Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

Barkmann is believed to have spent her childhood in Hamburg. In 1944, she became an Aufseherin, or overseer, in the Stutthof SK-III women's subcamp, where she brutalized prisoners, some to death. She also selected women and children for the gas chambers. She was so merciless that the women prisoners nicknamed her the "Beautiful Specter".[1]

Barkmann fled Stutthof as the Soviet Red Army approached. She was arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave a train station in Gdańsk. She became a defendant in the first Stutthof Trial, where she and other defendants were convicted for their crimes at the camp. Barkmann is said to have giggled through the trial,[2] flirted with her prison guards; she was apparently seen arranging her hair while hearing testimony. She was found guilty, after which she declared, "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."[3]

Barkmann was publicly executed by short-drop hanging along with 10 other defendants from the trial on Biskupia Górka Hill near Gdańsk on 4 July 1946. She was 24 years old, and the first to be hanged.[4]

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 Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff.

• In the play Maidens written and directed by Kenley Smith, she is portrayed by Molly Breen.[5]

• Female guards in Nazi concentration camps