Among the women tried at the Belsen Trial in 1945, Juana Bormann was the one whom even the other female SS guards feared. She was not tall or young like Irma Grese, nor did she hold a command position like Hermine Braunsteiner. She was merely a low-ranking female guard — small, middle-aged, almost invisible within the system. Yet what she did with her trained dogs left a deeper mark on the memories of survivors than almost anything else.
Juana Bormann was hanged on December 13, 1945 — on the same day and the same gallows as Irma Grese at Hamelin Prison. She was 52 years old. Until her final moments, she never understood why she had to die.
1. Origins: The Invisible Woman
Juana Bormann was born on September 10, 1893, in Bialutten, a small village in East Prussia (now Poland). She came from a poor farming family, received little education, and spent most of her youth performing ordinary manual labor.
Unlike Irma Grese — who joined the SS while still young, full of ambition and fanaticism — Juana Bormann joined the SS-Aufseherinnen (female guard corps) in 1938, when she was already 45 years old. Her motivation was not political ideology or a thirst for power. According to SS records, she joined simply for the salary and job security — things that a single, uneducated, middle-aged woman found difficult to obtain elsewhere.
This is what makes Juana Bormann’s story particularly thought-provoking: she was not a fanatical believer. She was an ordinary working woman — someone who took this job the same way she might have taken any other.
She was trained at Ravensbrück — the same training school for female SS guards as Grese and Braunsteiner — and was subsequently deployed to various camps within the Nazi system.
2. Journey Through the Death Camps
During her seven years of SS service, Juana Bormann passed through a series of concentration and extermination camps:
- Ravensbrück (1938–1942): Where she received her training and began her career as a guard. It was here that she learned how to handle trained dogs — a skill that later became the “signature” of her crimes.
- Auschwitz-Birkenau (1943–1944): She served at the largest and deadliest camp in the Nazi system. At Auschwitz, she began to develop the habits that witnesses would describe for decades afterward — releasing dogs to attack prisoners arbitrarily, for no reason at all.
- Bergen-Belsen (1944–1945): Her final posting — and the place where her crimes were most thoroughly documented before the Allies arrived.
3. “The She-Wolf”: Crimes and the Dogs
The nickname “The She-Wolf” (Die Wölfin) that prisoners gave Juana Bormann was not because she was fierce or physically imposing. It was because of the dogs.
Bormann always kept one or two SS-trained dogs with her — usually German Shepherds or Dobermans trained to attack on command. For most SS guards, dogs were tools for control and deterrence. For Bormann, they were weapons of entertainment.
According to the testimony of many survivors at the Belsen Trial:
Bormann would release her dogs to attack prisoners for no reason whatsoever. Someone walking too slowly — dogs released. Someone daring to look her in the eye — dogs released. Someone too weak to salute properly — dogs released. The dogs were trained to bite and hold — they tore into prisoners’ arms, legs, and necks while Bormann stood and watched.
Witness Ilona Stein testified in court that she had seen Bormann set her dogs on a group of women standing in line for work assignment. No reason was given. Bormann simply stood there, showing no emotion while the women screamed and tried to flee.
Other witnesses described a particularly haunting scene: Bormann allowing her dogs to attack a woman who had collapsed from exhaustion, while she continued her patrol as if nothing had happened.
In addition to the dogs, Bormann also:
- Beat prisoners with her hands and a leather strap
- Participated in “selections” (Selektion) — deciding who would live and who would be sent to the gas chambers
- Personally beat the sick and elderly who could no longer work
What many witnesses emphasized was Bormann’s indifference. Grese appeared to take pleasure in her cruelty — she smiled, she laughed. Bormann was different — she acted as though it were just routine work. No joy, no sadness. Just a task.
4. Bergen-Belsen: The Final Hell
When Bormann was transferred to Bergen-Belsen in late 1944, the camp was in complete chaos. Tens of thousands of prisoners were crammed into a space with insufficient food, water, or sanitation. Typhus raged through the camp. Corpses lay piled up because there were not enough people to bury them.
