Vera Salvequart - war criminal.

Vera Salvequart - war criminal.

Ravensbrück concentration camp near Furstenberg in Germany was the only major Nazi concentration camp for women and also served as a training base for female SS supervisors. Some 3,500 women underwent training there. They then worked in Ravensbrück or were sent to other camps. The camp was established in 1938 and liberated on April 30th, 1945 by the Russian Army. 

28 year old Vera Salvequart had not been an SS guard, but rather a prisoner herself in Ravensbrück. She was born on the 26th of November 1919 in Wonotsch in Czechoslovakia and had trained as a nurse. She had also served several periods in prison for having Jewish boyfriends. She claimed to have stolen plans for the V2 rocket and passed these to Britain.  She was sent to KZ Ravensbrück in December 1944 as a Kapo and worked as a nurse in the camp's hospital wing. Here, in February 1945, she was said to have administered poison in the form of a sleeping powder to some 50 of the patients, of whom 12 died. 

Sixteen members of the staff of were arrested and were tried between December 5th 1946 and February 3rd 1947 by a British military court at Hamburg on war crime charges. All were found guilty on Monday, the 3rd of February 1947, except one, who died during the trial. Eleven were sentenced to hang, including five women, head nurse Elisabeth Marschall, Aufseherin Greta Bösel, Oberaufseherin Dorothea Binz and Kapos Carmen Mory and Vera Salvequart.  Their sentencing can be seen here 

Marschall, Bösel and Binz were hanged at Hameln by Albert Pierrepoint on the 2nd of May 1947.  Carmen Mory committed suicide by cutting her wrists on the 9th of April.

Vera Salvequart petitioned the King for a reprieve in view of her passing secrets to the British. She was granted a stay while this was considered but the Royal prerogative of mercy was withheld and on Thursday the 26th of June 1947 she followed the other three women to the gallows.  She was the first of thirteen prisoners to be hanged that day by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Regimental Sergeant Major Richard Anthony O'Neill, the execution being carried out at 9.03 am.  Her body was later buried in the Wehl cemetery in Hameln.