Pole Hanging Executions Of The Female Traitors Of World War 2

It was one of the most ruthless and public execution methods used at the end of World War II. Pole hanging was a method that aimed to bring humiliation before death, and it was mostly deployed inside Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Many collaborators who sided with the Germans during World War II suffered this fate.

Amongst those who were pole-hanged were a number of women, female traitors who worked with the occupiers and those whom their neighbors and family deemed enemies. This brought them a huge amount of shame, and the method of pole hanging was performed upon these women as executioners wanted to show people that justice was being performed upon those who betrayed their nation.

Amongst the female pole-hanged traitors was a woman who may have worked inside the concentration camps and also a woman condemned for working with the Gestapo. This is the story of the pole-hanging executions of the female traitors of World War II. During World War II, there were many women who betrayed their nations and sided with the German army or the occupiers who came to their towns, cities, and lands.

These women were often seen as the worst kind of traitors. In France, women who collaborated and slept with the Germans were said to have been found guilty of horizontal collaboration, and following the liberation of parts of their country, they were treated terribly in public. They had their heads shaved and were forced to run the gauntlet, and many were beaten and battered by large crowds of angry people.

But inside countries to the east, many women were subjected to even worse treatment as they were publicly executed for their involvement with the enemy. This included women who helped translate during interrogations, and they would then be targeted following the end of the war. But inside specifically Hungary and Czechoslovakia, there were some female traitors who were pole-hanged.

Pole hanging was an extreme execution method used exclusively inside these countries, but executioners claimed it was more humane than even using a gallows. But why did this happen? Pole hanging was an execution method used inside countries that had formerly been under the control or influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was very different from a traditional gallows and was carried out normally in public in front of the eyes of thousands of people.

Specifically, the method used a three-meter wooden post or a metal pole, and the execution had a number of different steps. The condemned was brought in front of the pole or post first, and then the executioner and his assistant worked together to bring life to an end. A rope was attached around the feet of the condemned and was then passed through a pulley at the bottom of the pole.

The condemned was then held in place at the top of the post through the use of a chest sling across their middle, which kept them suspended at the top until the drop was released. A narrow noose was then passed around the neck of the prisoner, and this was secured to a hook at the top of the post. When the death sentence was read out and everything was checked, the chest sling was released, and the prisoner would rapidly jerk downwards with the drop while the assistant executioner guided the fall via a foot rope.

The executioner would stand behind the post, and when the drop was released, he attempted to shove the neck to one side in an effort to dislocate it manually. Often when this went correctly, executioners claimed death could occur within seconds. But a lot of the time the method was rather unsuccessful as someone would slowly strangle in front of a crowd.

Particularly during and after World War II, there were a number of women who were subjected to this execution method, and specifically they were condemned as they were said to have betrayed their nations and been traitors. One of these women was Maria Naji, who was executed in front of a large crowd inside the city of Budapest. There is not a huge amount of information available about the crimes and actions of Maria Naji.

However, it is known that she was condemned as a war criminal and that she had particularly tortured young women, presumably inside a concentration camp or a prison. Her name is rather typically Hungarian too. With her execution taking place in March 1946, she was brought out in front of a large crowd and attached to the post. The executioner and his assistants worked together, and when the plank she stood on was removed, the executioner brought her life to an end, practically strangling her against the post.

Maria Naji was said to have been a traitor and specifically a collaborator with the Germans, and this was why she went to her execution. This public execution method was meant to shame her and bring humiliation in front of a large crowd. It was also a public statement that she had betrayed the nation and all those in front of her, and that the old regime was finished. It also sent a clear message that collaborators would definitely be punished.

The hooded body of Maria Naji was then left hanging in a public square for some time, sending another warning that traitors would also be punished. Another woman who was executed by pole hanging was Hera Casparova. She was a Czech citizen who could also speak German. As a young woman, she was mocked by her peers, but during the war, she would get her own back and exact some revenge.

She worked for the Germans and the German occupiers, and specifically she worked for the Gestapo spies in the city of Trest, her hometown. She translated documents and conversations for them during interrogations and also reported on those who resisted the German occupation in her hometown. But in the final months of the war, Hera Casparova willingly fraternized with the Germans and SS soldiers, and she specifically asked the SS to execute four young men who had before the war been cruel to her at school.

