Gerda Steinhoff
Gerda Steinhoff was a Schutzstaffel Nazi concentration camp overseer following the 1939 German invasion of Poland.
SS career
Steinhoff was born in Danzig-Langfuhr. As a teenager, she worked as house maid on a farm at Tygenhagen near Danzig. From 1939, she worked in a bakery in Danzig and later became a tramway conductor. She married in 1944 and had a child. In the same year, because of the Nazi call for new guards, she joined the camp staff at Stutthof.On 1 October 1944, Steinhoff became a Blockleiterin, or block leader, in the Stutthof SK-III women's camp. There, she took part in selections of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers. On 31 October, she was promoted to SS-Oberaufseherin, senior overseer, and assigned to the Danzig-Holm subcamp.
On 1 December 1944, Steinhoff was reassigned to the Stutthof Bromberg-Ost female subcamp located in Bydgoszcz, some 170km south of Danzig. There, on 25 January 1945, she received a medal for her loyalty and service to the Third Reich. Steinhoff was devoted to her job in the camps and was known as a ruthless overseer. Just before the end of World War II, she fled the camp and returned home.