Elisabeth Volkenrath
Elisabeth Volkenrath (right corner) worked as a hairdresser until she was recruited for the Aufseherinnen SS in 1941. Later in 1942, she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she would meet her future husband, the SS officer Heinz Volkenrath.
Although she was seen beating imprisoned women at Auschwitz-Birkenau because she supervised a workforce and took part in the process of choosing who would be put in the death chambers, her testimony, after the war ended, was in her words, “I never knew what the selection was for.” Elisabeth was found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1945.