These men had not, during World War II, done anything that would have led to their deaths, but all four of them were executed later that day by a firing squad. Hera Casparova said later at her war crimes trial, “I know that I caused the deaths of several people. I acted out of revenge.” What she had specifically done was betray her people, her hometown, and her country.

On the 13th of September 1946, over a year after the end of the Second World War, Hera Casparova was brought out for her execution. At around 6:30 PM, thousands looked on as she was taken to the execution post. She wept and fell to her knees when she first saw it, and guards had to carry her there. As she was helped onto the pole, she screamed and screeched, and the executioner put the chest sling around her.

He worked very quickly, secured the noose around her neck, and then released the drop. For some time, Hera Casparova struggled on the post, and her head violently twitched from side to side until a doctor declared that she was in fact dead. The executioner then threw his white gloves to the ground to symbolize his disgrace in hanging her. Following her pole hanging, Casparova was placed inside a coffin and buried in a grave in front of a large crowd.

Still, these two women at the end of World War II were executed for betraying their nations and countries. What they had done was get involved in the brutality of the German occupations. They did not have to carry out the actions that they did; they did not have to get involved in death and suffering, and their actions brought a significant amount of pain to their fellow countrymen and women during the war.

There were a number of men who were also subjected to this treatment at the end of the conflict inside Hungary. This included members of the Arrow Cross Party, a collaborationist government made up of Prime Minister Ferenc Szalasi and his cronies. These men were all executed in exactly the same way and place as Maria Naji, and they may have even been hanged on exactly the same post. They were condemned in the same manner, alongside a Hungarian priest, Andras Kun, who had rampaged throughout the city slaughtering wherever he went.

The execution method of pole hanging was used to execute a number of people at the end of World War II mostly for the crime of betraying their nation. They were condemned in front of a large crowd in what was meant to shame and bring humiliation to them and their families in their final moments. After the drop from the pole had been released, a white sheet was thrown over them in what became a rather final and haunting image for the female traitors who betrayed their nation and ultimately were pole-hanged.

Throughout World War II, Hitler ordered his army to rampage into different lands and territories, which were then brought to heel in terrifying and brutal occupations resulting in much death and bloodshed. Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Germans, and Hitler in 1939 declared the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This left the nation powerless to German occupation and governance, and the country became known as the arsenal of the Reich as it was intended to produce a huge amount of armaments, weapons, and equipment for the Wehrmacht and overall German war effort.

Ruthless Nazi overseers such as Reinhard Heydrich were brought in to oversee these nations, and he brought with him a reign of terror intended to keep the country productive and the Czech people at heel. Terrifying persecution laws were brought in, and it was common to see people hanging in the streets to send a clear message to stay in submission and not resist. Hera Casparova was born on the 21st of June 1923 in the town of Trest, and her father had a humble job working on the railways.

However, Hera from birth suffered a disability and walked with a limp caused by her right leg. Because of this, while she was at school, she was bullied and treated terribly by other students. Her family spoke Czech and German, and because of this, when Hitler seized control of the Sudetenland following the Munich Conference, she and her family were seen as favorable by Hitler. He wanted German families to live inside these lands, and Hera was given Reich citizenship because of her German origins and roots.

She was of dual nationality and was also part of Hitler’s Reich, even changing her surname to Casper to make it sound more German. But in 1940, she started a new job inside an office of the German criminal police in a town named Jihlava, serving as an interpreter. As she could speak Czech and German, she was seen as useful by the Gestapo, and with this, she became involved in the interrogations of many Czech people suspected of being involved in the resistance. She was now openly collaborating with the Nazi enemy.

The Gestapo were known for roughly treating those suspected of defiance against the Nazi regime, and many people were tortured to death or executed for their involvement. Hera was now involved in the business of working for the Gestapo and was an important cog in securing the deaths of many Czech people. Many of those who worked with the Gestapo, the SS, or the Nazis in any capacity were seen as the worst of the worst, and many were hunted at the end of the war to be executed for their collaboration with the enemy.

She continued to translate for the Germans for a number of years. But at the end of the Second World War, as the Red Army moved towards Hera’s hometown, she quickly left her job and went back to living with her parents in Trest. After the Prague uprising, there were many different pockets of resistance in Trest, and they targeted those who had helped the Germans throughout the occupation. Different Wehrmacht units then arrived to free a number of imprisoned German people, and Hera Casparova spoke to the German soldiers about her house being broken into.

