Among the thousands of German Nazi war criminals, the vast majority were men. But a small number of women voluntarily entered the system of extermination — and became just as brutal as any SS man. Hermine Braunsteiner was one of them. She was not a doctor like Mengele, nor a commandant like Höss. She was merely a female camp guard — yet what she did at Majdanek is seared into the memory of hundreds of survivors.
What makes Hermine Braunsteiner’s story different from most Nazi war criminals is not only the level of brutality she inflicted, but also what happened afterward: she disappeared, married an American, and lived a normal life in a quiet New York suburb for nearly two decades — until justice finally caught up with her.
1. Origins: From Factory Worker to SS Female Guard
Hermine Braunsteiner was born on July 16, 1919, in Vienna, Austria, into an ordinary working-class family. Her father was a laborer; the family had no notable background — no signs of extremism, no history of violence. She grew up in interwar Vienna, a city where the rise of fascism gradually seeped into everyday life.
After Germany’s annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in 1938, the Nazi regime took full control. Hermine, then 19 and working as a factory worker in Vienna, volunteered in 1939 to join the SS-Aufseherinnen — the SS female guard corps. She was not forced; she saw it as an opportunity to escape the monotony of factory life and gain a position of power.
She was sent to Ravensbrück — the women’s concentration camp in northern Germany — which served as the main training center for female SS guards. There, the SS-Aufseherinnen learned to treat prisoners not as human beings but as Untermenschen (“subhumans”) who needed to be controlled through violence and fear. Hermine did not just learn — she excelled. SS records noted her as “disciplined” and “unhesitating in the performance of her duties.”
In 1941, she was promoted and transferred to the place with which her name would forever be linked: Majdanek concentration camp.
2. Majdanek – Hell on the Edge of a City
Majdanek concentration camp (official name: KL Lublin) was located right on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland — one of the few extermination camps situated so close to a populated area that city residents could see the smoke from the crematoria. Unlike Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was in a remote region, Majdanek existed in plain sight — making the cruelty there even more shocking.
Hermine Braunsteiner arrived at Majdanek in 1941 and quickly became one of the most feared female guards in the entire Nazi concentration camp system.
What survivors testified in court:
Braunsteiner carried a leather whip and used it constantly — striking prisoners in the face, chest, and back with mechanical coldness. She needed no reason. If a prisoner walked too slowly, she beat them. If a prisoner did not bow their head quickly enough, she beat them.
But what earned her the nickname “The Mad Mare” (Das Stutenpferd) was an act described independently by multiple witnesses: she would stomp on prisoners with her hobnailed boots — especially those who had fallen or could not stand. The heavy, steel-studded SS jackboots became instruments of execution.
According to numerous witness statements at later trials:
- She dragged children from their mothers’ arms and threw them onto trucks headed for the gas chambers.
- She personally escorted groups of prisoners into the “disinfection” rooms — a euphemism for gas chambers.
- She beat pregnant women until they miscarried.
- One witness testified that she stomped a woman to death in front of other prisoners as a deterrent display.
At Majdanek, more than 60,000 people were murdered during the camp’s operation — by gassing, starvation, disease, and direct violence. Hermine Braunsteiner was present and actively participated in that killing machine.
3. The Collapse of the Reich and Her Disappearance
When the Soviet Red Army advanced into Poland in 1944, the SS began evacuating the camps and destroying evidence. Majdanek was liberated on July 23, 1944 — the first Nazi extermination camp to be liberated during World War II, with intact evidence that allowed the world to see the truth.
Hermine Braunsteiner managed to retreat before the Soviets arrived. She was captured by the British after the war and tried in Austria in 1946 — but only for crimes at Ravensbrück, not Majdanek. She was sentenced to three years in prison and released in 1950.
After her release, Hermine Braunsteiner vanished from the reach of justice. She returned to normal life, worked, and in 1958 met Russell Ryan — an American working in Austria — and married him. The couple moved to Maspeth, Queens, New York, where Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan became an ordinary neighbor in an ordinary neighborhood — a friendly middle-aged woman who chatted with neighbors, tended her flower garden, and attended church.
No one knew who she was. No one knew what those hands had done.
4. The Nazi Hunter: Simon Wiesenthal and the Pursuit
Without Simon Wiesenthal — the world’s most famous Nazi hunter and himself a Holocaust survivor — Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan might have died peacefully in Queens.
