Episode #75
Episode 75 - Hermine Braunsteiner
In this gripping episode of Horrible Humans in History we uncover the full, astonishing life of Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan — the ordinary Austrian woman who became one of the most feared Nazi concentration camp guards, known as the "Stomping Mare" of Majdanek. From her humble Catholic upbringing in 1920s Vienna and frustrated dreams of becoming a nurse, to her voluntary service at Ravensbrück and Majdanek where she earned a reputation for savage brutality, selections, and stomping prisoners with her steel-studded boots, the story traces her path through the horrors of the Holocaust. We follow her postwar reinvention: a light Austrian prison sentence, marriage to an American GI, emigration to the United States, and decades as a friendly, fastidious housewife in quiet Queens, New York — until Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and a New York Times reporter knocked on her door in 1964. The episode explores her dramatic extradition, the marathon Majdanek trial in Germany, her 1981 life sentence, later medical release, and death in 1999, while examining the deeper questions of ordinary evil, denial, delayed justice, and how her case helped create America’s Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations. A sobering, unforgettable portrait of how history can hide in plain sight.
