The deportation hearings of Mrs. Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, a convicted Nazi concentration camp guard, resumed here today with a new translator after being temporarily suspended last week when her attorney accused the original translator of prejudicing her case. Under cross examination by Vincent A, Schiano of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Mrs. Ryan, the wife of an American, described the nature of life at Ravensbrueck and Majdanek concentration camps where she served as a guard of women and children during World War II.
Asked If she was ashamed of anything she did during her six years as a camp guard, Mrs. Ryan replied, “No, no. I did my Job to the best of my knowledge as I was supposed to do.” She admitted that she was present when prisoners were marched to the gas chambers at Majdanek. She said she was “shocked” and “scared” by the prisoners’ deaths but “It was not in my power to do anything about that. I was too little.”
Mrs. Ryan was convicted in Austria in 1949 on charges of brutality during her employment as a camp guard. Her failure to disclose that conviction when applying for naturalization cost her her American citizenship which was revoked last year. Although she speaks English, Mrs. Ryan was permitted to testify in her native German. Her original interpreter, Abraham Wassner, a Polish-born Jew, translated the title of the concentration camp officer who hired Mrs. Ryan as Lt. Col., SS. His use of those initials was seized upon by defense counsel as prejudicial and Wassner was dropped from the case. The hearings will continue tomorrow.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
