Execution of Vera Salvequart
- Killing Nazi Capo at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp - Holocaust -WW2

3 August 2022

Category: Female Nazi Guards

Vera Salvequart was born on the 26th of November 1919 in Ohníč, then part of Czechoslovakia. While Vera’s mother was a Czech, her adopted father was a Sudeten German which was a name for ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia. Soon after Vera was born, the family emigrated to Germany. In November 1944 she was arrested for the third time together with her Jewish lover and his sister. After a short detention in the Theresienstadt concentration camp located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Salvequart was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in December 1944.

Ravensbrück, opened in May 1939, was the only major women's camp established by the Nazis. Starting in the summer of 1942, SS medical doctors subjected nearly 80 Polish female prisoners at Ravensbrück to unethical medical experiments. SS doctors experimented with treating wounds with various chemical substances, such as sulfanilamide, to prevent infections. They also tested various methods of setting and transplanting bones. Such experiments even included amputations. SS doctors such as Herta Oberheuser also carried out forced abortions of women who were already seven or eight months pregnant and sterilization experiments on women and children, many of them Roma in an attempt to develop an efficient method of sterilization.

In total, some 132,000 women from all over Europe passed through the camp, including Poles, Russians, Jews, Gypsies, and others. Of that number, over 92,000 women perished. Ravensbrück was staffed both by SS men, who served as guards and administrators, and by 150 women, who served as supervisors. These female supervisors were either SS volunteers or women who had taken the job for the good pay and working conditions. Ravensbrück also housed a training camp for female SS guards who were trained here how to handle the prisoners that they were going to supervise.

Kapo life of Vera Salvequart

One such kapo was Vera Salvequart who also served as a nurse due to her professional training. As a nurse, she participated in the gassing of women and children, removing gold teeth and crowns from murdered victims, and completing death certificates. From February 1945, she took a direct part in the extermination of prisoners in the camp’s hospital, giving them, together with the SS men, poisonous white powder.

Prisoners, who took the powder or received an injection under the pretext of giving them strength before transport, soon fell into a heavy sleep, and after some time they stopped breathing. Allegedly Salvequart and her fellow Nazi colleagues used to poison the innocent sick people to avoid the effort of having to transport them to the gas chambers. On the one hand, Salvequart murdered, but at the same time she saved other prisoners by giving them hot tea and food as well as releasing them from roll calls that could last for hours. She also saved some women and children from death by substituting their camp identification number with that of those already dead.

British military tribunal

After the end of the war, Vera Salvequart was tried at the first Ravensbrück trial which began on the 5th of December 1946. On the 3rd of February 1947 the British military tribunal sentenced Vera Salvequart to death by hanging. However, Salvequart asked for a pardon, claiming that she had stolen the schematics for the V2 missiles produced at Ravensbrück prior to 1944 for smuggling it to the British. The execution of the sentence was temporarily postponed while this was taken into consideration and the remaining defendants sentenced to death were hanged on 2nd and 3rd of May 1947.

If Salvequart had hoped that her life would be saved, she was wrong. Her request was rejected. Vera Salvequart was 27 years old when the British executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out the sentence on the 26th of June 1947. Shortly after, her body was buried with the other executed war criminals at Wehl Cemetery in Hameln. There were no tears shed for Vera Salvequart.

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