On the 4th of July of 1946, 11 female guards from the Stutoff camp were taken to the gallows. The execution was public. Thousands of people watched in silence as the ropes tightened and the bodies fell. There was no ceremony, only immediate and visible punishment. These women had been an active part of the terror system.
They were not figures of command, but they applied orders with brutal precision. They were in the barracks, in the marches, in the dayto-day of the extermination. Their fate was sealed in the same country where they had exercised their power against defenseless prisoners. And the end was as relentless as their service had been.
Who were these women really? How did they go from anonymous guardians to condemned before a crowd? Were they mere executives of orders or conscious accompllices of the machinery of death? Sto the camp of the condemned. On the 1st of September of 1939, the German armed forces crossed the border of Poland. One day later, the first concentration camp created outside the borders of the Reich during the war was established in the region of Danzig.
It was called Stuto and its location responded to logistics and control criteria. Situated several dozens of kilometers east of Danzig in a wooded and swampy terrain near the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Gdans and the delta of the Vistulara River, the site guaranteed discretion and allowed quick access by land and sea.
At its beginning, Stutoff functioned as a detention center under the authority of the police of Danzig. The blacklists prepared before the invasion identified intellectuals, political and religious leaders, cultural figures, and community representatives. They were the first deportes. The camp was then composed of a few wooden barracks fenced with barbed wire.
The first prisoners arrived in the days following the occupation and had to erect new facilities under armed supervision. By the end of that same year, several thousand people had already passed through the place. Forced labor was immediately established as a method of exploitation. The working day extended from dawn to dusk in conditions calculated to physically exhaust the prisoners.
Violence also manifested in collective executions organized in the nearby forests. During the winter of 1939 to 1940, prisoners were forced to dig graves intended for mental patients transferred from hospitals in the region. Thousands of people were murdered there with a shot in the neck, including the inmates who had dug the ditches.
In November of 1941, the administration passed into the hands of the security police led by Reinhardt Hydrich. The place was designated as an education camp by labor, a euphemism to describe exemplary punishments. Shortly after, in January of 1942, Hinrich Himmler visited the facilities and ordered their integration into the SS concentration camp system.
The transformation was immediate. A crematorium was built and in 1943, a gas chamber. Over the following years, new barracks were built surrounded by watchtowers and electrified fences. The camp became a forced labor center linked to the war economy. Private companies benefited from slave labor. Within the camp itself, clothing workshops, shoe shops, carpentries, and smaller factories were set up.
There, uniforms, footwear, and components destined for the military industry were produced. Labor exploitation coexisted with the elimination of those who were considered useless for work. The number of deportes to Stutoff exceeded 100,000. Among them were Poles, Jews from different European countries, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, religious people, and citizens from occupied territories.
In the summer of 1944, contingents evacuated from other camps arrived, including thousands of women from Burkanau. In the last months of the war, tens of thousands of Jewish women were transferred to Stutoff and its sub camps. The food was insufficient. The rations consisted of lowquality bread, watery soups, and small amounts of margarine or barley coffee.
The caloric intake was far below what was needed to survive the workload. Hunger became a constant weakening factor. The epidemics worsened the situation. An outbreak of typhus in the winter of 1942 caused numerous deaths. Another in 1944 once again decimated the internal population. The lack of hygiene, overcrowding, and the precariousness of medical services facilitated the spread of diseases.
The camp authorities used the outbreaks as a pretext to select the sick and weak, sending them to the crematorium or gas chamber. The extermination methods included shootings, phenol injections, hangings, and the use of cyclone B in the gas chamber. Between 1,944 and the final evacuation, several thousand people were killed with this procedure.
The elimination affected both Jews and Poles considered unable to meet labor demands. Stutoff expanded into a network of more than 100 subamps located in the Baltic region and northern Poland. In them, the prisoners were exploited in factories, agriculture, and construction. This dispersed structure provided labor to various industries and made any attempt at mass escape more difficult.
It is estimated that more than 60,000 people died in Stutoff and its sub camps. The causes included executions, epidemics, starvation, exhaustion, and the so-called evacuation marches. In January of 1945, tens of thousands of prisoners were forced to leave the camp on foot under extreme conditions, resulting in further deaths in large numbers.
