Gertrud Heise
Gertrud Heise was a female overseer and later an SS supervisor at several concentration camps during the
Second World War.
Gertrud Heise was born in
Berlin,
Germany on
July 23,
1921. She later married and became Gertrud Senff. In 1941, Gertrud volunteered for the SS Women's Auxiliary, and on
November 21,
1941 she arrived at
Ravensbruck for training.
In October 1942, Gertrud was one of several women, including
Hermine Braunsteiner to arrive at the
Majdanek camp near Lublin as an
Aufseherin. Gertrud stayed in the camp until January 1944 when she accompanied a transport of women to
Plaszów, a small slave-labor camp on the outskirts of Kraków. Soon after Gertrud was assigned to guard on the death march to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp to the west. From there she guarded an evacuation train in October 1944 to the
Neuengamme concentration camp near
Hamburg, Germany.
In November 1944, Gertrud Heise was promoted to Oberaufseherin and sent to the Obernheide subcamp of Neuengamme. There, she and commandant Hille commanded over 500 women, as well as six (known) SS women. Irmentraut Reidel, Anita Schneider, Wilma Unmuth, a woman named Augusta, a woman named Kaete and a brutal woman overseer whom the prisoners referred to as 'Pferd' ("Horse") are known to history. Heise fled from Obernheide in April 1945 with the evacuation of the women prisoners to
Bergen-Belsen. Gertrud was later captured by
British soldiers and interrogated. The young camp guard was then placed on trial for
war crimes. On
May 22,
1946 a British court handed her a sentence of seven years imprisonment for war crimes.
*
The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Concentration Camp System, by Daniel Patrick Brown.
*
Profit für den Bremer Senat — Hunger für die Frauen
