On 12 March 1938, as Nazi Germany annexed Austria, thousands cheered. Among them stood a 26-year-old woman who would become one of the most feared figures in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women’s camp.

Maria Mandl rose from a small Austrian town to become SS Chief Guard at Auschwitz. Known to prisoners as both “the Beast” and the “Mistress of Life and Death,” she carried out brutal beatings, conducted selections for the gas chambers, and enforced terror with calculated cruelty. Survivors testified to her role in torture, starvation punishments, and the deportation of thousands to their deaths.

After the war, Mandl was arrested, extradited to Poland, and tried at the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków. In January 1948, she faced justice for her crimes.

This is the story of how an ordinary woman became one of the most notorious female perpetrators of the Holocaust.