The administration was under direct control of the SS. Throughout the war, more than 2,000 staff members, including officers, guards, and administrative staff passed through Stutoff. Starting from 1943, the shortage of available men, led to the recruitment of female guards. More than 100 fulfilled roles of surveillance, tallying, punishment, and selection.
Their presence increased with the creation of female subcamps where Jewish prisoners were concentrated. The female guards received specific training in control techniques, physical violence, and methods of humiliation. Many were very young, some just barely older than 20 years, but they exercised full authority over female and male prisoners.
Several reached positions of command within the hierarchy with the ability to decide individual fates in routine selections. The brutality was not an isolated phenomenon but part of institutionalized training. The postwar documentation recorded his involvement in beatings, torture, and executions. His crimes were investigated in legal proceedings that provided detailed evidence about the magnitude of the violence exerted in Stutoff.
The camp which began as an improvised center in the early days of the war transformed into a consolidated cog within the system of repression and exploitation of the Third Reich. Its evolution from precarious facilities to a complex with crematorium gas chamber and network of subcamps illustrates the process of institutionalization of Nazi violence.
But as the end of the conflict approached, the events surrounding the evacuation of Stutoff and the dispersal of its prisoners would show a new phase of brutality that was still to unfold. Jenny Wonder Bachmann, the beautiful face of cruelty. Jenny Wander Bachmann was born in Hamburg on the 30th of May 1922.
Her childhood unfolded in an urban environment characteristic of a port city subjected to the social and economic changes of the 1920s and30s. Information on those early years is scarce. Some sources indicate that she came from a family of modest income, while others suggest relative stability without luxuries or severe hardships. What does appear recurrently in the documents is the attention her physical appearance attracted.
From a very young age, she was considered attractive with fine features and blonde hair, and her presence was recorded both in testimonies of survivors and in reports prepared after the war. During adolescence, she expressed an interest in pursuing modeling or professions related to aesthetics. Although there is no evidence that she ever worked in that field, those aspirations reflected a constant concern for personal appearance.
The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 coincided with her childhood and the national socialist propaganda omniresent in school and on the streets shaped the environment in which she grew up. There is no documentary evidence of her involvement in the Bund Deutsche Medal. But given the mandatory nature of the organization for young German females starting from 1,939, it is likely that she participated in its activities.
In the summer of 1944, at 21 years of age, she joined as a guard in the concentration camp system. She was assigned to Stutoff at a time when the complex was undergoing rapid expansion due to the arrival of thousands of Jewish women and children from ghettos and intermediate camps in Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. The lack of male personnel due to the Eastern Front led the SS to recruit inexperienced young women trained in brief courses that included disciplinary rules, headcounts, surveillance, and the application of physical punishments. Her
arrival coincided with the full integration of Stutoff into the extermination machinery already equipped with a crematory and gas chamber in addition to a slave labor system organized in workshops and sub camps. Later testimonies agreed that Bachmann stood out from the start for her severity.
She was described as beating female prisoners during daily roll calls using sticks, whips, or her own hands, even without apparent reasons. She also participated in selections of inmates considered unable to work, sending them to the gas chamber with a gesture or a brief order. Among the victims were sick women, elderly women, and children.
During the subsequent trials, an episode was recounted in which she beat a prisoner unconscious who failed to remain upright in a lineup. Other witnesses remembered seeing her lead groups of women and children to the building where the extermination facilities were located. She was also attributed with participating in collective punishments that forced prisoners to remain outdoors for hours without shelter under her supervision.
Despite the fact that she did not hold a high rank within the female hierarchy of the SS, her reputation for cruelty spread quickly. She was not a main leader, nor did she hold the rank of Oberin, but as an alsin, she gained notoriety for the intensity of the violence she exercised. Testimonies highlight that she seemed to enjoy the power over the prisoners, sometimes smiling while imposing punishments, a behavior that distinguished her even within an environment where brutality was commonplace. Her physical
appearance, unusual among the female staff of the camp, made her easily identifiable. Survivors remembered her clearly, which made it possible to recognize her after the war. Her presence was not limited to the main camp. She was also assigned to subc camps where she maintained the same behavior systematically associated with abuse and violence.
