Elisabeth Lupka
Elisabeth Lupka (27 October 1902 – 8 January 1949) was a Nazi female guard at two camps during World War II.
Elisabeth Lupka | |
---|---|
Born | Klein-Damner, Germany | October 27, 1902
Died | January 8, 1949 46) Montelupich prison | (aged
Nationality | German |
Occupation | Nazi female guard |
Lupka was born in Klein-Damner, Germany (present-day Dąbrówka Mała, Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland). She got married in 1934, had no children and soon divorced.[1] In 1937 she went to Berlin to work in an aircraft factory.[2]
In 1942 she left her menial job as a laborer and came to Ravensbrück to undergo training as a camp guard. Lupka graduated and later became an Aufseherin over several work details. In March 1943, she was assigned to the German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland as an Aufseherin then as a Blockführerin (Block Overseer), where she physically beat many prisoners with a whip and selected many others for the gas chambers.[2] She stayed in the camp until its last evacuations in early January 1945 and accompanied a death march to Loslau. She returned to Ravensbrück later that same month.[1][3]
On 6 June 1945, Lupka was arrested by Allied troops and sent to an internment camp. Two years later, on 6 July 1948, after a long investigation, she appeared at a Kraków court for war crimes, mainly the maltreatment of prisoners and her involvement in selections of inmates to the gas chambers. She was found guilty, and executed by short-drop hanging, on 8 January 1949, in Montelupich prison in Kraków. She was 46 years old. Her corpse was later sent to Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland for use by medical students.[2]
References
- "Female Nazi war criminals". www.capitalpunishmentuk.org. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
- Gibson, Tyler (2017-04-06). Irma Grese - "The Beast of Belsen" & Other Twisted Female Guards of Concentration Camps. Lulu Press, Inc. ISBN 9781365237997.
- Ernst, Klee (2013). Auschwitz : Täter, Gehilfen, Opfer und was aus ihnen wurde : ein Personenlexikon. Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 9783100393333. OCLC 856902608.