UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Captured in a rare photograph, Commandant Richard Baer and former commandant Rudolf Höss strode away from the dedication of an SS hospital in Auschwitz in late 1944. Following behind them, are officers of lesser note, and behind them- in the background-  a few nurses.  Mostly hidden behind these men, head down, glove in gloved hand is Maria Mandel, the chief overseer of the women’s camp. She is the most powerful, important woman in Auschwitz and yet she barely makes the shot.  Mandel walks alone, not accompanied by her fellow Aufseherinnen subordinates.  She is not in front with her colleagues of equal rank, nor is she at the back with the nurses who share her gender. Instead, Maria Mandel occupies a space of her own: an awkward, middle area that lacks a conceptual framework. Though her job was identical to that of a man’s, her gender kept her from being “one of the boys.” And though she was a woman, her job prohibited her from being “one of the girls.”   In this photo, in the camp system, and in Germany, the women of the SS failed to “fit in.” They were not the mothers and nurses performing traditional women’s work in service of the Reich. The state asked them to do a man’s job, yet as shown in the above image, these women were not admitted to a partnership of equality in their workplace. Within this system of discrimination and inequality, women devised strategies to conform to the prevailing gender norms that governed camp culture and their employment.