With the approach of the Red Army in 1945, he participated in the forced evacuations. During the marches to the west, he maintained the same patterns of behavior, hitting those who could not keep up. In that context, the violence applied for months in the camp was transferred to the mass displacements. After the German surrender, she was identified by former prisoners and captured by the Allied forces.
Her appearance, which had drawn attention during the war, made any attempt to go unnoticed, difficult. In April of 1946, she was brought to trial in Gdansk along with 16 other defendants, including six women. From the beginning, she attracted the attention of observers and journalists due to her conduct in the courtroom.
She appeared everyday with neat clothes, different hairstyles, and a serene expression, as if she prioritized her image over the seriousness of the accusations. The hearings included tens of testimonies that directly pointed to her as responsible for beatings, selections, and murders. The survivors identified her without hesitation, recounting specific episodes.
The press of the time recorded that she often smiled during the sessions, showing indifference to the process. Some chronicers even noted flirtatious attitudes towards the guards tasked with her custody. The court accused her of crimes against humanity along with the rest of the defendants. The evidence was considered overwhelming and the conviction was inevitable.
On the 31st of May 1,946, she was sentenced to death by hanging. During the reading of the verdict, she maintained the same composure she had shown during the trial. She did not ask for clemency or express remorse. The final image she conveyed was that of a young woman who continued to care about her personal appearance even in her final days.
The trajectory of Jenny Wander Bachmann from her origins in Hamburg to her capture and conviction exemplifies the profile of young women incorporated into the structure of concentration camps in the final years of the war. Her case became a symbol due to the notoriety it reached among survivors and the contrast between her physical appearance and the documented atrocities against her.
The judicial outcome closed a chapter in Stutoff but did not put an end to the debate about the role of women in the Nazi concentration system an issue that would continue to develop in subsequent trials. Awa Paradis the games of ice and fire. Ever Paradis was born on the 7th of December of 1920 in Lenberg, a city in eastern Pomerania that after the war would become part of Poland under the name Leborg.
She grew up in a German Protestant family during a period marked by economic and political instability in the interwar period. Her formal education ended early as she left school in 1935 to take on minor jobs. The need for immediate work limited her prospects, although no extreme deprivations in her youth have ever been documented.
When the war broke out in 1939, Parades was 18 years old. That same context opened up the possibility of joining youth and paramilitary structures of the national socialist regime. She joined the League of German Girls where she received basic ideological training and a discipline centered on obedience and collective duty.
For 5 years, she was exposed to official propaganda which emphasized racial superiority and the need for sacrifice in favor of the Reich. In 1944, at 23 years old, she responded to the recruitment of female auxiliaries for the concentration camp system. She was sent to the SK3 subc camp of Stutoff for a training period. There she received instruction in surveillance procedures, prisoner accounts, imposition of punishments, and selection methods.
The training included guidelines on the use of physical violence conceived as an essential tool of authority. After completing the training, in October of that year, she was assigned to the women’s sub camp of Bramberg Ost in the city of Bidgosh. This place mainly gathered Jewish women transferred from liquidated ghettos in central Poland.
Later testimonies pointed out that parodies quickly adopted the practices she had been taught, distinguishing herself by her severity. Among the punishments she applied, one stood out that consisted of forcing the prisoners to undress in the middle of winter and remain outdoors while she poured cold water on them. Those who tried to take shelter were beaten until they lost consciousness.
This procedure was repeated on several occasions during the winter of 1944 to 1945 and was recorded in the trials as one of the most characteristic episodes of her conduct. In addition to those collective punishments, he also administered individual beatings during roll calls or for any gesture interpreted as disobedience.
He used sticks or whips and accompanied the blows with derogatory expressions. His attitude caught the attention even of some superiors who mentioned his uncommon harshness. That reputation prompted his transfer to the main camp of Stutoff in December of 1944. At that time, Stutoff was in a phase of critical overcrowding with tens of thousands of prisoners concentrated in extreme conditions.
