Suze Arts

Suze Arts was a concentration camp guard at two Nazi camps during the last three years of World War II who was distinguished by her cruelty.

Early life

Arts was born in Tilburg, Netherlands sometime between 1920 and 1924. In 1932 she attended a boarding school in Germany where she joined the Nazis' Bund Deutscher Mädel ("League of German Girls") and she met and fell in love with Franz Ettlinger. Arts later became a waitress in the Netherlands while her lover went to Germany to become a Nazi SS officer.

Later life

After having joined the SS, Arts's lover, Ettlinger, served in numerous Nazi concentration camps, including Flossenburg and Auschwitz, finally ending up in Vught in the Netherlands in 1943 as head of the transport department. There, he persuaded Arts to join the concentration camp staff so they could be together. She did, and in 1943 the SS sent her to Ravensbruck to undergo guard training. In mid-1943 she returned to Vught and the two lovers were reunited.

Suze Arts's cruelty

In January 1944, Arts took part in the torture and murder of 10 women at Vught which became known as the Bunker Tragedy. In June and July 1944 Arts was assigned to work in Ravensbruck where she continued her severe abuse towards the camp's female prisoners.

Trial and prosecution

Arts fled the Ravensbruck camp in April 1945. In 1948 the Dutch government found and captured Suze Ettlinger (nee Arts) and placed her on trial for war crimes committed at the Vught and Ravensbruck concentration camps. She was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment but she was released in 1953, after having served only a third of her sentence.

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