The SS included within its ranks female volunteers who guarded female inmates at the concentration and death camps. Relatively few in number, these women sometimes exceeded their male counterparts in cruelty.

Irma Grese, nicknamed the "Belle of Auschwitz," became a guard as a teenager and rose through the hierarchy to oversee nearly 20,000 women prisoners. Grese took special pleasure in watching the doctors at Auschwitz perform disfiguring surgeries on women.

The Ravensbrück, Germany, concentration camp for women contained a training camp to prepare women to become camp supervisors. Some 3500 women who trained at Ravensbrück served as guards there or at other camps. Hildegard Mende (pictured) worked at Theresienstadt. While a few guards exhibited kindness toward their prisoners, most followed the harsh camp rules, and beat and humiliated their prisoners. Few sought to intercede on inmates' behalf. Some guards even competed with one another in cruelty, believing that was the route to promotion and respect from their male superiors.

One prisoner reported that women were even worse than men in commanding their dogs to brutally attack inmates. Another prisoner attested that a female guard requested permission to watch the gassings at Auschwitz, a pastime she particularly enjoyed.
Photo: Terezin Memorial Museum / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive