Maria Mandl

Maria Mandl (/ˈmændəl/, MAHN-dul; sometimes erroneously spelled Mandel; 10 January 1912 – 24 January 1948) was an Austrian-born Holocaust perpetrator and convicted war criminal. From 1942 until her arrest in 1945, she served as the Schutzhaftlagerführerin (camp leader) at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. She also held positions at the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück camps as Aufseherin (overseer) and Oberaufseherin (head overseer), respectively.

Mandl was born in Münzkirchen, Austria-Hungary, into a financially well-off Catholic family affiliated with the Christian Social Party (CSP). Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, she moved to Munich and found work as an Aufseherin at the Lichtenburg concentration camp. There, she subjected prisoners to fatal beatings and floggings. In 1939, she was transferred to Ravensbrück, where she was promoted to Oberaufseherin. She oversaw the training program for prospective Aufseherinnen and worked alongside Dorothea Binz in the camp's punishment block. Mandl's final promotion came in 1942, when she was transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau and given the position of Schutzhaftlagerführerin under the command of Rudolf Höss. As the Red Army advanced toward the Auschwitz complex in late 1944, Mandl was transferred to the Mettenheim camp. In May 1945, as the United States Air Force invaded and bombed the area, Mandl fled with her lover, Kommandant Walter Adolf Langleist, and a Jewish prisoner known as Mose. After evading arrest for three months, Mandl and Langleist were apprehended by the American military police in August 1945 at Langleist's home in Hof.

Mandl was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków in December 1947. Based on the number of death lists she signed, it is believed that she had been complicit in the deaths of approximately 500,000 prisoners during her tenure at Birkenau. In January 1948, she was executed by hanging at the age of thirty-six. Her last words were "Polska żyje" ("Poland lives").