The crerematorium and the gas chamber operated constantly. Paradis then participated in routine selections, standing alongside other guards in the rows of prisoners and pointing to those who were considered unable to work. Sick women, elderly women, and children were set aside to be sent immediately to their deaths. The procedure was quick and mechanical, repeated frequently during the first months of 1945 when new transports arrived from other camps.
With the Red Army approaching, massive evacuations to the west were ordered. Parades joined the groups of guards overseeing the prisoners during the forced marches. According to various testimonies, he struck those who could not keep pace or fell in the snow. The winter conditions, lack of food, and the imposed pace turned those marches into roots of extremely high mortality where thousands of people died along the way.
In April of 1945, after the fall of Danzig and the isolation of the Stutoff complex, Paradis attempted to flee. She was captured shortly afterwards by the Soviet forces and handed over to the Polish authorities. She remained in custody for almost one year until the opening of the first trial against the Stuto staff in Gdansk.
Started on the 25th of April of 1946. Parades was tried along with 16 other defendants including several women. The charges focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity based on her actions in Bramberg Ost and in Stutoff. During the hearings, she maintained a calm demeanor and listened to the testimonies without getting upset.
Survivors vividly recalled the winter punishments with freezing water and her involvement in the selections for the gas chamber. The accounts were consistent, detailing episodes that confirmed her direct responsibility in acts of violence and extermination. The judicial process represented the first attempt to systematically document the behavior of the guards within Stutoff and its subamps.
The testimonies against Eva Paradis reflected how the women recruited in the last years of the Reich could play an active role in the dynamics of control, repression, and extermination. Her case, along with that of other defendants, left open the discussion on the female dimension of violence in the camp system, a topic that would continue to expand in subsequent trials.
Elizabeth Becker, the youngest guard. Elizabeth Becka was only 22 years old when she was executed on the 4th of July of 1946. Among the five convicted female guards, she was the youngest, a circumstance that sparked debates about her case during the judicial process. Her life before arriving at Stutoff had been spent in Noish, an agricultural village near Dansig where she worked in the fields.
The records indicate that he completed elementary education in his locality and from a young age he dedicated himself to agricultural tasks. In 1936 at 13 years old he married, something unusual but not impossible in rural areas where early unions were tolerated. His married life developed in the routine of peasant work until the outbreak of the war.
In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, the area of Danzik was incorporated into the Reich. National Socialist propaganda was immediately installed in local institutions. In 1940, Becka formally joined the National Socialist Party and went through the League of German Girls where discipline, loyalty to the Furer, and readiness for service were instilled.
Between 1941 and 1944, he worked in agriculture in Nokage, collaborating on farms intended to supply the armed forces. During those years, he did not perform duties in the repressive apparatus. His incorporation into the camp system was late and responded to the urgent need for personnel in the second half of the war.
In September of 1944 at 21 years old, she was recruited as an alsarin and transferred to Stutoff. The camp was overcrowded with more than 60,000 prisoners in facilities designed for fewer. The mass arrival of deported Jewish women from Avitz had increased the pressure on the administration. Her training consisted of a few weeks of basic instruction in surveillance, discipline, and selection procedures.
Once incorporated, she was assigned to the female sector of the main camp, the SK3, and occasionally to the Bramberg Ost sub camp. Her main role was to supervise prisoners in forced labor and participate in selections. The selections constituted the daily routine in the camp. The prisoners passed in front of the selectors, who quickly determined their fate.
Those deemed fit continued working while the others were separated for immediate extermination. Survivors recounted at the trial that Becca participated in selections where children, elderly women, and the sick were separated. His participation included pointing with gestures at the lines of prisoners led towards the extermination facilities.
The selections were carried out during roll calls or when specific groups of prisoners were gathered. An important charge against her was her involvement in the maritime evacuations of prisoners in 1945. With the advance of the Red Army, the Nazi authorities organized mass evacuations by train, on foot, or by vessel.
A significant part of the evacuees died during these transfers. A document presented at the trial linked Becca’s signature with the authorization of a sea transport where hundreds of prisoners were crowded into barges without food or water. Many perished during the journey. One of the cases mentioned was a convoy to the Baltic coast in May of 1945.
