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Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

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Jenny-Wanda Barkmann
Barkmann at the Stutthof trials in 1946
Born30 May 1922
Hamburg, Weimar Republic
Died4 July 1946(1946-07-04) (aged 24)
Biskupia Górka, Gdańsk, Republic of Poland
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. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
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