Wiesenthal, through his information network, uncovered leads about a former Majdanek female guard living in the United States. In 1964, he contacted The New York Times and provided details of Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan’s identity.
Times reporter Joseph Lelyveld went to her home in Maspeth. In a brief doorstep interview, Hermine Ryan did not deny her past. She merely said she had “done her duty” and that it was all long ago.
The article was published. A wave of outrage followed. But the legal issues were far more complicated than simply locating her: Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan was now a U.S. citizen. To try her in West Germany, the U.S. government first had to strip her of citizenship — an unprecedented step.
5. Historic Precedent: Denaturalization and Extradition
The case of Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan became one of the most important legal cases in U.S. history regarding Nazi war criminals.
In 1971, the U.S. Department of Justice formally sued to revoke her citizenship on the grounds that she had concealed her SS past when applying for naturalization. In 1973, a federal court ruled to strip Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan of her U.S. citizenship — the first time in American history that a citizen was denaturalized for Nazi war crimes.
In 1973, she was extradited to West Germany — the first extradition from the U.S. to Germany for Holocaust-related crimes.
6. The Düsseldorf Trial: Justice Delayed
The trial of Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan and her accomplices took place in Düsseldorf, West Germany, from 1975 to 1981 — lasting nearly six years and involving hundreds of witnesses.
It was one of the longest and most complex war crimes trials in postwar West German history.
Survivors — many in their 50s, 60s, and 70s when they testified — stood before the court and described what they had witnessed more than 30 years earlier. Many wept. Some could not finish their statements. But all were consistent: Hermine Braunsteiner had directly participated in murder.
The main charges against her:
- Personally escorting hundreds of children and women into the gas chambers at Majdanek.
- Beating prisoners to death with whips and boots.
- Participating in “selections” (Selektion) — deciding who would live and who would die.
Braunsteiner, then aged 55 to 61, sat in the courtroom with a cold expression. She denied some charges and continued to argue that she had only “followed orders.”
On June 30, 1981, the court delivered its verdict: Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder as a principal — directly linked to the deaths of at least 1,000 people at Majdanek.
7. Final Years and Death
Hermine Braunsteiner served her sentence in a West German prison. In 1996, after 15 years, she was released on health grounds — she suffered from severe diabetes and had a leg amputated.
She spent her final years in a nursing home in Bochum, Germany. She died on April 19, 1999, at the age of 79. There was no public expression of remorse. No apology was ever offered to the victims’ families.
Her husband, Russell Ryan, stood by her throughout the trial and imprisonment. He died before her.
8. Why This Story Still Matters
Hermine Braunsteiner’s story is not just about one war criminal — it is about escape, the silence of systems, and the persistence of justice.
First: the banality of evil. Braunsteiner did not come from a criminal family or have a history of violence. She was an ordinary factory worker. This forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: under certain circumstances, ordinary people can commit acts of extraordinary cruelty.
Second: disappearance and reintegration. For two decades, Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan lived as an ordinary neighbor in New York. Her neighbors described her as “kind.” This reminds us that evil leaves no visible mark — and that a person’s past cannot be judged by their outward appearance.
Third: the power of persistence. Simon Wiesenthal devoted his life to hunting war criminals not for revenge, but for a simple principle: “Justice delayed is not justice denied.” The Braunsteiner case proves that.
Fourth: legal precedent. The case established a precedent allowing the United States to denaturalize and extradite Nazi war criminals hiding on American soil — paving the way for many subsequent prosecutions through the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).
Conclusion: When Justice Has No Statute of Limitations
Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan nearly escaped justice. She rebuilt her life, had a husband, a home, and beloved neighbors. For more than 20 years, she succeeded in becoming invisible — erasing the image of the female guard with heavy boots and a whip at Majdanek.
But the memories of the survivors did not fade. Their testimonies — carefully recorded and preserved over decades — finally caught up with her in Queens, New York.
The Düsseldorf trial could not bring back those who died at Majdanek. It could not erase the memories of the survivors. But it sent a clear message: crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. No distance is too great. No marriage, citizenship, or length of time is long enough to hide them.
The Mad Mare of Majdanek was caught. But the question she left behind — how an ordinary person becomes a monster — remains for every generation to answer for itself.
This article is based on the Düsseldorf trial records (1975–1981), documents from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and historical works by Raul Hilberg, Hannah Arendt, and other Holocaust scholars. The content is purely educational and historical.