They Cried & Begged for Mercy: 20 Minutes of Agony for 11 N4zi Guards

On the cold morning of September 1, 1939, N4zi Germany invaded Poland, unleashing the devastating violence of the Second World War. This brutal invasion was followed immediately by a systematically planned apparatus of state-sponsored repression. Arrests began overnight as teachers, priests, government officials, and community leaders were forcibly dragged from their homes to disappear into prisons, camps, or mass execution sites.

The occupation authorities quickly established a terrifying machinery of oppression, anchored in absolute police authority, racial ideology, and organized violence. One of the very first fruits of this cruel system was the construction of a concentration camp near the historic port city of Danzig on the Baltic coast.

Named Stutthof, the camp opened its gates on September 2, 1939, just one single day after the war commenced. Over the next six years, the guards stationed at Stutthof tortured, starved, and murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

Following the total collapse of the N4zi regime, eleven of the individuals responsible for these horrific crimes were finally brought to justice. They were publicly hanged before a massive crowd of nearly two hundred thousand onlookers in an execution remembered for its sheer scale and public spectacle.

Located near Danzig, known today as the Polish city of Gdańsk, Stutthof concentration camp was originally created as a key element in the N4zi strategy to destroy Polish national identity and culture. Later, it became integrated into the broader, sinister plan to systematically exterminate European Jewry.

Initially, the site functioned merely as a civilian internment camp, but it rapidly expanded into a fully operational concentration camp under the direct control of the SS. These elite paramilitary units were responsible for guarding the network of camps and ruthlessly enforcing N4zi racial policy.

The early prisoners were forced to construct the very walls of their own captivity, clearing dense forest land, erecting wooden barracks, and enclosing the perimeter with high barbed wire fencing. From its inception, physical violence was an everyday routine within the confines of the camp.

Guards routinely beat inmates for moving too slowly, for attempting to speak, or simply for no reason at all. Severe hunger, epidemic diseases, and complete physical exhaustion became the constant, inescapable companions of every prisoner.

As the war expanded across Europe, Stutthof grew dramatically in both size and economic importance. By 1942, the site was fully integrated into the official N4zi concentration camp network and the war economy of the Third Reich.

Inmates were relentlessly exploited as forced labor in industrial workshops, specialized factories, agricultural labor, and armaments production. Those who became too physically weak to perform heavy manual labor were systematically selected for removal.

Some were taken into the surrounding woods and shot, while others were murdered in the infirmary via direct lethal phenol injections to the heart. Beginning in 1944, a permanent gas chamber was put into regular operation to accelerate the rate of murder.

Thousands of innocent human beings were killed in Stutthof, including large numbers of women and young children. Devastating typhus epidemics swept repeatedly through the overcrowded barracks, exacerbated by deliberate sanitary neglect and the outright refusal of medical care.

Survivors later recounted horrifying memories of emaciated corpses stacked high like firewood outside the barracks, while the sick were left to perish on the damp floors. The guards who maintained this system were not distant administrators operating behind desks; they were present daily, enforcing terror with their own hands and weapons.

Brutality at Stutthof was not restricted to formal executions or the tense selection process that determined who would work and who would go to the gas chamber. Cruelty defined the rhythm of daily life and was built directly into the camp’s operational rules.

Inmates were subjected to perpetual humiliation designed to systematically destroy their human dignity, self-worth, and individual identity. Daily roll calls were dragged out for hours in freezing cold, pouring rain, or scorching heat.

Prisoners were forced to stand completely motionless for hours while guards violently beat anyone who swayed, collapsed, or attempted to support a failing comrade. Punishment was consistently collective, meaning that if a single inmate was accused of a minor infraction, entire barracks were beaten or deprived of food.

Physical torture was utilized as a standard disciplinary measure by the SS personnel. Inmates were mercilessly whipped with heavy wooden sticks, solid rubber truncheons, or the iron butts of rifles.

These violent beatings routinely continued until bones were shattered or the victims lost consciousness entirely. Guards kicked helpless prisoners with heavy iron-reinforced boots and routinely unleashed trained attack dogs to terrorize and maul them.

Some prisoners were subjected to a form of torture where their arms were bound behind their backs and they were suspended off the ground for hours, causing unbearable joint dislocation and permanent physical injury. Others were forced to crawl on their bellies through deep freezing mud while being continuously struck by guards.

Starvation was deliberately weaponized as an effective tool of behavioral control and physical destruction. Daily food rations were kept strictly below survival levels and were composed of the lowest possible quality materials.

The tiny daily bread ration was frequently stretched by mixing the flour with wooden sawdust and chemical fillers. The thin soup served to inmates often consisted of little more than dirty water boiled with decaying vegetable scraps.

Desperate prisoners fought over tiny morsels of food and were severely beaten if caught attempting to hoard or share crumbs with dying companions. Extreme starvation weakened human bodies so thoroughly that any form of physical or mental resistance became virtually impossible.

Countless inmates died a slow, agonizing death from malnutrition alone, their bodies shrinking to skeletons until they could no longer stand during roll call. Medical care within the camp was entirely nonexistent in any meaningful, compassionate sense.

