In the Nazi concentration camp system, Ravensbrück was the camp built exclusively for women — and it also served as the main training ground for most female SS guards deployed to other camps across Europe. Irma Grese passed through here. Hermine Braunsteiner passed through here. Juana Bormann passed through here. But among all the women who served at Ravensbrück, one name was spoken by prisoners with particular horror: Dorothea Binz.
She did not arrive at Ravensbrück as a commander or officer. She arrived as a 19-year-old girl, the daughter of a domestic servant, looking for stable employment. Within just a few years, she became the most brutal female guard in the entire history of the camp — the woman prisoners called the “White Rose” for her coldly metallic beauty, and the “Golden Devil” for her blonde hair and heart that knew no mercy.
Dorothea Binz was hanged on May 2, 1947, at Hamelin Prison — the same place where Irma Grese and Juana Bormann had been executed two years earlier. She was 26 years old.
1. Origins: The Girl from the Brandenburg Forest
Dorothea Binz was born on March 16, 1921, in Peetsch, a small, remote village in the Brandenburg forest region of northern Germany. She was born into poverty — her father was a forestry worker, her mother a domestic servant. Nothing in her background hinted at what was to come.
She completed elementary school but had no opportunity for higher education. In her teenage years, she took on odd jobs locally. At that time, Nazi Germany was transforming the country — propaganda, Hitler Youth, and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM — League of German Girls) permeated every corner of life. Like millions of German girls of her generation, Dorothea grew up breathing that atmosphere.
In 1939, when Dorothea was 18, Ravensbrück concentration camp was built very close to her village of Peetsch — just a few kilometers from her home. The camp needed local staff. In 1939, Dorothea Binz applied for a job at Ravensbrück.
That decision changed everything.
2. Ravensbrück: The School of Evil
Ravensbrück concentration camp was located on Lake Schwedt, about 90 km north of Berlin. Built in 1939, it was the largest concentration camp for women in the Nazi system — a place that held prisoners from more than 40 countries, including Jewish women, Roma, political prisoners, women labeled “asocial,” and later prisoners of war.
During its operation from 1939 to 1945, an estimated 50,000 to 90,000 women died at Ravensbrück — from starvation, disease, medical experiments, and direct executions.
When Dorothea Binz began working there in 1939, she was a low-ranking employee — an SS-Aufseherin (female guard). But she learned quickly and rose rapidly.
The first thing Ravensbrück taught Dorothea Binz was dehumanization: prisoners were not people. They were numbers, labor units, objects to be used and discarded. The second lesson was: violence was the only language that mattered here.
Binz did not just learn these lessons — she internalized them until they became instinct.
3. Rise Through the Ranks: From Guard to Deputy Commander
In her early years at Ravensbrück, Binz stood out for her ruthless brutality — a quality highly valued by her SS superiors. She did not hesitate to beat prisoners, showed no emotion when witnessing suffering, and never questioned orders.
In 1943, at the age of 22, Dorothea Binz was promoted to Oberaufseherin (Chief Female Guard) — one of the highest positions a woman could achieve in the Nazi concentration camp system. She was responsible for supervising and coordinating the entire team of female guards at Ravensbrück — training them, assigning them, and setting the standards for how prisoners were treated.
In other words: Dorothea Binz was not only a torturer — she was the trainer of torturers.
It was at Ravensbrück, under Binz’s supervision or through training she directly provided, that women such as Irma Grese, Juana Bormann, and Hermine Braunsteiner learned how to become SS guards.
Binz also had a romantic relationship with Edmund Bräuning — an SS officer at Ravensbrück. This relationship did not soften her. If anything, it strengthened her position within the camp’s power structure.
4. “The Golden Devil”: Crimes and the Whip
The nickname prisoners gave Dorothea Binz — “Golden Devil” (Goldenes Teufel) — said it all. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a young and beautiful face — and inside, a coldness beyond measure.
According to the testimony of dozens of survivors at the postwar trials:
The leather whip was Binz’s signature weapon — she never went anywhere without it. She used it to strike prisoners in the face, back, and legs for the smallest reasons: walking out of line, not bowing low enough when greeting, or simply because she felt like hitting someone. Some witnesses described her whistling or quietly singing while beating people — as if it were a recreational activity.
The punishment block (Strafblock) at Ravensbrück was the place where Binz held complete control. Prisoners were sent there for official punishment — usually 25 to 75 lashes on the bare buttocks while lying face-down on a wooden bench, with other guards holding their limbs. Binz often stood watching — and sometimes carried out the punishment herself.
Polish prisoner Wanda Kiedrzyńska testified that she witnessed Binz beat an elderly woman to the ground, then continue kicking her when she could not stand up.
Other witnesses described Binz setting dogs on prisoners — a practice she shared with Juana Bormann, though it is mentioned less often.
In addition to direct violence, Binz participated in “selections” — deciding which prisoners would be sent to the gas chamber or given lethal injections. Especially in the final months of the war, when Ravensbrück installed a gas chamber and accelerated the killing, Binz was an indispensable part of that machinery.
