Nazi concentration camps where female prisoners were kept not only men, members of the SS Death’s Head Units, but also women were present performing a duty of matrons (Aufseherin). The latter were not members of the SS formally, thus representing an intermediate category between the camp commandant and the prisoners themselves. This issue, until recently, has remained outside of scholars’ attention as well the complex of topics related to women in camps on the whole. The article presents the results of a reconstruction of the number of female supervising staff in Nazi concentration camps. It is true that similar attempts have already been made by scholars before, however, the latter have faced a number of difficulties of an empirical and methodological nature. Thus, the statistics appearing in present-day literature are limited by certain chronological or geographic boundaries, tending to estimate and approximate. A comprehensive approach, which involves a wide range of published and unpublished archival materials related to the majority of concentration camps and sub-camps established during 1938–1945, has been employed for the first time not only in Russian but also in foreign historiography.

Keywords

• нацистская Германия
• СС
• концентрационный лагерь
• надзирательница
• Равенсбрюк
• Освенцим
• Флоссенбург
• Нейенгамме.