She even identified a number of men and boys who had stolen items, choosing 11 people for this action. All of those 11 that Hera had chosen were dragged out to the courtyard of the town hall in her hometown and executed by a firing squad alongside a number of other rebels. Amongst the executed were allegedly some of the people who had bullied Hera Casparova at school, and she got vengeance against them by utilizing her German links to have them shot.

The Germans also released her from imprisonment at the hands of the rebels, and she ran off to Austria, serving in a number of jobs, including working as a cook. Part of her employment even saw her working for the Red Army, her enemy. However, in February 1946, she was arrested and sent to Czechoslovakia to stand trial relating to charges of being a collaborator with the Germans. She was placed on trial for the work she conducted alongside the Gestapo as an interpreter and also as someone responsible for the executions of those she had personally identified.

At her trial, Hera stated, “I know that I caused the death of several people. I acted out of revenge.” She was vengeful and knew she would be condemned. The court confirmed her darkest fears and sentenced her to death for collaborating with the Nazis and for treason against the Czechs. Her execution, however, was one that was to be very different, and she was only one of a very small number of women executed by pole hanging at the end of the Second World War.

Pole hanging as an execution method was common in Czechoslovakia and Hungary at the end of the war, and a number of high-ranking politicians and government officials were executed in this manner instead of using a gallows. Hera Casparova was executed that evening after her death sentence had been given to her. She was walked outside to a meadow on the outskirts of Trest close to the castle. On the day before, the head of the Nazi offices inside the town was executed in the very same way, and Hera was brought out in front of a huge crowd.

The pole-hanging post was three meters tall and sixty centimeters wide. When she was led up to the post, she lost her calm composure and began to scream and shout for her life, even falling to the floor as her knees began to shake so much she had to be carried to the execution post by the guards accompanying her. Hera wore a short dress to her execution and continued to cry and scream as she was led up to the post.

The executioners, seeing her panic, began to work quickly, but they also made sure that everything would be performed correctly and professionally with pole hanging. It relied on a number of steps, and they fastened a leather strap around her chest, holding her in place and in position in the air on the post briefly. The executioner then secured the rope around her legs and passed it through a pulley system, as well as making sure that Hera Casparova’s arms were secured together to prevent a sudden drop.

He then secured the noose around her neck and checked his work before signaling that he was ready. The hangman stood on the step behind her post, and the sign was given to the assistant to release the drop, which he did. The executioner guided Hera’s neck with his hand and dislocated it. With this, she began to twitch and move from side to side. But there was a problem as her head began to move significantly, and it took a number of minutes for her to be confirmed dead.

A number of Czech doctors came over to her remains and checked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing. Hera was then cut down and placed inside a cheap coffin that lay under the pole. Within the coffin, someone had even placed a number of flowers inside the wooden box for her. Her remains were carried into the central cemetery in Jihlava, and she was interred alongside a number of German soldiers who had died in the local area fighting during the war. It is interesting that she was buried in this place as they saw her as the enemy even in her death.

The execution of Hera Casparova was a huge event for the people in the town of Trest, and people even bought tickets to secure the best position to see her death. It was almost like a medieval carnival. For those inside the Czech town, she was seen as the enemy and someone who carried out the evils of the German army, helping the Nazis with their persecuting work. In the translation work she completed for the Gestapo, she was complicit in the torture of many people, and her work helped the Gestapo execute many accused of resistance.

She was executed herself for collaboration, but also because she actively chose 11 men to be executed, many of whom had mocked her at school. She had her vengeance for this taunting in the most barbaric way, and Hera Casparova contributed to a number of war crimes. Her execution was a huge spectacle and one of the final public executions carried out inside Czechoslovakia.

Ruth Alfreda Hildner was born on the 1st of November 1919 inside Germany. As a teenager and a young woman, her life would have been influenced significantly by the Nazis with the rise of Adolf Hitler to the position of the Führer. Hildner was most probably a member of Nazi youth groups for women, such as the BDM or the League of German Maidens. In this group, young teenagers were subjected to a significant amount of indoctrination and brainwashing.

They were schooled in Nazi policies for women, ordered to one day marry an SS man and have as many children for the Third Reich and Hitler as possible. Young girls were told that their place was in the home, but eventually a number of young women were conscripted to go and work inside the concentration camps. Around 1943 and 1944, there was an army of young women who went to train as female concentration camp guards, or Aufseherinnen.

