Occasionally, people reveal their essence at the most unexpected moment, and this so strikes contemporaries that they cannot find an answer as to why certain things actually happened. Such was Jenny Wanda Barkman—a darling girl, sweet Jenny, who was deprived of her parents and who seemed destined for one thing alone: to shine on the podium. Today, in Nick’s War History, we are going to tell you about Jenny Wanda Barkman and her story. Let’s begin.
She was born in Hamburg in 1922. The girl was given the double name Jenny Wanda. Ever since she was a child, she was a pure soul and had an angelic appearance that fit so perfectly into the theory that later emerged about the true Aryan. She dreamed of a modeling career. After graduating from high school, Jenny enrolled in the studio for the Performing Arts in Hamburg, and as soon as the first photos of the beautiful Jenny appeared in magazines, the dream came true. She began to shine.
Offers poured in from all sides, from fashion magazines to men’s magazines. Barkman did not reject any offer, so the enticing photos of a half-naked beauty with an angelic face shone in magazines for men. The Nordic profile of the blonde beauty blessed the soldiers and officers for military deeds and civilians for the same feats just at the workplace front. Jenny’s name was known throughout Germany and abroad in the Wehrmacht armies that fought from Africa to Stalingrad. It would seem that life was a success and the golden dream had long since become a reality.
But as time later showed, it was not enough for the model herself. As early as 1942, due to the shortage of personnel in concentration camps, Nazis announced recruitment of civilians for the positions of wardens, guards, and other conditionally service personnel in the death camps. High salaries, benefits, and prospects for advancement up to camp commander were used to lure potential candidates. In 1944, Jenny Wanda Barkman responded to the call and, after being accepted for work, was assigned to the Stutthof concentration camp near the town of the same name, a couple of dozen kilometers from Gdansk.
Nicknamed by one of the Lithuanian prose writers Balys Sruoga, Stutthof was dubbed “The Forest of the Gods,” but the only ones who were called gods there were the guards and warders, and the prisoners were the uncomplaining crowd. From her first days as warden, Jenny Wanda Barkman showed herself to be one of the cruelest and most inventive wardens, whose kinds of torture amazed even the most highly regarded members of the SS. The inmates soon dubbed Barkman “The Charming Ghost” and “Mad Jenny.”
The fact was that it was simply impossible to expect the level of atrocities she committed against the prisoners from a simple, delicate, angelic-looking girl. The former fashion model was particularly affectionate to Jewish and Polish women, the reasons for which have never been clarified to our days. She severely punished her subordinates for any slightest misdeed. Her favorite method was beating with a thin leather belt. According to witnesses, she had beaten several dozen women to death with this weapon alone.
Barkman’s second favorite pastime was the separation of mothers and children. Crazy, but she experienced the abnormal pleasure of taking a child away from the mother and sending the baby to the gas chamber before her eyes. Many, if we may say so, standard types of torture the former model perfected by making her victims insane. She whipped the guilty with the belt on their feet and ankles, beat them with rubber sticks, and hounded them with dogs. Often, she invited local doctors to her experimentations who conducted inhuman experiments on the unfortunates in the death camp.
According to the accounts of former inmates, while the perpetrator was being beaten to death, the angel’s face would change into the face of a demon—the mask of fury on Barkman’s face at such a moment frightened even her fellow servicemen. There are also surviving accounts of how Jenny Barkman greeted newcomers. Many immediately fell into the trap of looking at the sweet and affectionate woman who smiled sincerely at the inmates. With the same sweet smile, she could give a child a poisoned candy and then enjoy the cries of the unhappy woman whom she herself would later brutally beat for showing disrespect. Everyone was so terrified of Barkman that they feared even a casual glance in their direction because, at best, it meant a gas chamber and, at worst, an agonizing death to the animal-like cries of pleasure of the former model.
Unfortunately, Stutthof was one of the last to be released on May 9, 1945. So, the camp administration managed to evacuate about 11,000 prisoners from the camp. Later, 3,000 people, mostly of Jewish nationality, were shot. At the same time, many of the guards and warders decided to secretly flee in order not to fall into the hands of the advancing Red Army units. Barkman also fled with them, realizing that she would certainly not live if she ever was discovered.
Although, unlike her colleagues, Jenny Wanda was too presumptuous. For four months, she had been hiding in Poland. Moreover, not only did she not immediately try to leave the borders of Germany, but she did not even go there. It is quite difficult to understand what the criminal was hoping for after everything she had done. She appeared quite boldly in Gdansk, where she was about to take a train to leave Poland. But the confiscated archives in Stutthof, with the files of all the camp personnel and the testimonies of the surviving prisoners, left the status no chance of escaping punishment.
The reference lists of “Crazy Jenny” or “Mad Jenny” were sent to all the liberated cities of Europe, and in Poland—and even more so in Gdansk—one of the most horrible guards during World War II could be recognized by anybody. And so it happened. Identified by a military patrol at the railway station, Barkman was arrested and imprisoned. During the investigation, Jenny Wanda Barkman even tried to charm one of the guards, Polish Army Corporal Joseph Loss. Using her looks, she secretly began to tell the corporal how she had actually saved Jews in the camp and how many people even owed their lives to her.
But in order to obtain evidence of her near-feat, Jenny argued she must go free. Perhaps if the guard had been someone other than the Jew who lost his wife and daughter at Stutthof, Barkman would have had something. However, when the corporal became acquainted with the materials of the indictment, he simply stopped going near the cell door anymore. Therefore, the only slim chance of salvation for the former photo model disappeared.
During the investigation, Barkman was outspokenly delusional. At first, she claimed that she had been forced to become a guard because the Gestapo threatened to repress her family. When this was not convincing, Barkman presented a new version: that she was an anti-fascist who had volunteered to work in the camp in order to alleviate the suffering of the unfortunate inmates. Here, the evidence already played against her.
In the end, coming to terms with her fate, Jenny Wanda calmed down, realizing that her fate was clear. The Poles would not forgive her for what she had done in the concentration camp. Therefore, at the trial, Barkman behaved quite arrogantly with a sneer, meeting all charges, and sometimes even with bravado, talking about her own methods of torture and extermination of prisoners. The sentence was fully expected: the death penalty by hanging. The court file documented the phrase Barkman said after the verdict was handed down.
“Life really is a great pleasure, and this pleasure usually doesn’t last long,” she said.
The execution of Barkman and several other Nazi criminals took place on July 4, 1946, at Biskupia Hill. The condemned individuals were driven up by a truck. The nooses were put around their necks and then the truck was driven off. When it was barkman’s turn, after the loops were put on, the truck stopped. A woman immediately ran out of the crowd and pushed exactly Barkman’s legs off the truck. All the convicts waited for the car to start. Speaking of which, about 200,000 people were present at the execution.
Some historians later asserted that after the execution, Jenny Wanda’s body was burned and her ashes were flushed down the toilet. In fact, this is nothing more than a beautiful rumor. The Poles, despite all their hatred, were not going to bother with the former executioners. The government decided that the bodies of all executed Nazi criminals were to serve one last time for the great purpose of training future doctors and nurses. They were sent to the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology of the Gdansk Medical Academy. So Barkman ended her life on the gallows, and her beautiful body served as an exhibit for future medical luminaries for months to come.
