Hildegard Lächert

Who was Hildegard Lächert?

Hildegard Martha Lächert was a notorious female guard, Aufseherin, at several German World War II concentration camps. She became publicly known for her service at Ravensbrück, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war she spent 27 years in prison altogether for her brutal treatment of inmates during her camp service.

In October 1942, at the age of 22, Hildegard Lächert, a German nurse, was called to serve at Majdanek as an Aufseherin. In 1944, after the birth of her third child, Lächert went on to serve at Auschwitz concentration camp. The ruthless overseer fled the camp in December 1944 ahead of the advancing Red Army. There are reports that her last overseeing jobs were at Bolzano, a detention camp in northern Italy, and at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.

In November 1947, the former SS woman appeared in a Kraków, Poland courtroom, along with 40 other SS guards in the Auschwitz Trial. Lächert sat next to three other former SS women, Alice Orlowski, Therese Brandl and Luise Danz. Because of her war crimes at Auschwitz and Płaszów, the former guard and mother of two surviving children was given a sentence of 15 years in prison. Lächert was released in 1956 from a Kraków prison. In 1975, the German government decided to try 16 former SS guards from the Majdanek concentration camp. Lächert was one of them, along with Hermine Braunsteiner and Alice Orlowski. From November 26, 1975, until June 30, 1981, the accused were tried in a Düsseldorf courtroom.