Erna Dorn

Erna Dorn (17 July 1911 – 1 October 1953) was a victim of the politicised justice system in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). She is believed to be the only female to have been sentenced and executed in the aftermath of the East German uprising of 1953.^[1]

According to records she claimed to have worked in the political department at Ravensbrück concentration camp and to have been responsible for the deaths of between eighty and ninety inmates. She was sentenced to death on 22 June 1953 by the district court at Halle, found guilty of war mongering and boycott incitement against the German Democratic Republic: she was executed by guillotine two months later. On 22 March 1994 the conviction and sentence were posthumously revoked.^[2][3]

There is much that remains unclear about Erna Dorn. Although she was executed as Erna Dorn, no records have surfaced identifying her by that name from before 1945.^[4] Surviving sources depend heavily on court files containing records of investigations and researches created during the four years prior to her execution, between 1949 and 1953. Her testimony during this period appears to have become ever more outlandish.^[4] There are also suggestions that some of what appears in these East German official records is uncorroborated and might be based on statements inaccurately attributed to Dorn by interrogators.^[2] Two alternative birth names that appeared were Erna Kaminski and Erna Brüser. Towards the end she came up with more (apparently fictitious) identities for herself.^[5] There is an alternative birth date of 28 August 1913. Also, between 1945 and 1949 she was married, and may be identified in sources by her married name as Erna Gewald.^[1] (An earlier marriage, between 1935 and 1943, to a Communist activist called Erich Brüser, seems to have been another fiction.^[5])