Typically, these were young women who had spent many years inside youth groups such as the League of German Maidens, and they were incredibly devoted to the Third Reich and the Nazi regime. Ruth Alfreda Hildner was conscripted to work in the concentration camps in July 1944 to make up for the fact that many male guards had been sent to fight and repel the Soviet advancement in the east and the Allies who had invaded from Normandy. Hildner was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, an all-female site, and was fast-tracked through training to become a female guard, initially trained as a camp matron who would work in the infirmary or hospital.

After a few weeks, the then twenty-four-year-old Hildner was moved on to Dachau concentration camp. This was the first camp opened inside the Third Reich, and Dachau was a terrible site of torture, slaughter, and execution. Hildner became a female overseer here and switched from working as a matron in the infirmary to wielding power and brutality over prisoners. She was then moved on to the Agra camera works, a subcamp of Dachau, and would later serve in other subcamps too.

In December 1944, she was sent to a tiny subcamp of Flossenbürg known as Holleischen. Whilst at this camp, Ruth gained a notorious and terrible reputation for herself, and the prisoners were scared of her violent nature. She regularly took weapons to the inmates and battered them brutally if they did not work as hard as she wanted, and it is believed that she also killed many with her bare hands. She was most certainly a very dangerous woman, yet she was only in her mid-twenties when she was demonstrating monstrous behavior every single day.

After remaining at Holleischen for around five months, in April 1945, with the Allies and in particular the US Army on the horizon, Holleischen was evacuated by the SS and the Nazis. The women were moved away quickly, and Hildner was one of a number of guards who oversaw the death march, the forcible transfer of hundreds and thousands of prisoners from one site to another. Hildner on the death march was involved in the beating and murder of a number of young girls who were killed as she took her baton and weapons to them. These women were too weak to walk, and Hildner was involved in the slaughter.

She went with a group of prisoners to another subcamp of Flossenbürg found within Czechoslovakia. For many of the SS guards, male and female, they knew that the Second World War was coming to an end, and they also knew that they would be hunted at the end of the conflict for their crimes and actions. Ruth Hildner, after a few days at Svatava, realized this too, and she fled the camp with a number of other female guards and overseers.

There were at the time huge amounts of refugees fleeing and moving in and out of Czechoslovakia, and these scores of people gave Hildner the perfect escape route to try and blend in and hide. She managed to live out for just under two years inside Czechoslovakia. As the war came to an end, Hildner kept looking over her shoulder, knowing she was wanted and being hunted. But Czech police in March 1947 identified her, and she was arrested and put into prison.

It is not known why the former female guard did not make an attempt to travel back into Germany or German lands; she may have believed it was more dangerous to do so and that she risked capture. In May 1947, Ruth Hildner was brought to the extraordinary people’s court in Pisek, Czechoslovakia, and her trial took place. The courtroom heard from many people locked up inside the Nazi concentration camp system and the specific camp where Ruth Hildner worked, and they testified about the brutal guard she truly was.

Because of this, the courtroom judges were shocked, wondering how a woman in her early twenties could have such a terrible history of violence, sadism, and murder despite having worked at the camp for roughly over a year. With all of the evidence heard, Hildner was sentenced to death after being found guilty of war crimes, and she was taken to a nearby prison for her execution to be carried out. She was executed on the very same day she was condemned and found guilty.

Inside Pisek Prison’s courtyard, there were a number of execution posts, and Ruth Hildner, being tried in Czechoslovakia, was to be pole-hanged. This method, it was believed and claimed, could be quicker than using a gallows to bring about death. Hildner was led up to the three-meter post, and her execution followed the established process. Firstly, she was placed near the pole, and a rope was attached around her feet and passed through a pulley at the bottom of the pole.

Ruth was hoisted to the top of the pole, and a chest sling around her middle secured her off the ground, holding her in place. Then a noose was looped around her neck and placed over a hook, and the executioner and his assistant got ready. They released the chest sling, and the executioner had his hand under Ruth’s neck, trying to force her head to one side to dislocate it. As she plunged downwards, the noose tightened around her neck while the executioner’s assistant guided her fall.

