Johanna Langefeld
Nazi concentration camp guard (1900–1974)
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Key Takeaways
- Johanna Langefeld (née May ; 5 March 1900, Kupferdreh, Germany – 26 January 1974) was a Nazi German guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz.
- Early life and Nazism Born in Kupferdreh (now Essen, Germany), Johanna May was brought up in a Lutheran, nationalistic family alongside a sister.
- Her father was a blacksmith.
- In 1924, she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in 1926 of lung disease.
- Langefeld was unemployed until age 34, when she began to teach domestic economy in an establishment of the city of Neuss.
Johanna Langefeld (née May; 5 March 1900, Kupferdreh, Germany – 26 January 1974) was a Nazi German guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz. She was arrested and imprisoned for her role in the Holocaust, but she escaped prison and was never tried.
Early life and Nazism
Born in Kupferdreh (now Essen, Germany), Johanna May was brought up in a Lutheran, nationalistic family alongside a sister. She was named after a German heroine figure, Johanna Stegen. Her father was a blacksmith. Her parents instilled her and her sister with values of strict discipline and Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
In 1924, she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in 1926 of lung disease. In 1928, Langefeld fell pregnant with another man, left him soon afterward, and moved to Düsseldorf, where her son, Herbert Langefeld, was born that August.
Langefeld was unemployed until age 34, when she began to teach domestic economy in an establishment of the city of Neuss. Satisfied to have a secure career inline with traditional gender roles, she became an adherent of Adolf Hitler partially because he preached that traditional gender roles would make Germany great again. From 1935 onwards, she worked as a guard in a so-called Arbeitsanstalt (working institution) in Brauweiler Abbey, which was a prison for prostitutes, unemployed and homeless women, and other so called "antisocial" women, who were then later imprisoned in concentration camps. Langefeld did not join the Nazi Party until 1937, when the Brauweiler director fired her for resistance to his authority, which included her lack of party membership.
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