Maria Mandl Signed Receipt from Ravensbruck

Maria Mandl Signed Receipt from Ravensbruck
Receipt from Ravensbruck concentration camp signed byOberaufseherin Maria Mandl and it reads:Receipt Rm 100From SS-location administration FKL RaFor Supervisor Maria MandlRM One hundredI hereby certify that I have received it correctlyRavensbruckOn 20.May 1942Signed MandlMaria Mandl (also spelled Mandel; 10 January 1912 – 24 January 1948) was anAustrian SS-Helferin known for her role in the Holocaust as a top-rankingofficial at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where she is believedto have been directly complicit in the deaths of over 500,000 femaleprisoners. She was executed for war crimes.After the Anschluss by Nazi Germany, Mandl moved to Munich, and on 15October 1938 joined the camp staff as an Aufseherin at Lichtenburg, an earlyNazi concentration camp in the Province of Saxony where she worked withfifty other SS women. On 15 May 1939, along with other guards and prisoners, Mandl was sent to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp nearBerlin. She soon impressed her superiors and, after she had joined the NaziParty on 1 April 1941, was elevated to the rank of a SS-Oberaufseherin inApril 1942. She oversaw daily roll calls, assignments for Aufseherinnen andpunishments such as beatings and floggings.On 7 October 1942, Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau campwhere she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of the women campunder SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß. As a woman she could never outrank a man, but her control over both female prisoners and her female subordinates wasabsolute. The only man Mandl reported to was the commandant. She controlledall the female Auschwitz camps and female subcamps including at Hindenburg, Lichtewerden and Raisko.Mandl promoted Irma Grese to head of the Hungarian women's camp at Birkenau.According to some accounts, Mandl often stood at the gate into Birkenauwaiting for an inmate to turn and look at her: any who did were taken out ofthe lines and never heard from again. At Auschwitz, Mandl was known as TheBeast, and for the next two years she participated in selections for deathand other documented abuses. She signed inmate lists, sending an estimatedhalf a million women and children to their deaths in the gas chambers atAuschwitz I and II.Mandl created the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz to accompany roll calls, executions, selections and transports. An Auschwitz prisoner, LuciaAdelsberger, later described it in her book, Auschwitz: EinTatsachenbericht:The women who came back from work exhausted had to march in time to themusic. Music was ordered for all occasions, for the addresses of the CampCommanders, for the transports and whenever anybody was hanged.For her services, Mandl was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd class. InNovember 1944, she was assigned to the Mühldorf subcamp of Dachauconcentration camp and Elisabeth Volkenrath became head of Auschwitz, whichwere liberated in late January 1945. In May 1945, Mandl fled from Mühldorfinto the mountains of southern Bavaria to her birthplace, Münzkirchen.Arrest and executionThe United States Army arrested Mandl on 10 August 1945. Interrogationsreportedly revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her workin the camps. For some time she was held at Dachau Prison, and was filmed bythe US Army in May 1946 sharing a cell with Elizabeth Ruppert.Mandl was handed over to the Polish People’s Republic in November 1946, andin November 1947 she was tried in a Kraków courtroom in the Auschwitz Trialand sentenced to death by hanging.Stanisława Rachwałowa (a Polish survivor of Auschwitz who was an inmateunder Mandl's administration and, after the war, was arrested by Poland'spost-war communist authorities as an "anti-communist activist") wasimprisoned in the cell next to Maria Mandl and Therese Brandl. Rachwałowawas proficient enough in German to interpret for the wardens. She statedthat the last time she and the two German war criminals met – after they hadbeen sentenced to death and shortly before their executions took place –both had asked her for forgiveness. Mandl was hanged on 24 January 1948,aged 36.This Typed document/receipt from Ravensbruck measures 105mm x 130mm