Hermine Braunsteiner

Hermine Braunsteiner
Rapportführerin Hermine Braunsteiner
Nickname(s)	Mare of Majdanek (Stute von Majdanek)
Born	(1919-07-16)July 16, 1919 Vienna, Republic of German-Austria
Died	April 19, 1999(1999-04-19) (aged 79) Bochum, Germany
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Schutzstaffel women's auxiliary
Years of service	1939-1945
Rank	SS Helferin
Awards	Kriegsverdienstkreuz 2. Klasse, 1943
Spouse(s)	Russel Ryan
Other work	Hotel and restaurant worker Housewife

Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was a female camp guard at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps, and the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States, to face trial in Germany. Braunsteiner was known to prisoners of Majdanek concentration camp as "Stomping Mare" and was said to have whipped women to death, thrown children by their hair onto trucks before being taken to their deaths in gas chambers, hanging girl prisoners and stomping an old woman to death with her jackboots. She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the District Court of Düsseldorf on April 30, 1981 but released on health grounds in 1996 before her death 3 years later.

Braunsteiner was born in Vienna, the youngest child in a strictly observant Roman Catholic working class family. Her father, Friedrich Braunsteiner, was a chauffeur for a brewery and/or a butcher. Hermine lacked the means to fulfill her aspiration to become a nurse, and worked as a maid. From 1937 to 1938 she worked in England for an American engineer's household.

In 1938 Braunsteiner became a German citizen after the Anschluss. She returned to Vienna from England and the same year relocated to Germany proper for a job at the Heinkel aircraft works in Berlin.

At the urging of her landlord, a German policeman, Braunsteiner applied for a better paying job supervising prisoners, quadrupling her income in time. She began her training on August 15, 1939, as an Aufseherin under Maria Mandel at Ravensbrück concentration camp. She remained there after the start of World War II, and the influx of new prisoners from occupied countries. After three years, a disagreement with Mandel led Braunsteiner to request a transfer in October 1942.