A vessel arrived at Clinton Hav in Denmark carrying 370 people of whom only 351 survived in conditions of extreme weakness. Another group was transferred to Malmo, Sweden in the final days of the war. The prosecutors argued that Becka had intervened in transfer orders that resulted in thousands of deaths.
It is estimated that about 25,000 people died during the evacuations of Stutoff and its sub camps in the winter and spring of 1,945 1,945. Although Becka did not hold a supreme command rank, his administrative involvement in some transfers was considered evidence of criminal responsibility. On the 25th of April of 1946, the first Schuto trial began in Gdansk.
Becca was accused along with 16 other defendants of war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the hearings, she presented herself as a young woman with a fragile appearance, but witnesses claimed that she had efficiently fulfilled her role in selections and mistreatment. She was not attributed with acts of extreme sadism like other female guards, but she did actively participate in the extermination machinery.
Her youth and the perception that her crimes had been less numerous did not alter the tribunal’s verdict. On the 31st of May 1946, the court issued a sentence of death by hanging. Given his youth, Becka submitted a petition for clemency to the president of the People’s Republic of Poland, Bololis Beirut. The court recommended commuting the death sentence to 15 years of imprisonment considering his age and that his involvement had been secondary.
However, Beirut rejected the request. His decision was based on the fact that the crimes were of such magnitude that no clemency could be granted regardless of the age of the accused. The refusal sealed Becker’s fate, who became the youngest of those sentenced to death in the group. Wanderclaf, the whip that dictated the daily sentence.
The phrase that Wonderclaf uttered during her interrogation in 1946 was recorded as one of the most direct admissions of the first Stoff trial. She claimed to beat at least two prisoners every day. The statement expressed naturally summarized the routine of a guard who made physical punishment an essential part of her job.
Wander Claf was born in Danzig in 1922 into a workingclass family. Her father worked on the railway and her mother was a homemaker. The family did not belong to the economic elite of the city, but neither did they live in conditions of extreme poverty. Her childhood unfolded in an environment marked by the urban workingclass life.
She attended elementary school until she was 16 years old without excelling in her studies. And in 1938, she began working in a jam factory. She remained there until 1942 when she started driving trams in the same city. That same year she married a man with the last name Claf and for a time she devoted herself to household tasks.
The family had changed their original last name Kalachinski to Kalin in order to avoid ethnic confusion in a context where discrimination could have consequences. The German invasion of Poland in 1939 changed the status of Dani incorporated into the Reich and subjected to a process of Germanization. For many Germans in the region, the new political structures offered opportunities for social advancement.
Young women were encouraged to participate in auxiliary organizations or to join the concentration system as surveillance personnel. In 1944, when military pressure on Germany was critical and more personnel was required in the camps, Claf volunteered to serve as a guard. She received a brief period of instruction in Stutoff, focused on discipline, prisoner control, and basic security procedures.
Her first assignment was at the sub camp of Proust near Danik, where women intended for forced labor were concentrated. In October of that year, she was transferred to the subcamp of Rousushin in northern Poland. The testimonies presented at the trial in Gdansk described her behavior in those places. She stood out for imposing constant punishments, especially during roll calls.
Her most characteristic method consisted of waiting for the prisoners at the exit of the barracks and whipping them with a leather whip as they paraded in front of her. The procedure was repeated every day regardless of the inmate’s behavior. Over time, the routine of beatings became part of everyday life. Many prisoners tried to avoid it by escaping through the windows of the barracks, but those improvised escapes led to falls and serious injuries.
The result was that after a few weeks, most of the inmates had widespread bruising. Several witnesses noted that Claf could order additional roll calls when he felt that discipline needed to be reinforced. On some occasions, three or four roll calls were conducted each day, each accompanied by the same violence. The progressive weakening of the prisoners as a consequence of the punishments led to many being classified as unfit to work.
That category meant their immediate transfer to the gas chamber. Claf participated in these selections by pointing out those who could no longer meet the physical demands of the work. She also intervened in broader processes in which entire groups were set apart for extermination. When the mass evacuations began in January of 1945, Claf accompanied groups of prisoners on the marches to the west.
