Maria Mandel
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Mandel on trial

Maria Mandel (January 10, 1912 - January 24, 1948) was an Austrian SS-Helferin infamous for her key role in The Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where she is believed to have been directly responsible for the deaths of over 500,000 female prisoners.

1947 Arrest and execution

The United States Army arrested Mandel on August 10, 1945. Interrogations reportedly revealed her to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work in the camps. She was handed over to the Republic of Poland in November 1946, and in November 1947 she was tried in a Kraków courtroom in the Auschwitz Trial and sentenced to death. Stanisława Rachwałowa (a former Polish Auschwitz inmate under Mandel's administration who, after the war, was arrested as an anti-communist activist) was accommodated in the cell next to Maria Mandel and Therese Brandl. Because of her stay at Auschwitz she was proficient enough in German to interpret for the wardens. She describes the last time she and the two German war criminals under sentence of death met. During it, both asked her, several days before the execution took place, for forgiveness. Mandel was hanged on January 24, 1948 at the age of 36.