On the 4th July 1946, a number of female guards of one of the most sadistic and horrific concentration
camps of the Second World War were taken to the gallows in front of a huge crowd.
Each of these women were known as some of the most evil female guards that worked for
the SS and inside of the concentration camps systems, and they were known for slaughter
and torture.
They would make the lives of the prisoners a misery every single day, and they would
persecute and cause a huge amount of suffering.
Stutthof Concentration Camp was found in Gdansk, and it was a place which became known for
executions and terrible treatment, and many of these young women who were condemned had
been brainwashed since they were young by the Nazi beliefs and ideas, and they became
inside of Stutthof murderess’, torturers and beasts.
Join us today as we look at the horrific crimes of the female guards of stutthof concentration
camp, as always to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Many of the most terrifying and savage guards who worked inside of Stutthof Concentration
Camp were women and female sadists.
Around 1944, the German Army was suffering heavily following being pushed back by the
Red Army after the Battle of Stalingrad, and also with the impending Normandy Landings
which would make things worse.
Because of this many of the male guards were sent from the concentration camps to go to
the frontlines to fight, but because of this the SS would advertise in cities and towns
nearby for women to join the SS retinue and go and become concentration camp guards.
Inside of Gdansk, there were regular advertisements which offered good pay to women and a chance
of career advancement and promotion, and with this.
Women from all walks of life came into the camps to work, from teachers to hairdressers
with many drawn in by the attraction of more money.
But these women would then become evil brutes who would inflict a severe degree of punishment
onto other women and also men.
One of these young women who joined was Jenny Wanda Barkmann who would become known as the
beautiful spectre.
She became one of the most brutal and barbaric female guards of Stutthof, and she would take
part in the selections of inmates to go into the gas chambers.
Those who were not fit enough to work inside the industries and factories would be sent
to the gas chambers with guards such as Barkmann deciding their fate and playing God with their
lives.
Jenny Barkmann was also known for beating prisoners to death with her bare hands and
with weapons such as truncheons and sticks.
Prisoners later said that many other women did this also and often beat prisoners to
death.
Stutthof Concentration Camp was the first camp set up outside the borders of Germany
during World War 2, and it opened its doors on the 2nd September 1939.
It was a camp which would be used to cause terror and inflict fear onto the polish people,
and many people who were considered the intellectual part of polish society were held there.
Teachers, religious figures and politicians were rounded up as soon as the German army
invaded Poland, and the SS lists which had been drafted of who to arrest were put into
place.
The first prisoners held at Stutthof were the ones who would be used to build the infrastructure
of Stutthof and the initial barracks and other buildings.
It was where many civilians would be kept and forced to work, but over time it transitioned
into a concentration camp with execution sites inside of it.
The first 150 prisoners arrived to build, but within weeks of the Second World War continuing,
many more polish people found themselves imprisoned inside of Stutthof, and they were forced to
work in some of the war industries, creating ammunition and weapons for their enemies.
But as the Germans expanded their territory and invaded different lands, prisoners from
all over Europe arrived at the camp in Gdansk, and many had been sent to work there from
Auschwitz.
It’s said that 110,000 people passed through the barbed wire fences and the gates of Stutthof,
and these people were from all different walks of life.
There were resistance fighters, Soviet prisoners of war, those who were mentally ill and communists
who arrived for punishment and eventual extermination through labour.
There were many other sub camps that served Stutthof, however the conditions were truly
awful and shocking.
Disease was rife and there was poor sanitation and a severe overcrowding problem, and prisoners
also died from starvation.
There were deadly typhus epidemics in 1942 and 1944 which caused a huge degree of death,
and prisoners who had caught the disease were often sent to the camps gas chamber which
was despite being small very deadly.
The SS guards and doctors would also pick those who were sent to their deaths, and lots
would be executed in a variety of ways.
There was a terrible firing range where resistance fighters were shot, and the gas chamber claimed
the lives of 4000 prisoners including many women and children.
The evil treatment of prisoners inside of Stutthof continued until January 1945 where
the camp would be evacuated due to the impending advancements of the Red Army who were rampaging
quickly through German occupied lands.
50,000 prisoners were force marched out of Stutthof, and 5000 walked to the Baltic Coast
and they then were forced to walk into the cold sea where they were slaughtered by a
machine gun which was sat on the beachhead.
More prisoners were sent on the death marches and these took place in the freezing cold
weather and prisoners did not have warm clothes, any food or water and if they were too slow
they would be shot immediately.
Around 25,000 people died during the evacuation of Stutthof and there were only 100 prisoners
left at the camp when it was liberated.
At the end of the Second World War, a significant war crimes trial took place to punish those
guards of Stutthof who had been captured.
Many of these guards in the first Stutthof Trials were women who had tried to flee into
the local area of Gdansk, and some had even tried to return home to their pre-war lives
as if nothing had happened.
The first trial brought 6 women on trial who were accused of being terrifying female overseers
inside of Stutthof.
These were Jenny Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Ewa Paradise, Wanda Klaff, Erna Beilhardt
and Gerda Steinhoff.
The court room heard a lot of testimony regarding their conduct, and it showed how brutal these
women could be.
Erna Beilhardt would be spared as she was deemed to have left the site when she found
the brutality of the other women too much.
She did not feel comfortable inflicting such suffering.
Many of these female guards did not take the trial seriously, and many including Barkmann
would flirt with the guards and seemed more interested with their hair and they would
also laugh through evidence being given.
But Jenny Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Gerda Steinhoff, Wanda Klaff and Elisabeth Becker were all
sentenced to death.
Many of these women did not have experience inside of other camps such as Auschwitz, but
they would be known for killing inside Stutthof and sending inmates to their deaths in the
gas chambers.
Some had also only worked at Stutthof for around a year following the SS’ appeal for
workers in 1944.
The executions of the female guards of Stutthof Concentration Camp took place on the 4th July
1946 on Biskupia Gorka Hill in Gdansk.
There were a number of other male guards condemned, but a crowd of around 200,000 had come out
to see the executions of these women and men.
The gallows which had been made were huge to ensure every person who attended had a
good view of the hangings.
The gallows were imposing, and the women were all brought out in front of the crowd.
The first woman who was executed was Jenny Parkman, and she was brought under the gallows
on a truck which was reversed below the structure of death.
Whilst here she was stood on a stool and an executioner read out the death sentence and
reminded the crowd what she had done, and with this the noose was then secured around
her neck.
Following this, the truck then drove off and she was left swinging from her neck, and within
minutes Jenny Barkmann had died in front of a huge crowd, as her body was seen twitching
as she struggled for a few minutes before she turned limp.
Her shoe came off during her execution, and the other executions of the female guards
continued in this manner and in this way.
There was even a female executioner or two who were used to execute women such as Wanda
Klaff.
For those people who witnessed the executions of the female guards of Stutthof Concentration
Camp, it was justification for the evil committed inside of Stutthof.
These women had brutalised inmates and many of those who witnessed the executions were
former prisoners of the camp.
But the crimes of the female guards were endless, and the fact that many of them tried to hide
at the end of the conflict signalled that they knew what was coming.
They were responsible for the crimes of the camp, for the slaughter and for the torture
that they caused every day.
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