The survivors remembered her beating those who could not keep up. The whip became the same instrument she used in the camp, now applied on routes covered with snow and under extreme temperatures. Many prisoners died during those marches from exhaustion, hunger, or cold, while the guards maintained pressure through violence.
In the first months of 1945, Klaf left the area of operations and returned to Danig in an attempt to reintegrate into civilian life. She was arrested in June of that same year thanks to the report of former prisoners who recognized her. During her detention, she contracted typhoid fever, a disease that had been a constant among the inmates of Stutoff.
After several weeks of suffering, she recovered and remained in prison until the start of the judicial process. The first trial against the staff of Stutoff began on the 25th of April in 1946. Claf was one of the six female guards tried alongside 11 male staff members of the camp. The charges included war crimes and crimes against humanity, supported by evidence of systematic beatings and selections leading to extermination.
The statements of the survivors were consistent. They recounted how the use of the whip in the roll calls had become a daily ritual. One witness claimed that after a few weeks, no prisoner escaped the blows. Another stated having seen how Claf beat to death an inmate who tried to flee from the line. During the trial, Claf adopted a distant attitude, acknowledging having beaten prisoners, but presenting it as disciplinary compliance with the orders received.
The very claim of having punished at least two prisoners each day reinforced the image of a warden who had normalized violence as part of her duties. On the 31st of May of 1946, the court found her guilty and sentenced her to death by hanging. She received the sentence without visible signs of remorse or pleas for clemency.
Gersteinhoff from young mother to decorated execution. A medal for loyalty and service to the Third Reich was awarded to Gerder Steinhoff on the 25th of January 1945. The decoration came in recognition of her efficiency as a senior warden in Stutoff where she had quickly risen to the rank of Ober Alf Searin. A few months later, that same medal would be presented as evidence against her during the war crimes trial.
Steinhoff had arrived at Stutoff in 1944 as a young mother of 22 years. She had worked during the first years of the war as a cook and street car driver in Danzig, leading an ordinary life within the urban working class. Her marriage and the arrival of a child in 1944 seemed to destined her to the domestic routine typical of women of her generation.
However, the progress of the war and the growing demand for personnel in the Nazi concentration system offered young women the possibility of a job with authority, uniform, and remuneration. Steinhoff volunteered to join the SS as an alsarin, leaving her young son in the care of relatives. After a brief training in the Stutoff system, she was assigned to the main camp.
Her conduct soon caught the attention of her superiors for her severity and discipline in the performance of the assigned tasks. Reports from her commanders highlighted her ability to maintain order in the sections under her responsibility and her willingness to apply physical punishment when she deemed it necessary. In a few months, she was promoted to Oberav Seaharin, a rank equivalent to senior warden with responsibility over entire blocks of prisoners.
This rapid promotion made her one of the most important female figures within the camp administration. Her authority included the supervision of other lower ranking wardens and decision-making regarding punishments and selections. The testimonies of survivors presented after the war described Steinhoff as an extremely harsh warden.
Several female prisoners declared that she actively participated in the selections for the gas chamber, indicating with gestures or words the inmates considered unable to continue working. Selections were made frequently, sometimes daily, to maintain the balance between the camp’s population and its operational capacity. Steinhoff stood alongside other selectors and examined the prisoners passing in front of her.
One glance was enough to determine each person’s fate. Among those selected for extermination were sick people, the elderly, and children. Once separated from the main group, they were moved to the crerematorium area or directly to the gas chamber. The process was routine and was carried out with administrative efficiency without time for individual considerations.
Survivors also claimed that Steinhoff personally hit female prisoners during the daily roll calls. She used whips and sticks to enforce obedience, physically intervening when she deemed discipline to be insufficient. Her physical appearance described as that of a young, energetic blonde woman, contrasted with the brutality of her actions.
Several testimonies described her personally overseeing the beatings of prisoners who had committed minor infractions or who had simply been randomly selected to serve as an example. These sessions lasted until the victims were unconscious or too weak to continue. Her role was not limited to routine surveillance.
She was directly involved in the systematic process of selection and elimination of prisoners considered unproductive. Her participation in these activities was seen by her superiors as evidence of her ideological commitment and professional efficiency. In December of 1944, Steinhoff was assigned to the women’s subc camp of Bramberg Ost dependent on Stutoff and located in Bidgosh.
