Johanna Langefeld (5 March 1900 - 26 January 1974) was a
female guard and supervisor at three
Nazi concentration camps.
Born in Kupferdreh (now in Essen, Germany), Johanna Langefeld was brought up in a Lutheran-Protestant, nationalistic family. Her father was a blacksmith. In 1924 she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in 1926 of lung disease. In 1928 Langefeld got pregnant by another man, left him soon after and moved to Düsseldorf where her son was born in August of that same year.
Langefeld was unemployed until age 34, when she began to teach domestic economy in an establishment of the city of Neuss. From 1935 onwards, she worked as a guard in a so-called Arbeitsanstalt, (working institution) in Brauweiler. In fact, this was a prison for prostitutes, unemployed and homeless women and other so called 'antisocial' women, who were then later imprisoned in concentration camps. From 1937 on, Langefeld was a member of the Nazi party.
In March 1938, she applied for a job as a camp guard in the first SS concentration camp for women in Lichtenburg. After one year, Langefeld became the female superintendent of this camp. She stayed in that position until the camp population was transferred to Ravensbrück in May 1939.
