Kaethe Hoern

Who is Kaethe Hoern?

Kaethe Hoern was a female supervisor at two Nazi concentration camps from 1944 until April 1945.

Many details about Hoern are unknown, though it is known she was born in Germany. In 1944, she arrived at Ravensbrück to begin her training as a female SS guard. She trained under Dorothea Binz, and soon became known among the female overseers as a "leader type." In the summer of 1944, Hoern was given the title of Oberaufseherin in Ravensbrück, and assigned as head wardress to the Buchenwald subcamp near Allendorf, Germany. There she commanded up to fifty SS Aufseherin at one time, as well as over 400 women prisoners. In April 1945, she fled Allendorf.

In 1947 the U.S. Military Tribunal tried the former head camp wardress for war crimes. One survivor pointed out how she would beat sick prisoners to make them work and punched one inmate in her ear to wake her up. Eventually she served seven years in prison for the maltreatment of concentration camp prisoners.