There she served as block leader, maintaining the same brutal conduct that had characterized her work in the main camp. In her new position, she directly supervised hundreds of female prisoners assigned to forced labor in factories in the region. Her authority included deciding punishments, assigning work tasks, and participating in selections to determine who continued working and who was sent back to the main camp for extermination.
The decoration that he received in January of 1945 was awarded to personnel in the field in recognition of their discipline and loyalty to the regime. This fact was recorded in the administrative archives and was later presented as proof of the esteem that his superiors had for him due to his professional conduct.
The medal confirmed that her brutality was neither accidental nor the result of individual excesses, but part of a work performance considered exemplary by the camp administration. Her efficiency in the application of violence and her participation in the extermination had made her an employee valued by the system.
When the mass evacuations of Stutoff began in January 1945, Steinhoff accompanied groups of prisoners on forced marches towards the west. Several testimonies stated that he beat those who lagged behind and pressured the columns with threats and physical violence. The marches took place in the middle of winter with extreme temperatures and without adequate provisions.
The prisoners had to walk for hours without rest carrying their few belongings. Those who stopped due to exhaustion were beaten until they stood up or were abandoned on the road. The death toll in those evacuations exceeded 20,000 people. The weather conditions, the lack of food and water, combined with the violence of guards like Steinhoff turned the marches into processes of mass extermination.
Most of those who began the marches did not reach their destination. After the German surrender, Steinhoff returned to his home in Danik with the intention of resuming her family life. Her plan was to take care of her son and disappear among the civilian population, avoiding being identified as concentration camp staff.
However, her stay at home was brief. On the 25th of May of 1945, she was arrested by the Polish authorities. Her arrest came as a result of reports from survivors who had recognized her. She was sent to prison pending trial where she remained for almost one year. During the initial interrogations, she denied having committed acts of cruelty, describing herself as an administrative official whose work was limited to bureaucratic tasks.
However, the statements of survivors provided numerous details that completely contradicted that version. On the 25th of April of 1946, the first Stuto trial began in Gdansk. Steinhoff appeared alongside 16 other defendants, including five more women. During the trial, witnesses recounted specific episodes of violence and their direct involvement in selections for the gas chamber.
The accused listened to those statements with an attitude that observers described as mocking and disrespectful. It was reported that on several occasions she smiled or made sarcastic comments during the presentation of testimonies about torture and murders. Her behavior contrasted sharply with the seriousness of the accusations. When questioned whether she had beaten prisoners, Steinhoff responded that her work was purely bureaucratic and that she had had no physical contact with the inmates.
That answer was met with skepticism as more than 200 surviving witnesses directly identified her as a participant in physical abuse and selections for extermination. The contradiction between her denial and the abundance of testimonies solidified the accusation against her. The medal she had received for her service was presented as evidence that her superiors valued precisely the activities she denied having undertaken.
On the 31st of May of 1946, the court declared her guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. She was sentenced to death by hanging. Unlike other accused who pleaded for clemency or showed signs of remorse, Steinhoff maintained her attitude of contempt during the reading of the sentence. His reaction to the sentence was described as defiant.
He did not apologize nor showed acknowledgment of the seriousness of his actions. Until the end, he maintained the stance that he had followed orders and that his work had been administrative despite the overwhelming evidence against him. Biscupia Gorka, the hill of the last public hanging. On the 4th of July 1,946, around 200,000 people gathered on the hill of Biscupia Gorka, located on the outskirts of Gdansk to witness the public execution of the 11 condemned of the first Stoff trial.
The choice of that location was due to the need for a large space with easy access and sufficient visibility for the crowd that was expected. On that occasion, among those executed were six men, including Johan Pauls, commander of the camp guards, and five women who had served as overseers, Jenny Wander Bachmann, Paredes, Elizabeth Becka, Wander Claf, and Gera Steinhoff.
The preparation of the stage began days earlier under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice and the Polish militia. 11 gallows were erected in a row, each consisting of a vertical post and a crossbeam with ropes made of twisted plant fibers crafted by prisoners from the Dansk prison following precise resistance measurements.
