Kaethe Hoern

Kaethe Hoern was a female SS supervisor at two concentration camps from 1944 until April 1945.

Camp work

Many details about Hoern are unknown, though it is known she was born in Germany. In 1944, she arrived at Ravensbrück to begin her training as a female SS guard. She trained under Dorothea Binz, and soon became known among the female overseers as a "leader type." In the summer of 1944, Hoern was given the title of Oberaufseherin in Ravensbrück, and assigned as head wardress to the Buchenwald subcamp near Allenburg, Germany. There she commanded up to fifty SS Aufseherin at one time, as well as over 400 women prisoners. In April 1945, she fled the Allendorf subcamp.

Trial and conviction

In 1947 an American Tribunal tried the former head camp wardress for war crimes. One survivor pointed out how she would beat sick prisoners to make them work and punched one inmate in her ear to wake her up. Eventually she served seven years in prison for the maltreatment of concentration camp prisoners.