Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

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

Barkmann was born in 1922 and is believed to have spent her childhood in Hamburg.

In 1944, Barkmann volunteered with the Schutzstaffel as an Aufseherin,<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> a concentration camp overseer, in the Stutthof SK-III women's subcamp in Poland, where she brutalized prisoners, sometimes to death. She also selected women and children for the gas chambers.<ref name="LRE" /> Women prisoners nicknamed her the Beautiful Spectre.<ref name="LRE">Template:Cite web</ref>

Barkmann fled Stutthof and hid in Gdańsk, where she was arrested at a train station<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name="LRE" /> After she was found guilty she declared, "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."<ref>Stutthof Concentration Camp — Fold3.com – Historical Military Records. Retrieved 3 March 2012.</ref>

File:Biskupia Gorka executions - 14 - Barkmann, Paradies, Becker, Klaff, Steinhoff (left to right).jpg

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 ten other defendants from the trial on Biskupia Górka Hill near Gdańsk on 4 July 1946.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Former Stutthof prisoners volunteered to conduct the executions. She was 24 years old at the time of her death.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Female guards in Nazi concentration camps

External links

• Template:Commons category-inline