Hilde Benjamin studied law in Berlin, Heidelberg and Hamburg from 1921 to 1924. Afterwards, she worked as a practicing attorney in Berlin-Wedding for the Rote Hilfe, a Communist aid organization. In 1926 she married Georg Benjamin, the brother of writer Walter Benjamin, and in 1927 she joined the Communist Party. Forbidden to practice law after 1933, she worked 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 the war, she joined the SED in 1946 and was vice president of the Supreme Court of the GDR from 1949 to 1953. In that capacity she assisted with the Waldheim Trials and presided over a series of show trials against political undesirables, such as against the Burianek group and Jehovah's Witnesses. Her frequent death verdicts earned her the popular sobriquets "The Red Guillotine" and "Bloody Hilde".
In three months of 1952 alone, she handed down two death sentences, eight terms of life imprisonment and 109 years at hard labor. In court she shrilly interrupted defense counsel with cries of "go on, go on, we have no time for your silly excuses."
From 1949 to 1967 she was a member of the Volkskammer and 1954 to 1989 a member of the Central Committee of the SED. In 1953 she succeeded Max Fechner as minister of justice. GDR leader Walter Ulbricht asked her to resign in 1967, ostensibly for health reasons but in reality because the Politburo felt that the political fanaticism that characterised her harsh verdicts impeded the GDR's desire for international recognition.
Benjamin was instrumental in authoring the penal code and the code of penal procedure of the GDR and played a decisive role in the Stalinist reorganization of the country's legal system. From 1967 to her death she held the chair for the history of the judiciary at the Deutsche Akademie für Staats- und Rechtswissenschaft in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
Heike Amos, Kommunistische Personalpolitik in der Justizverwaltung der SBZ/DDR (1945-1953) : Vom liberalen Justizfachmann Eugen Schiffer über den Parteifunktionär Max Fechner zur kommunistischen Juristin Hilde Benjamin, in: Gerd Bender, Recht im Sozialismus : Analysen zur Normdurchsetzung in osteuropäischen Nachkriegsgesellschaften (1944/45-1989), Frankfurt am Main 1999, Seiten 109 - 145. ISBN 3465027973
Zwischen Recht und Unrecht - Lebensläufe deutscher Juristen, Justizministerium NRW 2004, S. 144 - 146
