At the age of 24, Jenny Wanda Barkmann a young woman from Hamburg was led to a huge set of
gallows in front of a crowd of 200,000.
On the huge hill in Gdansk, the concentration camp guards who worked inside of the Stutthof
Camp nearby were brought following being condemned to death.
Alongside Jenny were a number of other women who had been ordered to have been executed
and she would go down in history as one of the most brutal female guards who worked inside
of the concentration camps during the Second World War.
She was just a young woman when she committed many of her crimes, and she had big dreams
during during the deadliest conflict in human history, this 24 year old woman would be led
down a dark path of execution, depravity and evil.
Join us today as we look at the execution of Jenny Wanda Barkmann.
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Born on the 30th May 1922, Jenny Wanda Barkmann was born in Hamburg and she had a rather modest
upbringing.
She was raised by her father who was a dockworker, and the family did not always have too much
money as her mother was also a housewife.
As a child, Jenny was a normal girl and she dreamt of becoming an actress.
Following her schooling, she then tried to become a fashion model, and Jenny was noted
for her looks and appearance.
But the outbreak of the Second World War did not change her ideas, and she continued to
be involved in photoshoots for German magazines and also in advertisement.
But then at some point at the start of 1944 something changed in the life of Jenny Wanda
Barkmann.
Suddenly she quite her modelling career and then she appealed to an advertisement which
was issued by the German SS, and they needed women to work inside of concentration camps.
Many women were recruited to work inside of the evil sites, and some went for money and
some wanted a complete change in their life.
At the time, Jenny Wanda Barkmann was just around 21, and she probably wanted the money
and also the idea of career advancement, or she may have been obsessed with the idea of
wielding power over others.
She was interviewed for the job, and she then passed this interview and she then trained
to become an overseer inside of a concentration camp.
She was then transferred to Stutthof Concentration Camp which was known for being a very brutal
site.
At Stutthof in Gdansk, there were 110,000 inmates who were held within the barbed wire
fences, and 65,000 people would never make it out alive.
The camp was staffed by SS guards and also Ukrainian auxiliaries and the first female
guards at Stutthof were brought in during 1942, and a total of 295 women would work
there.
Stutthof had a huge number of prisoners come from different countries, and the conditions
there were harsh.
Thousands of prisoners died from starvation and disease, and lots died from typhus epidemics
that swept through the camp in winter 1942 and also in 1944, and many inmates who were
too sick to work were send to the camp’s small gas chamber.
Executions were carried out on a daily basis, with people being shot on the firing range
and being sent to the gas chambers.
Others were executed on gallows during roll call to strike fear into the hearts of the
inmates.
Others were injected with phenol, and the prisoners sometimes were beaten to death by
the guards, and some even drowned in the mud.
Many prisoners were rented out by other companies for slave labour, and stutthof became infamous
for its evil.
Jenny Barkmann as soon as she arrived showed her evil and brutal side, and she had a talent
for cruelty and sadism.
She was known for beating inmates almost to death, and then sending them to the concentration
camps.
She would torture prisoners in different ways, and some of these actions even shocked the
other guards.
People believed that she was a fragile and intelligent young woman, but she became known
as ‘Mad Jenny,’ and also ‘The Beautiful Spectre.’
It’s believed that she had dozens of victims, and she would also take part in selections
where they were taken to the gas chambers on a daily basis.
It’s believed she was responsible for the deaths of man, and she killed some with her
own hands through violent beatings.
She also sent many children as well as women to their deaths, but as the Second World War
was coming to an end, Mad Jenny sought to try and escape justice.
As the Soviet Red Army were on the horizon, she ran off and Jenny Barkmann became one
of the most hunted war criminals before the war came to an end.
She managed to evade capture for a while before in May 1945 she was then arrested whilst she
was boarding a train in Gdansk to leave.
She had been helped whilst she was hiding for some time, but the image of Jenny Barkmann
had been kept in the records of the camp, and prisoners remembered her well, and the
description of Jenny was sent all over Europe to try and find.
But following her first interrogation, she said she had always treated the prisoners
of Stutthof well, and that she never killed or ill-treated inmates.
She also said that she helped some who were suffering and were starving, and also that
some had been saved from death by her.
But the descriptions of her antics and what she was saying did not add up, and one prison
guard was fooled by her lies.
One even became to sympathise with her, and she even begged this guard to let her out
of her prison cell for a few hours.
But when the guard saw the inmates of her victims, he did not let her out again.
Jenny Wanda Barkmann was then brought to the Stutthof Trials, and at trial dozens of prisoners
of the camp testified about her.
Documents were also brought forward showing her evil, and her lawyer tried to make a case
that she was insane and was not fit enough to stand trial.
He claimed that she did not have the capacity to make sound decisions and that she was insane,
however she did not come across crazy at all.
Jenny spent most of the time at her trial flirting with guards and bothering more about
her hair than the evils of what had happened at the camp where she worked.
She would laugh in the face of witnesses, but for her crimes she was sentenced to death.
When this was announced she did not cry, and she listened to it calmly, however the final
words of her court case were ‘Life is really a great pleasure, and pleasure as a rule does
not last long.
On the 4th July 1946, early in the morning Jenny Wanda Barkmann along with 10 other convicted
war criminals were taken to a site of execution on the Biskupia Gorka Hill near Gdansk.
On these hills were huge gallows which had been constructed to execute the former guards
of Stutthof.
Over 200,000 people were there to witness the proceedings, and Jenny was then brought
out in front of the crowd, and she was helped up onto the back of a truck.
The executioners were stood with her, and they then sat her down on a stool whilst the
adjustments to the noose were made.
Then Jenny Barkmann was told to stand on the stool, and then the noose was fastened around
her neck.
Shortly after this the truck drove off, and Jenny Wanda Barkmann was left on the gallows,
and within minutes with thousands looking on, she was dead.
Jenny Wanda Barkmann was just 24 when she was executed on the gallows for her crimes
at Stutthof Concentration Camp.
She would have dreamed of a career modelling or being an actress, however the lure of a
brutal life wielding power and violence over people was too much for her to resist.
Inside of Stutthof she became known for her evil antics and actions, and she was also
known for her cruelty in which she ordered many executions and carried killing out with
her barehands.
She was a woman who became notorious alongside other guards such as Irma Grese, Johanna Bormann
and Elisabeth Volkenrath for their terrible actions and sadism, but what drove her to
enter a world dominated by the evil of the SS?
Still today it’s not entirely known.
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