Erika Bergmann

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Erika Bergmann (3 January 1915 – 1996) was a German Nazi concentration camp guard at two labor camps during World War II. She was known as the "beast in human skin" (German: Bestie in Menschenhaut) for her cruel treatment of prisoners during her tenure as a warden at Ravensbrück concentration camp, according to a 1990 edition of the East German magazine Für Dich. Bergmann was born on 3 January 1915 in Neukölln, at the time an independent city near Berlin. In 1943 she arrived at Ravensbrück concentration camp where she received her initial training and first assignment. In the same year, along with other female concentration guards (German: Aufseherin) she accompanied a transport of prisoners to the Genthin sub-camp where she remained until the end of the war. After the war, Bergmann moved to East Germany, where she lived until her past was exposed in 1955. She was accused of acts of cruelty towards prisoners, including using a whip and inciting an attack by a dog on prisoners (killing six of them), as well as other crimes. Placed on trial in an East German court in Neubrandenburg, she was found guilty of six murders and sentenced to life imprisonment on 2 November 1955. The explanation of the verdict stated: "As an Aufseherin in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the period 1943[-1945], the defendant had mistreated prisoners: one day this Aufseherin had been ordered to take a column of Ravensbrück prisoners outside the camp for leveling work. She used her dog against an approximately 20-year-old Gypsy woman, who, in her opinion, worked too slowly.