Ruth Alfreda Hildner was executed on the execution pole, paying the ultimate price for a very dark history inside the concentration camps where she had inflicted terror, especially upon female prisoners, every single day. After the end of the war inside Hungary, there were many executions that took place outside the Academy of Music in Budapest. This building became synonymous with the executions of former politicians who had plunged the country into a tragic and terrible war that saw the land closely allied with the Nazis.

Hungarians fought alongside German soldiers and were rocked by huge deportations of people from their lands to concentration camps. Many politicians who became prime minister quickly and came into power collaborated with the Nazis, Hitler, and Mussolini, and after the war, a number of these politicians, including Béla Imrédy, were executed in Budapest outside the Academy of Music. Thousands would flock to witness these executions and see what they believed was justice being carried out.

However, what is the story of the woman who was executed inside Budapest in the same place believed to have been used for the former prime ministers? Maria, or Mányi Naji, was a World War II criminal who had been taken to a people’s tribunal or trial. These were held to deal with those accused of crimes against humanity and of causing huge suffering inside concentration camps, while members of the army who committed atrocities were also tried this way. Following her trial, Maria Mányi was condemned to death.

What did she do? It is believed that as a Second World War criminal, she was known for torturing young Jewish women, which leads to the possibility that she worked inside concentration camps. There were many women who became guards for the SS inside camps within the Third Reich, such as Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen, and a number of them were condemned for their crimes. But usually women like Irma Grese were executed in private within prison cells and execution chambers well away from the eyes of the public.

The name associated with the condemned woman, Mányi Naji, is short for Margaret in Hungary, and what is strange is that little documented evidence, except pictures and photographs, remains regarding her fate and execution. She is considered an unknown war criminal, and from the images, it is clear she was an elderly woman who looked respectable, wrapped in a sweater, but petrified as she made her way to her execution.

There is another possibility as to why she was executed. In the final days of the Second World War in Hungary, there was large-scale killing and looting as the Soviet Red Army invaded and took city after city before moving to Budapest. It is possible Mányi was one of those who stole the property of displaced people or attacked women who were already suffering. For her to be sentenced to death, it is clear she must have done something very serious.

She could also have been a collaborator with the Germans who passed information on to the Nazis, the Gestapo, or the SS about the locations of Jewish women or prisoners. There were people paid to hunt Jews across Europe, acting on tip-offs from neighbors and local people, and perhaps Mányi was one of those collaborators considered the lowest of the low inside society. In Holland, one young woman was executed for this crime and deemed a war criminal on the same level as the SS, willingly giving Jews over to the enemy to be exterminated upon arrival at sites such as Auschwitz.

For Mányi Naji to be executed in front of a crowd inside Budapest, her offense and crime must have been incredibly serious and shocking. The witnesses that day would have known they were seeing the death of a war criminal, and the events of her execution were in keeping with the executions of prominent Hungarians throughout the war. She was led out from her prison, taken to an execution post, and executed using the pole-hanging method.

The noose was attached to a pole or large wooden stake through a hook fed through an eyelet to the executioner standing behind the condemned. When the wooden plank someone stood on was removed, the executioner would pull on the noose and strangle the condemned against the pole, with death usually occurring in a few minutes. Maria Mányi Naji was accompanied by a priest who remained with her for her final moments, and preparations were handled by an executioner wearing a suit and hat alongside his assistant.

These two performed the killing, and she was not alone in her final moments. On the pole next to her was a white sheet covering a previously executed person to keep their body out of view of Mányi as she approached the stake. With her legs and arms tied and a rope passed around her middle, she climbed on top of the wooden box as the executioner fastened the noose. The step was removed, and within minutes she was executed.

The story of Maria Mányi Naji is shocking. What did this elderly woman do that was so offensive and evil that she would be taken in front of a crowd in Budapest and executed in public? Judging by the shape of the windows and the brickwork behind her, the execution must have occurred outside the Academy of Music where former ministers and politicians were also executed. While some were executed by firing squad, former Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi, considered one of the country’s worst war criminals, was executed on the same stakes and in the same manner as this elderly woman.

It is believed she collaborated with the Nazis and Germans, potentially giving up Jewish women who were hiding out so they could be taken to extermination centers and killed. But the sight of the elderly lady making her way to her death still puzzles historians as we do not know too much about her specific crime. Yet this aging lady in her sweater, in the eyes of Hungarian officials, witnesses, and the people of Budapest, must have deserved her execution for whatever she did.