On the fourth of July, 1946, before thousands of people gathered in the war-scarred city of Gdańsk, five young women were led to the gallows to be executed. This was no ordinary hanging scaffold. It was built large enough to allow two women to be hanged from the same wooden structure at once, and an angry crowd had assembled, demanding to watch the executions with their own eyes. The executioners were former prisoners of the very concentration camp where these women had once held authority over inmates.
The ropes were fastened around the women’s necks, and their bodies were left hanging from the gallows. The five condemned were female guards from the Stutthof concentration camp, judged to be among the most brutal wardens to have served in the Nazi camp system. Even though some of them had worked at Stutthof only briefly, some for just a few months, they had quickly earned terrifying reputations. The question of why all the captured Stutthof guards were executed requires understanding who these women were and what they had done.
The first Stutthof trial took place in Gdańsk in 1946, prosecuting several former female supervisors, known as Aufseherinnen, alongside male SS members and prisoner functionaries called kapos. Five women were sentenced to death: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Ewa Paradies, and Gerda Steinhoff. A sixth guard, Erna Wallisch, was sentenced to five years in prison instead. This distinction matters because the proceedings did not automatically impose the death penalty simply for serving as a guard.
The five who were condemned were the ones publicly hanged on Biskupia Górka hill, together with the other convicted male defendants. Stutthof itself had been established near Danzig, now Gdańsk, in September 1939, growing into a vast camp complex. Its prisoners included those persecuted by the Nazis as well as Soviet prisoners of war, with people sent there from many countries. Inmates endured forced labor, starvation, disease, beatings, executions, and other forms of brutal treatment.
Female guards became increasingly significant as the number of female prisoners grew rapidly. The women who served as Aufseherinnen supervised prisoners at Stutthof and its numerous subcamps. The system eventually employed hundreds of female guards, but only a relatively small proportion of them were ever put on trial. These particular women were convicted because the prosecution’s case was that they had been active participants in Stutthof’s crimes, which were entirely centered on persecution.
The trial demonstrated that the women were not merely passive employees. Survivor testimony and eyewitness accounts described the guards beating female prisoners, imposing cruel punishments, and participating in the machinery by which prisoners were selected for execution. The charges varied from one defendant to another. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann worked as a supervisor at Stutthof.
Witnesses said she was extremely brutal toward the female inmates. The prosecution portrayed her as a very active participant in the camp’s violence, not just someone standing guard and watching. She may have become the most famous defendant, partly because trial photographs showed her paying attention to her hair and makeup and flirting with the guards. Photographs of her execution later circulated as well.
Gerda Steinhoff carried more responsibility than some of the other guards, rising to the position of Blockälteste, which effectively gave her authority over prisoners and some of the other female guards. She was accused of flagrantly mistreating inmates and participating in the broader system of persecution and killing inside Stutthof. The court considered her conduct serious enough to warrant the death sentence. Accounts of the Stutthof trial singled out Steinhoff and Barkmann as among the most deeply implicated defendants.
Wanda Klaff served as a guard within the camp and was also known for beating prisoners, much like Ewa Paradies. Paradies was noted for her particular treatment of inmates. During winter, she was known to force prisoners in her barracks to undress and stand for hours in freezing conditions, and she would pour buckets of cold water over them, causing hypothermia and even death. Elisabeth Becker’s case was especially interesting because it differed from the other guards.
She initially confessed to involvement in selecting at least thirty female prisoners to be sent to the gas chamber and killed, although she later retracted that confession and cast doubt on what she had actually done. She was also very young. At one point, the court recommended commuting her death sentence to fifteen years in prison, partly because she had served as a guard for a very short time and her conduct was considered less severe than what was attributed to Steinhoff and Barkmann. Becker also submitted a request for clemency to the Polish president, but it was refused, and she was executed.
The guards were tried for their individual conduct and actions. The position of supervisor did not automatically lead to execution. Anna Breudt, mentioned earlier, was tried alongside the five women and received a five-year prison sentence. Similarly, other Stutthof guards were never brought to trial at all or received sentences other than death.
The court at least attempted to formally distinguish between different levels of responsibility. The prosecution argued that the condemned women had crossed the line from merely being camp employees to personally participating in crimes committed against innocent prisoners. The trial took place in the spring of 1946, only one year after the liberation of the concentration camps. Poland had suffered enormous destruction under German occupation.
Millions of Polish citizens had been killed, including the vast majority of Poland’s Jewish population. Stutthof itself was one of the main sites through which the system of imprisonment, forced labor, and murder operated. The first trial took place in the immediate postwar environment, when courts across Europe were prosecuting concentration camp guards for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Gdańsk court convicted the defendants after hearing evidence from former prisoners about conditions inside the camp and the behavior of individual guards.
Local press reports at the time covered the witness testimony extensively and described the women’s crimes in detail, fueling further public outrage. The executions were not carried out secretly inside the prison. The five women were taken to a large hill overlooking the city, where a large wooden gallows had been prepared. The condemned women were helped onto a truck beneath the gallows with ropes placed around their necks.
The executioner was a former Stutthof prisoner. Once the ropes were secured, the vehicles were driven away, leaving the condemned hanging from the scaffold. Thousands of people gathered to watch. The method was short-drop hanging, and as the ropes tightened around their necks, the women kicked and struggled, taking long minutes to die.
The women were executed regardless of their gender. Concentration camp guards held positions of authority over prisoners. Although women were excluded from most official SS ranks, female guards were an integral part of the concentration camp system. Courts considered whether the female guards had personally committed or participated in crimes just as they did with men.
The same principle led to death sentences for other female guards in trials after the war. Women such as Irma Grese were executed on the exact same grounds. The Stutthof guards were executed because the postwar Polish court concluded that their individual conduct as guards amounted to participation in crimes against prisoners and, importantly, crimes against humanity. The fact that one guard received a prison sentence and that other defendants were acquitted or received short sentences proves that mere service at Stutthof did not lead to execution.
These women were hanged because the evidence showed that they had personally crossed the line into active participation in the camp’s brutal system of persecution and murder.