Hilde Benjamin

Vocation

East German judge and Minister of Justice, best known for presiding over a series of political show trials in the 1950s. Her frequent death sentences earned her the popular sobriquets "The Red Guillotine" and "Bloody Hilde". She was among the first women to study law in Germany, which she did at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Hamburg from 1921 to 1924. Because she was Jewish she was forbidden to practice law after 1933. Briefly jobless, with her husband removed to a concentration camp (from which, on this occasion, he was released later in the year) directly after the Reichstag fire, she returned for a time to live with her parents along with her small son: she then obtained a position providing legal advice for the Soviet trade association in Berlin. During World War II, she was forced to work in a factory from 1939-45. Her Jewish husband was killed at the KZ Mauthausen in 1942. After World War II, she joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1946 and was vice president of the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949 to 1953. In that capacity, she assisted with the Waldheim Trials and presided over a series of show trials against those identified as political undesirables, such as Johann Burianek and Wolfgang Kaiser, as well as against Jehovah's Witnesses. She died on 18 April 1989 in East Berlin. Link to Wikipedia biography