Anna Hempel - Bestial Nazi Guard
at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp - Holocaust - World War 2

23 July 2022

Category: Female Nazi Guards

Anna Hempel was born on the 22nd of June 1900, in Grünberg, then part of the German Empire and in May 1944 she started a three-week course at Ravensbrück concentration camp in order to become a guard.

Ravensbrück, opened in May 1939, was the only major women's camp established by the Nazis. In total, some 132,000 women from all over Europe passed through the camp, including Poles, Russians, Jews, Gypsies, and others. Of that number, over 92,000 women perished. About 3,500 women were trained at Ravensbrück and went on to serve either there or at other concentration camps.From Ravensbrück Anna Hempel was sent to Grünberg which was a sub camp of the larger concentration camp system known as Gross-Rosen. The camp was used for forced labor and the female prisoners worked in the textile and munitions factories. Because in the early 1945 the bombing from the Allied powers was getting closer, the female inmates of Grünberg were taken on a death march on the 28th of January. In freezing cold, the poor women had to march without shoes, having their feet wrapped in rags. Their possessions consisted of a thin blanket, a tin bowl and a spoon. Each received a hunk of bread to eat.

From Grünberg to Bergen Belsen

After more than 3 weeks, on the 17th of February 1945, Anna Hempel together with prisoners from Grünberg arrived in Bergen Belsen concentration camp which was a camp for sick people. At Bergen Belsen, Hempel had two days off duty. Then for two days she worked in the bath-house. At Bergen Belsen, Anna Hempel was known as a cruel and sadistic guard. When it seemed to her that the prisoners were slacking, she woud beat them terribly. Hempel‘s reign of terror ended on the 8th of April 1945 shen she was taken ill with typhus and went to the hospital in the Wehrmacht Barracks Area at Belsen.

7 days later on the 15th of April, the British 11th Armored Division liberated Bergen-Belsen and Anna Hempel was arrested. She was tried at the Belsen Trial which began on the 17th of September 1945. The British Military tribunal found Anna Hempel guilty of the crimes she had committed at Bergen Belsen and sentenced her to 10 years imprisonment. Unlike Irma Grese, she avoided the death sentence and, at the end, spent only 6 years in prison until she was released in April, 1951. Nothing more is known either about her remaining life or of how she died.

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