Stutthof Concentration Camp was one of the deadliest sites of the Second World War.
It was guarded by a number of evil SS men and women who made the prisoner’s lives
a misery.
They established reigns of terror over them with executions being carried out on a daily
basis, and within the barbed wire fences of Stuthof, around 65,000 prisoners never made
it out of the camp alive.
There were a series of trials that took place after the war, and many men and women were
condemned to death during this, and the executions took place on Biskupia Gorka, a huge hill
in Gdansk.
On the hill were 20,000 people who witnessed the executions, which occurred on a large
gallows so everyone could see.
One of those women who was brought to the gallows that day was Gerda Steinhoff, who
was a woman who had came to Stutthof late in the conflict, and answered an SS call to
work at the camp.
But she became known for her evil and brutality, but at the age of just 24 she was executed
for her work at the camp.
Join us today as we look at the execution of Gerda Steinhoff, to support our channel
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Gerda Steinhoff was born on the 29th January 1922, inside of Danzig or Gdansk.
She had a normal upbringing, and whilst she was a teenager she worked as a house maid
on a farm near to her home.
But then following leaving school from 1939, she worked inside of a bakery in Danzig, but
then Gerda took a new job working on the trams as a conductor.
As the Second World War was waging on, she continued working in Danzig, and got married
in 1944 and then she had a child.
However that year, she also then answered the call that the Nazis put out asking for
new guards to work inside of the concentration camps.
They asked inside of many towns as many former guards had been drafted to the front lines
to fight the Soviets and the Allies as the war turned against the Germans.
However Gerda Steinhoff then trained at Stutthof Concentration Camp near to her home, and she
would then join the staff there after a short period training.
On the 1st October 1944, Gerda Steinhoff became a blockleiterin, or a block leader who was
in group or a block of women and prisoners.
Stutthof where she worked was a camp which opened following the German invasion of Poland,
and as soon as the Germans invaded people were being rounded up and were sent there.
The first inmates were then to build the camp, and they built the barrack buildings, and
Stutthof changed over a number of years until in 1942 it became a concentration camp.
The initial site was surrounded by barbed wire fences, and there were 8 barracks and
also a bunkhouse for SS guards, and then the camp got bigger and grew to a huge capacity,
with a new site being made next to the old one.
The new camp had 30 barracks and also a crematorium and gas chamber which were added, and the
final solution was carried out at Stutthof.
The camp staff was made up of German SS guards, and as mentioned many people including women
were enlisted to the site to work and manage the women.
Alongside Gerda Steinhoff were other women such as Ewa Paradies, Jenny Wanda Barkmann
and Herta Bothe.
The prisoners of Stutthof came from a number of countries, and a huge number of them were
sent from Asuchwitz and were deported there to work.
The conditions at the camp were incredibly tough, and dozens of thousands of prisoners
died from starvation and disease which went around Stutthof, with typhus epidemics sweeping
through the camp in winter 1942 and also in 1944.
The prisoners who were considered too weak to work were then sent to the small gas chamber
at Stutthof, with thousands dying inside the chamber before they were taken to the crematorium.
Executions were carried out there on a daily basis, and also doctors took the lives of
weak inmates using phenol injections and also a number of prisoners were drowned in the
mud by the guards and were beaten to death with weapons.
Prisoners were shipped out for forced labour at a number of nazi businesses who helped
the war effort, and these prisoners were forced to work incredibly hard.
An aircraft factory was even created at Stutthof, and there were a huge number of sub camps,
but then as the war was coming to an end the evacuation of Stutthof took place.
Around 50,000 prisoners were shipped out of the camp, and many were marched towards the
sea, and once they arrived there German SS guards executed them as they marched into
the sea, shooting them with their machine guns.
This happened a number of times, and then further executions on death marches took place
with its believed around 25,000 prisoners dying during the evacuation efforts.
Gerda Steinhoff was a guard at Stutthof who got involved in the killing process, and she
became known for taking part in prisoner selections and she would send many to their deaths in
the gas chambers.
The Nazis valued her horrific work, and she was then promoted to SS Oberaufseherin and
was considered a senior female guard, and she was a senior overseer and other women
served underneath her.
She was on the 1st December 1944 reassigned to other sub camps at Stutthof, but one of
these was the Bromberg Out camp, found 105 miles south of Danzig.
Whilst here she received a medal for her service to the Nazi Third Reich, but Steinhoff was
known for being a brutal and savage overseer who would whip and beat the prisoners, but
whilst the evacuations were taking place, Gerda Steinhoff then decided to flee Stutthof
and the sub camp, and she then returned home to her family life.
However the authorities would soon catch up with her.
Following the liberation of the camp, a number of guards were arrested following guard lists
being found, and Gerda Steinhoff was arrested by polish officials on the 25th May 1945.
She was then interrogated and was then tried in the first Stutthof Trial along with many
other SS female guards and staff, and during the trial many witnesses came forward about
her actions at various sub camps.
They told of her brutal beatings and also that she was involved in the selections with
prisoners being sent to their deaths, and she was considered a sadist who would assault
and abuse inmates on an hourly basis.
But what surprised the judges was that Steinhoff had been a guard for only around a year, but
then the war would come to an end, but in this short time she got involved in a horrific
number of crimes and at the end of the day she was just a 24 year old young mother who
caused immense brutality.
But along with a number of other women she was sentenced to death for her involvement
in the selections and in crimes against humanity.
Gerda Steinhoff was then imprisoned for a short time until on the 4th July 1946, she
was taken to Biskupia Gorka Hill, which was a huge mound in Gdansk.
On this hill stood a number of huge wooden gallows, where they would be executed on and
the female guards were then led out in front of the crowd.
Gerda Steinhoff and the other condemned men and women were taken out and were told to
climb on a number of trucks.
Gerda Steinhoff was helped onto the vehicle and then was told to sit on a stool on the
back whilst the noose was thrown over the gallows and was prepared.
She was then stood on the stool and the noose was secured around her neck, and then the
guards gave the instruction for the truck to drive off.
The rope then went taut, and then Gerda Steinhoff was executed and was left on the gallows in
front of the huge crowd, and she was executed on the same gallows as the head guard Johann
Pauls.
Gerda Steinhoff was despite her age a senior guard at Stutthof Concentration Camp, and
she was just 24 when she was executed in front of the huge crowd.
She was a woman who was also not there too long, but she was known for her violence that
resulted in a number of inmates being killed, and she also selected prisoners to go to their
deaths.
For this she was found guilty of crimes against humanity and she is remembered alongside other
evil female guards such as Elisabeth Volkenrath, Irma Grese and Johanna Bormann as some of
the most despicable war criminals of the Second World War.
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