Herta Bothe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Herta Bothe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

'via Blog this'

Once in the camp Bothe supervised a female wood brigade of 60 women prisoners.^{[citation needed]} The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945.^{[citation needed]}

She is said to have been the tallest woman arrested. Bothe also stood out from other Aufseherinnen because, while most of the SS women wore black jackboots, she was in ordinary civilian shoes. The Allied soldiers forced her to place corpses of dead prisoners into mass graves adjacent to the main camp. She later recalled in an interview some 60 years later that, while carrying the corpses they were not allowed to wear gloves, and she was terrified of contracting typhus. She said the dead bodies were so rotten that the arms and legs tore away from the rest of the body when they were moved. She also recalled the emaciated bodies were still heavy enough to cause her considerable back pain. Bothe was arrested and taken to a jail at Celle.^{[citation needed]}

At the Belsen Trial she was characterized as a "ruthless overseer" and sentenced to ten years in prison for using a pistol on prisoners. She was released early from prison on December 22, 1951 as an act of leniency by the British government.^{[citation needed]}