1946: Eleven from the Stutthof concentration camp
1 comment July 4th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1946, officials of Soviet-occupied Poland publicly hanged eleven convicted war criminals of the Stutthof concentration camp.
Set up immediately upon Germany’s September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland and not liberated until after official German capitulation in 1945, Stutthoff handled over 100,000 prisoners during its long service.
This day’s condemned — camp commandant Johann Pauls, five male kapos, and five female guards — were the product of the first of four Stutthof trials held in 1946-1947. At a hill in Gdansk known as Biskupia Gorka (Bishop Hill), upon a specially-erected row of four T-shaped double gallows centered around a pi-shaped triple gallows, and before a crowd of thousands, the doomed eleven were noosed on the back of military trucks which then drove away to leave them strangling to death with a “short drop” hanging.
The following gut-twisting images are among a number to be found here.
There’s more about Stutthof’s history at the Holocaust Research Project, and at the current memorial facility’s home page.
Possibly Related Executions
- 1978: Antonina Makarova, Nazi executioner
- 1942: Partisans by the Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger
- 1946: Amon Göth, Schindler’s List villain
Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Capital Punishment, Concentration Camps, Death Penalty, Execution, Germany, Hanged, History, Mass Executions, Mature Content, Occupation and Colonialism, Poland, Public Executions, Russia, USSR, War Crimes, Women
Tags: 1946, bischofschugel, biskupia gorka, danzig, elisabeth becker, ewa paradies, Fascism, franciszek szopinski, gdansk, gerda steinhoff, holocaust, jan breit, jenny wanda barkmann, johann pauls, joseph reiter, july 4, kapos, nazi, naziism, stolzenberg, stutthof, sztutowo, tadeus kopczynski, waclaw kozlowski, wanda klaff, world war ii
Recently Commented