One of the most clearly documented crimes was Binz’s involvement in the medical experiments at Ravensbrück — where SS doctors performed surgeries without anesthesia, bone transplants, and sulfonamide tests on living prisoners. Binz was not a doctor — but she was the one who selected prisoners for the experiments and maintained “order” during the procedures.
5. The Love Affair and the Painful Contrast
One of the most haunting details about Dorothea Binz is the stark contrast between her private life and her work.
While serving at Ravensbrück, Binz maintained a romantic relationship with SS officer Edmund Bräuning. According to accounts, it was a genuine relationship — they walked together around Lake Schwedt in the afternoons, dined together, and shared a personal life while tens of thousands of women were dying around them.
Some survivors described seeing Binz and Bräuning walking hand-in-hand along the camp fence — while on the other side of the wire, prisoners were collapsing from hunger and exhaustion. That contrast — love and death separated only by a fence — is an image many witnesses could never erase from their memories.
Bräuning was later tried for war crimes.
6. The Final Days of Ravensbrück
As the Soviet Red Army advanced into eastern Germany in early 1945, the SS panicked. At Ravensbrück, the final weeks before the Soviets arrived were the period of the most frenzied massacre — the SS tried to kill as many prisoners as possible to erase evidence.
The newly installed gas chamber operated at full capacity. Thousands were murdered in those final weeks. Binz continued “working” until the very end.
On April 30, 1945 — the same day Hitler committed suicide in Berlin — Ravensbrück was liberated by the Soviet Red Army. But Binz had left the camp a few days earlier, blending into the stream of refugees and retreating SS personnel heading west.
She was arrested by the British shortly afterward — without papers, without a clear identity. But surviving witnesses recognized her and confirmed her identity.
7. The Ravensbrück Trial: Facing the Past
The war crimes trials for Ravensbrück were conducted by the British military court in Hamburg in 1946 and 1947.
Dorothea Binz was a defendant in the first Ravensbrück Trial, which opened in December 1946. Along with her were 15 other defendants — doctors, guards, and SS officials who had served at the camp.
The courtroom was packed with witnesses. Women from Poland, France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands — survivors from across Europe — came to testify about what they had seen and endured.
Binz, 25 years old when the trial began, sat in the courtroom with a closed expression. Unlike Irma Grese — who defied the court with a cold stare — Binz looked tired and withdrawn. But she did not plead guilty and offered no apology.
Her defense was familiar: she was only following orders. She had no choice. She was just a small part of a larger system.
The court did not accept this. The evidence was overwhelming — dozens of witnesses had seen her beat people, set dogs on them, and participate in selections for death. She was not an anonymous cog in the machine — she was the Deputy Commander, directly responsible for the treatment of prisoners.
On February 3, 1947, the court delivered its verdict: Dorothea Binz was guilty. Sentence: death by hanging.
8. The Morning of May 2, 1947
On May 2, 1947, at Hamelin Prison — the same site where Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Juana Bormann had been executed — Dorothea Binz was led to the execution chamber.
She was 26 years old.
According to those present, Binz entered the execution room in silence. No final statement. No apology. No tears. Only the cold silence that the Ravensbrück survivors knew all too well.
Executed with her that day were several other defendants from the Ravensbrück trial — including SS doctors who had conducted medical experiments on prisoners.
Dorothea Binz was buried in an unmarked grave at the Hamelin Prison cemetery.
9. Legacy: The Trainer of Other Devils
What set Dorothea Binz apart from most other female SS guards was not only the level of her personal brutality — but her role in shaping the next generation.
As Oberaufseherin at Ravensbrück — the main training camp for female SS guards — Dorothea Binz directly or indirectly influenced hundreds of women who passed through Ravensbrück on their way to other camps. When Irma Grese was trained at Ravensbrück before going to Auschwitz, Binz was already Oberaufseherin. When Juana Bormann and Hermine Braunsteiner passed through Ravensbrück, Binz was there.
She did not just commit crimes. She spread crime — turning it into the standard, the procedure, the culture of the system.
Conclusion: The White Rose and Thorns of Steel
Prisoners called Dorothea Binz the “White Rose” — because of her beauty, her blonde hair, and her youthful face. But like all roses, she had thorns — and those thorns were made of the cold steel of the SS system.
The story of Dorothea Binz reminds us that evil does not need a monstrous face. It can wear the face of a 19-year-old girl from a remote village looking for a steady job. And once the system has taught her to see her fellow humans as objects — once violence has become a daily habit — the boundary between human and monster is erased beyond repair.
Ravensbrück today is a memorial site (Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück). Every year, thousands visit — to remember those who died, and to remind themselves that it happened, that ordinary people did it, and that vigilance is the price of freedom.
Dorothea Binz’s name is not engraved on any monument. But the names of the victims — tens of thousands of women from across Europe — are carefully preserved in records and memory, as proof that they existed, that they deserved to be remembered, and that what happened to them must never be allowed to happen again.
This article is based on the records of the Ravensbrück Trials (1946–1947), archival materials from the Ravensbrück Memorial Center, and historical works by Nikolaus Wachsmann, Sarah Helm (“If This Is a Woman”), and Wendy Lower (“Hitler’s Furies”). The content is entirely educational and historical in nature