Johanna Altvater
Surname | Altvater |
Given Name | Johanna |
Country | Germany |
Category | Government |
Gender | Female |
Contributor: C. Peter Chen
ww2dbaseJohanna Altvater was born in Germany in 1920. In 1942, she arrived in the Vladimir-Volynsky region of Ukraine to work as the secretary of Nazi Party district leader Wilhelm Westerheide. After the war, she was accused of having held a Jewish boy by his legs and killed the child by swinging his head into a wall in a ghetto. She was also accused of throwing Jewish children out of a third-floor window of a hospital, and then dispatching staff to go out to the pavement to ensure all the children were dead. After the war, she became married and took on her husband's surname of Zelle. She served as a welfare worker for some time, but was ultimately brought to court together with her former superior Westerheide. They were ultimately acquitted in a lower court in 1979 and were again acquitted in a higher court in Dec 1982, both times due to contradictory testimonies and general lack of evidence.
ww2dbaseSource: Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
Last Major Revision: Dec 2015
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Visitor Submitted Comments
16 Nov 2019 10:41:09 AM
Wow what a evil bitch I would love the kick ten bells of *** out of her even now her being a fail old vulnerable women just like she did to vulnerable children I agree the allies should of massacred the lot of them 😡
18 Jun 2020 04:35:28 PM
I cant belive we let her go they should have smashed her head in and left her in the street, even now
All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB.
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13 Aug 2019 02:53:52 AM
Wow...so many evil people got off scot free after the war; sometimes I think it would've been best if the Allies had acted like the Nazis.