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Gertrud Heise was a female overseer and later an SS supervisor at several concentration camps during the Second World War.
Gertrud Heise was born in Berlin, Germany on July 23, 1921. She later married and became Gertrud Senff. In 1941, Gertrud volunteered for the SS Womens Auxiliary, and on November 21, 1941 she arrived at Ravensbruck for training.
In October 1942, Gertrud was one of several women, including Hermine Braunsteiner to arrive at the Majdanek camp near Lublin as an Aufseherin. Gertrud stayed in the camp until January 1944 when she accompanied a transport of women to the Plaszow, a small slave labor camp on the outskirts of Krakow. Soon after Gertrud was assigned to guard the death march to the Auschwitz Birkenau camp to the west. From there she guarded an evacuation train in October 1944 to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, Germany.
In November 1944, Gertrud Heise was promoted to Oberaufseherin and sent to the Obernheide subcamp of Neuengamme. There she, and commandant Hille commanded over 500 women, as well as six known SS women. We know of Irmentraut Reidel, Anita Schneider, Wilma Unmuth, a woman named Augusta, a woman named Kaete and a brutal woman overseer whom the prisoners referred to as 'Pferd.' Heise fled from Obernheide in April 1945 with the evacuation of the women prisoners to Bergen Belsen. Gertrud was later captured by British soldiers and interrogated. The young camp guard was then placed on trial for war crimes. On May 22, 1946 a British court handed her a sentence of seven years imprisonment for war crimes.
Further reading
- The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Concentration Camp System, by Daniel Patrick Brown.
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