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Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

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Jenny-Wanda Barkmann
Barkmann at the Stutthof trials in 1946
Born30 May 1922
Died4 July 1946(1946-07-04) (aged 24)
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
Other names"Beautiful Spectre"
OccupationGuard of the Stutthof concentration camp
Political partyNazi Party
Conviction(s)Crime against humanity
TrialStutthof trials
Criminal penaltyDeath

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann (30 May 1922 – 4 July 1946) was a German overseer in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. She was tried and executed for crimes against humanity after the war.

Biography

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Barkmann was born in 1922 and is believed to have spent her childhood in Hamburg.

In 1944, she became an Aufseherin, or overseer, in the Stutthof SK-III women's subcamp in Poland, where she brutalized prisoners, some to death. She also selected women and children for the gas chambers[1] and volunteered as a gunner in the camp.[2] She was so merciless that the women prisoners nicknamed her the "Beautiful Spectre".[1]

Barkmann fled Stutthof and hid out in Gdańsk, where she was arrested at a train station[2] in May 1945 for her criminal wartime acts. In 1946, she became a defendant in the first Stutthof Trial, where she and other defendants were convicted for their crimes at the camp.[1] After she was found guilty she declared, "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."[3]

Public execution of Stutthof concentration camp personnel on 4 July 1946 by short-drop hanging. In the foreground, from left to right, are female camp overseers Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff.

Barkmann was publicly executed by short-drop hanging along with 10 other defendants from the trial on Biskupia Górka Hill near Gdańsk on 4 July 1946.[4] Former Stutthof prisoners volunteered to conduct the executions. She was 24 years old.[5]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Jenny-Wanda Barkmann Biography". Liberation Route Europe. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Modellnek készült, az egyik legrettegettebb náci fegyőr lett a gyönyörű kísértetnek nevezett nőből". www.evamagazin.hu (in Hungarian). 17 November 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
  3. ^ Stutthof Concentration Camp — Fold3.com – Historical Military Records. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  4. ^ Wynn, Stephen (19 April 2020). Holocaust: The Nazis' Wartime Jewish Atrocities. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-5267-2822-7.
  5. ^ "1946: Eleven from the Stutthof concentration camp". Executed today. 4 July 2008. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
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