The central structure was designed with greater height to allow the simultaneous execution of up to three condemned individuals. The set was arranged so that spectators could observe from any point on the hill. The local press announced the date and time of the execution 3 days in advance. Factories granted leave to workers and organized collective transportation to take those who wish to attend.
From the early afternoon, groups of families, war veterans, former prisoners, and local residents began to gather in the surrounding areas. Many climbed trees or rooftops of nearby houses to get a better view, while impromptu vendors offered food and drinks to the growing crowd. The authorities set up security cordons made up of police officers and soldiers to prevent disturbances.
Although it was anticipated that the public might attempt to intervene on their own against the condemned when the clock was approaching 5 in the afternoon, 11 open military trucks arrived from the Gansk prison. Each vehicle carried a convict with hands and feet tied with ropes. The vehicles were positioned under the gallows so that each prisoner would be directly under the prepared noose.
The procedure was organized to ensure maximum visibility and for the execution to proceed in an orderly manner. Former Stutoff prisoners still dressed in striped uniforms boarded the trucks to adjust the ropes around the necks of the condemned. Their participation had a symbolic nature and was approved by the Polish authorities as part of the justice process.
The truck drivers were given clear instructions. Upon receiving the order, they would move forward slowly, leaving the prisoners suspended in the air. The method of short drop was used, which did not produce immediate cervical fracture, but death by progressive strangulation, prolonging the agony for several minutes.
The first to be executed was Yan Paul’s. Before the truck moved forward, he shouted, “Hail Hitler!” The crowd responded with insults and booze. The vehicle pulled away and the body hung suspended, moving for a few moments until it became still. After him, the five female guards were taken to the gallows successively. Jenny Wander Bachmann was the first of them.
She wore a simple dress and got onto the truck without visible resistance. According to Chronicles of the Time, she maintained a serene expression until the final moment. When the vehicle moved away, she lost a shoe in the fall and her body swung before a brief silence immediately interrupted by the screams of the public. Parades was the next.
She resisted during the preparations, struggling with the guards who tried to bind her. Finally, the rope was placed around her neck, and as the truck moved forward, her body shook violently for several seconds before becoming suspended. The third was Elizabeth Becka, just 22 years old, the youngest of the condemned.
She got on the truck with resignation and did not show any protest. When her body was left hanging, the crowd began chanting phrases, remembering the victims of the camp and mentioning children and husbands killed during the war. Wonder Claf climbed silently. The rope was tightened and the truck moved forward.
Her body swung under the gallows while among the attendees her own phrase spoken at the trial about the daily beatings was repeated turned into a slogan in the middle of the execution. Gerder Steinhoff was the last of the female guards. She maintained a defiant attitude and gestures until the end that observers interpreted as disdain towards the crowd.
When her body was suspended, the reactions of the audience intensified with applause and shouts. After them, the other men were executed one by one, following the same procedure. In a few minutes, 11 bodies hung in a row, visible from the entire hill. The audience watched every movement attentively, and the time needed for death to occur prolonged the anticipation for more than 1 hour.
Once the death of the condemned was confirmed, the security barriers were overcome by the crowd, which rushed towards the gallows. The bodies were beaten and looted. Buttons were torn from the clothes. Fragments of fabric and pieces of rope were cut, which the attendees kept as souvenirs. Some corpses were even kicked after death with special viciousness towards the bodies of the wardens, particularly that of Gerder Steinhoff.
The police and the troops intervened by firing into the air to disperse the crowd. After regaining control, the bodies were removed and loaded into military trucks. They were later transferred to the Gdansk Medical Academy where they were used in anatomy practices for students. The remains were used for months and finally disposed of as biological waste with no graves or monuments preserved.
The execution in Biscupia Gorka was documented with photographs, reports from the Ministry of Justice and press accounts. The act became one of the last public hangings carried out in Poland. On the 21st of July 1946 in Pausnan, the last public execution in the country was carried out against other war criminals.
The images of the hill and of the 11 condemned hangings circulated both in local publications and foreign media, becoming recorded in the judicial and journalistic archives of the time.
