Hildegard Lächert
- Sadistic Nazi Guard in Majdanek & Auschwitz Concentration Camps - Holocaust-WW2

4 April 2022

Category: Female Nazi Guards

Hildegard Lächert was 22 when she started her infamous career as a guard in Majdanek concentration camp in October 1942. In Majdanek, Lächert was known as the “ bloody Brigitte “ because she used to beat the prisoners until blood appeared. Hildegard Lächert was accused of incredible atrocities. Among her numerous victims some were even small children. At first, Lächert acted kindly to them offering them candy with a sweet voice. Then she would throw them on a truck going into gas chamber without remorse.

Lächert also participated in selections of female prisoners for gas chambers. In August 1943 she left Majdanek and later worked in Płaszów and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. After the war, Hildegard Lächert was captured and tried at the Auschwitz trial where she finally faced justice for her inhuman crimes but unlike her colleagues such as Maria Mandl, she was not sentenced to death but 15 years imprisonment.

The Third Majdanek trial

Her 15 years imprisonment lasted only 10 years as she was released from prison in 1957 and allegedly became a cleaning lady in a brothel. Her dark past never stopped haunting her. Alongside Alice Orlowski and Hermine Braunsteiner, Lächert faced the Third Majdanek trial held between 1975 and 1981 for the crimes she had committed during the war. She was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, but she never had to serve this sentence as her 10 years imprisonment in Poland and 5 years she spent in custody awaiting the trial were allowed for. She died in Berlin in 1995 of natural causes at the age of 75.

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