Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

{{Infobox criminal

| name = Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

| image = Jenny Wanda Barkmann.jpg

| image_caption = Barkmann at the Stutthof trials in 1946

| birth_date = 30 May 1922

| birth_place = Hamburg, Weimar Republic

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1946|07|04|1922|05|30|df=y}}

| death_place = Biskupia Górka, Gdańsk, Republic of Poland

| death_cause = Execution by hanging

| conviction_penalty = Death

| occupation = Guard of the Stutthof concentration camp

| years_active =

| conviction = Crime against humanity

| trial = Stutthof trials

| other_names = "Beautiful Spectre"

| party = Nazi Party

}}

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, she volunteered with the SS as an Aufseherin,{{Cite web |date=2023-11-17 |title=Modellnek készült, az egyik legrettegettebb náci fegyőr lett a gyönyörű kísértetnek nevezett nőből |url=https://www.evamagazin.hu/tarsadalom/jenny-wanda-barkmann-elete |access-date=2024-09-21 |website=www.evamagazin.hu |language=hu}} 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. She was so merciless that the women prisoners nicknamed her the Beautiful Spectre.{{cite web|url=https://liberationroute.com/poland/biography/jenny-wanda-barkmann-bio218 |title=Jenny-Wanda Barkmann Biography | website=Liberation Route Europe|access-date=9 March 2021 }}

Barkmann fled Stutthof and hid out in Gdańsk, where she was arrested at a train station 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. After she was found guilty she declared, "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."[http://www.fold3.com/page/286061325_stutthof_concentration_camp/ Stutthof Concentration Camp] — Fold3.com – Historical Military Records. Retrieved 3 March 2012.

File:Biskupia Gorka executions - 14 - Barkmann, Paradies, Becker, Klaff, Steinhoff (left to right).jpg 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.{{Cite book |last=Wynn |first=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AwI2EAAAQBAJ&dq=Jenny-Wanda+Barkmann&pg=PT181 |title=Holocaust: The Nazis' Wartime Jewish Atrocities |date=2020-04-19 |publisher=Pen and Sword |isbn=978-1-5267-2822-7 |language=en}} Former Stutthof prisoners volunteered to conduct the executions. She was 24 years old.{{cite web

|url=http://www.executedtoday.com/tag/jenny-wanda-barkmann/ |title=1946: Eleven from the Stutthof concentration camp |website=Executed today |date=4 July 2008 |access-date=22 July 2012 }}