In that environment, Juana Bormann continued her “work” — beating prisoners, releasing dogs, and maintaining “order” through violence in a place where order had long since lost all meaning.
On April 15, 1945, British forces entered Bergen-Belsen. They found more than 60,000 prisoners — most of them dying — and over 13,000 corpses scattered throughout the camp. The first British soldiers could not believe what they were seeing.
Juana Bormann was arrested right there in the camp. She did not flee or resist. She stood with the other prisoners and SS staff as the British arrived, as if she did not understand — or did not want to understand — what was happening.
5. The Belsen Trial: Facing the Witnesses
The Belsen Trial opened on September 17, 1945, in Lüneburg, Germany, with 45 defendants — including Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Josef Kramer, and Juana Bormann. It was one of the largest and earliest war crimes trials of the postwar period, conducted by a British military court.
Bormann, now 52 years old, sat in the courtroom with a tired and bewildered expression. She lacked Grese’s cold arrogance and Volkenrath’s calculated demeanor. According to observers, she looked like an elderly woman who did not understand why she was there.
But the witnesses understood perfectly.
One witness after another described the dogs, the beatings, and the unprovoked attacks. One testified that Bormann had set her dogs on a pregnant woman. Another described how she had beaten a prisoner to death with her bare hands.
Bormann’s defense at the trial can be summarized in one sentence: “I was only following orders.”
She did not deny her presence in the camps. She did not deny using the dogs. She simply repeated that she was a subordinate, that she had no authority to decide, that she was merely a small cog in a large machine.
The court did not accept that argument. On November 17, 1945, Juana Bormann was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging.
6. The Morning of December 13: The Gallows at Hamelin
Early on the morning of December 13, 1945, at Hamelin Prison in Lower Saxony, three women were led to the execution chamber: Irma Grese (22 years old), Elisabeth Volkenrath (26 years old), and Juana Bormann (52 years old).
The man responsible for carrying out the sentence was Albert Pierrepoint — Britain’s official hangman, who executed more than 200 Nazi war criminals after World War II.
According to eyewitness accounts:
Grese entered the execution chamber defiantly, head held high. Volkenrath was calm. Bormann — she was trembling. She had to be supported as she walked. According to some reports, she whispered something in German as she approached the gallows. No one recorded exactly what she said.
Juana Bormann was the last of the three to be executed that morning.
She was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery at Hamelin — alongside Grese and Volkenrath.
7. Lessons from “The She-Wolf”
Juana Bormann’s story raises a different question than the stories of Irma Grese or Hermine Braunsteiner. Grese symbolized youthful, fanatical cruelty. Braunsteiner symbolized the fugitive who tried to reintegrate into society. And Bormann?
Bormann is the embodiment of what philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” — a concept Arendt developed while covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961.
Juana Bormann was not a madwoman. She was not a fanatic. She was not born exceptionally cruel. She was an ordinary middle-aged woman who took a job, and in that job, she did what the system demanded — and added a little something of her own: the dogs, the beatings, the indifference — without ever stopping to ask whether what she was doing was right.
This is what is most terrifying: Not the demonic monsters with fangs and claws. But ordinary people who chose not to think.
Conclusion
The three women hanged at Hamelin on December 13, 1945, represent three different faces of evil within the Nazi system: Grese — young, beautiful, fanatical; Volkenrath — cold, calculating, administrative; and Bormann — old, tired, ordinary.
Three women. Three different stories. But the same ending — and the same lesson:
A genocidal system does not only need fanatics. It needs ordinary people who are willing to do their jobs without asking questions. And those people — no matter how ordinary they may be — must still be held accountable.
This article is based on the records of the Belsen Trial (1945), documents from the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and the historical works of Nikolaus Wachsmann, Wendy Lower, and Hannah Arendt. The content is entirely educational and historical in nature.