Women guards shortly after their arrest at Bergen Belsen, 2 May 1945-the first three (left to right Marta Löbelt, Gertrud Rheinhold, Irene Haschke) wear their Nazi uniforms while Kohlmann is wearing a poorly fitted men's uniform because when she was arrested, she was wearing a prisoner uniform.[citation needed]
Kohlmann was born in 1921 in Hamburg, Germany, to a poor single mother. She was adopted when she was aged four by Margaretha and Georg Kohlmann.[2] Georg was a teacher and Masonic leader.[3]
Kohlmann attended a private school until 1938.[3] During her obligatory year after school she worked as a cook for the German Red Cross.[2] On 1 April 1940, aged 19, she became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and until November 1944 worked as a streetcar conductor for a railway company.[1]
Kohlmann was a self identified lesbian.[5] Whilst working in the concentration camps she had a relationship with a Czech Jewish prisoner called Lotte and organised postings to follow her from camp to camp.[6] The inmate engaged in coerced sexual barter with Kohlmann (this may or may not have included sexual acts[2]) to support herself and her mother, stepfather and half-brother,[6] using the forced same sex relationship to survive.[2]
Shortly before liberation of Bergen-Belsen,[5] on 14 April 1945 Kohlmann put on civilian clothes and smuggled herself into the camp.[7] A survivor named Věra Fuchsová recalled in a 1994 interview that:[8]
"And there was a thing that happened to us: in Hamburg we already had a SS woman, a guard in the camp, a young girl, we called her Bubi, and she treated us kind of ok. A young, pretty girl, but, as it turned out later, she was gay. And she fell in love with one of our fellow prisoners. I don’t know in how far the girl came close to her, but she had her mother there and she would have done anything for her, and on account of Bubi she had it good. After the liberation of Belsen we suddenly found that Bubi is among us, wearing the striped prisoner clothing. What to do now? She treated us fine, but she was a SS woman, so what to do with her? The camp Eldest sent a girl to the English head officer to tell him."
"Yes, we could have asked ourselves why she had chosen to suffer with us and endure lice, infections and intolerable living conditions if she did not have to. But then I thought she probably loved Lotte so much that she refused to be separated from her, even at such a price."
Another survivor remembered caresses between Kohlmann and the prisoner, but it cannot be conclusively confirmed to what extent the relationship became physical or who initiated the relationship.[2]
Post war trial
Soon after the liberation Kohlmann was arrested on the grounds of Bergen-Belsen after her former victims from Neugraben and Tiefstack identified her wearing prisoner clothes. She was kept in Celle prison until her trial in Hamburg.[9]
Kohlmann was found guilty of repeatedly whipping inmates including pregnant women across the face, kicking until they lost consciousness,[10] condemning at least one female prisoner to punishment of 30 lashes for a piece of stolen bread, and sexually exploiting younger women.[1] Another guard named Maria Borowski testified that Kohlmann particularly physically abused older women,[2] and survivor Marianne Braun testified that:
"Kohlmann apparently thought I was about to insult her, and she hit me roughly 30 times with a piece of wood in the face, on the head, on the hands, arms, and sides."
She was sentenced to only two years in prison[11] due to her short service in the SS and her defense claim that she did not kill anyone. Kohlmann also claimed that she helped four women escape during the transport to Bergen-Belsen.[2] After serving her sentence at Fuhlsbüttel prison (cut in half by time spent in jail before trial[12]), Kohlmann remained in Hamburg. She worked as a truck driver and moved to West Berlin in 1965. On 17 September 1977, Kohlmann died in Berlin at the age of 56.[1]
In popular culture
Aufseherin Anneliese Kohlmann is most remembered as one of the SS female camp guards at Bergen-Belsen, ordered to help bury the bodies of camp victims in a mass grave, which was photographed by Life Magazine's photojournalist George Rodger and widely distributed thereafter.[13]
Kohlmann is one of the main characters in the play Under the Skin[14] by Israeli playwright Yonatan Calderon. The play depicts a love affair between a lesbian Nazi commander (Kohlmann) and one of her female Jewish prisoners.[15]
A Delayed Life, The powerful memoir of The Librarian of Auschwitz, by Dita Kraus - see Chapter 22 'Bubi' which is a personal story of interactions at the camp between 'Bubi' who she later discovered was Annelise.
^Interview of Věra Fuchsová. 28 November 1994, no. 386, Oral History Collection, Archive of the Jewish Museum in Prague (AJMP).
^The National Archives (TNA), Kew, England. War Crimes case file. Case No. 108. Defendant: Anneliese Kohlmann. Ref. WO 235/120. May-August 1946. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
