Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was born on May 30, 1922 in Hamburg, Germany. Though she had a normal childhood, she also came of age with the rise of Naziism. Just before Barkmann turned 11, Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. When she was 16, Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were attacked during Kristallnacht, including in Hamburg. Shortly thereafter, Hitler invaded Poland — and World War II began.
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As Mémoires de Guerre reports, Barkmann had initially hoped to use her beauty to become a fashion model. But as the war dragged on, she changed her mind. In 1944, the 21-year-old became an Aufseherin, or a female guard, at the Stutthof concentration camp in Gdańsk, Poland.
Over the course of the war, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that as many as 100,000 people were deported to Stutthof and some 60,000 people died there. Many perished of diseases like typhus. But many more were sent to the gas chambers by the camp guards.
In 1944, Barkmann became one of these guards. She was one of just 3,700 women to take on such a position — of 55,000 total guards in the Nazi concentration camps — and she quickly made a name for herself as one of Stutthof camp’s most brutal Aufseherin.
She showed no hesitation when it came to beating prisoners — sometimes to death — and regularly sent women and children to the gas chambers who she and other guards found too weak or sick to work. Beautiful and brutal, Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was called the “Beautiful Spectre.”
The Fall Of The ‘Beautiful Spectre’
By the time Jenny-Wanda Barkmann secured her a reputation at Stutthof, World War II had begun to come to an end. In April 1945, Adolf Hitler died by suicide in Berlin. A month later, Germany surrendered. And Barkmann, the ‘Beautiful Spectre’ fled Stutthof and went into hiding.
According to Mémoires de War, Barkmann — dubbed “Mad Jenny” — became one of the most wanted Nazi criminals. Barkmann managed to stay hidden for four months, but she was captured at the Gdansk train station.