The camp infirmary was never a sanctuary of healing, but rather a dangerous waiting room for death. Sick prisoners were denied medication and were examined primarily to determine if they possessed any remaining capacity for manual labor.

Those deemed permanently useless to the war effort were immediately selected for execution, often receiving fatal phenol injections without warning. Victims would collapse within seconds of the chemical hitting their hearts, and their corpses were promptly dragged out to clear space for the next victims.

The remaining sick were simply abandoned without food or water until disease, fever, or sheer exhaustion finished them off. One survivor solemnly recalled that his mother, after giving birth inside the camp, was forced by guards to watch as her newborn infant was thrown directly into the crematorium incinerator.

This systematic cruelty was not merely the result of wartime chaos or individual sadism. It was the calculated outcome of a vast industrial system engineered specifically to destroy human beings physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

SS guards were systematically trained to view prisoners not as human beings, but as dangerous subhuman enemies, parasites, and disposable objects. Within the camp hierarchy, extreme violence was actively rewarded with leave and promotions, while any display of mercy was severely punished.

Early in 1945, as the Third Reich began to collapse under pressure from advancing Allied forces, the SS attempted to erase all physical evidence of the camp by evacuating it. On January 25, 1945, the Commandant of Stutthof, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul-Werner Hoppe, issued the formal order to evacuate the main facility.

In the initial phase of the evacuation, approximately eleven thousand six hundred prisoners were forced out of the main camp to begin a death march heading west, away from the rapidly advancing Soviet Red Army. At that time, nearly thirty-four thousand people remained imprisoned across the system, including over eleven thousand at the main camp and twenty-two thousand in satellite camps.

During these forced marches, the SS organized the weakened inmates into long columns numbering between one thousand and fifteen hundred people. Each column was separated by a distance of several miles and closely monitored by around forty heavily armed guards.

Inmates who were too frail to maintain the grueling pace were immediately shot in the back of the head and left in the snow. The marches took place amid deep winter blizzards and extreme sub-zero temperatures, with virtually no food or shelter provided to the marching prisoners.

Although the march was scheduled to last a week, it dragged on for ten brutal days for those who somehow survived the harsh climate and the endless violence of the guards. On January 31, 1945, one of the most horrific single atrocities of the evacuation occurred near the coastal town of Palmnicken.

Around three thousand Jewish prisoners from the Stutthof camp system were forced to march to the Baltic shore, where they were driven into the freezing sea and mowed down with machine guns, while others were murdered in the courtyard of a local amber factory. It is estimated that only about fifteen people survived this massive coastal massacre.

Throughout its period of operation, more than one hundred thousand people passed through the gates of the Stutthof camp network. At least sixty thousand of them perished as a direct result of gassing, deliberate starvation, uncontrolled disease, formal executions, extreme forced labor, and the brutal winter evacuation marches.

When Red Army soldiers finally entered the main Stutthof camp on May 9, 1945, they discovered only a tiny handful of emaciated survivors hiding in fear among the wooden ruins. Almost immediately following the liberation, official investigations were launched to document the unprecedented atrocities committed at the site.

Joint Polish and Soviet judicial commissions began gathering physical evidence, locating official documents, and taking detailed formal testimonies from surviving victims. In April 1946, the first official Stutthof Trial opened before a tribunal in the city of Gdańsk.

A group of former SS guards, administrative staff, and camp overseers—both male and female—stood in the dock accused of direct participation in crimes against humanity. Witnesses testified in harrowing detail about routine beatings, wanton murders, and the cold selection process for the gas chambers.

The callous demeanor exhibited by several of the defendants throughout the court proceedings shocked both the judges and the public observers. Among the principal accused was Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, a female guard who had earned a reputation for extreme cruelty toward inmates, including children.

She was known to have beaten several prisoners to death using her bare hands or a heavy leather whip. During the trial proceedings, Barkmann appeared entirely unconcerned about her impending life-or-death verdict, focusing her full attention instead on her personal appearance.

She wore stylish clothing to court each day, styled her hair in different fashions, and was repeatedly observed flirting with the prison guards stationed around her desk. Another infamous defendant was Wanda Klaff, who had drawn notorious recognition at Stutthof for her violent, unpredictable rages.

Klaff routinely beat and kicked helpless prisoners without any provocation until they lay completely motionless on the ground. When in a particularly foul mood, she was known to deliberately drown female inmates in deep mud puddles or strike them repeatedly with wooden clubs.

During her testimony, she brazenly declared to the court that she was highly intelligent and deeply devoted to her assigned duties in the camp, openly admitting to striking at least two prisoners every day. Following this arrogant statement, observers noted she was likely the only person in the courtroom who held that opinion of her intelligence.

Elisabeth Becker was another female guard put on trial for committing extraordinary acts of violence against mothers and their children. Witnesses testified that she routinely beat mothers alongside their infants before personally selecting them to be sent to the gas chambers without showing a shred of remorse.

Also standing trial was Eva Paradis, a guard who developed a reputation for inflicting creative physical torture during the extreme cold of winter. She frequently ordered groups of female inmates to strip naked in freezing weather and stand motionless in the deep snow.

Paradis would then pour buckets of ice-cold water over the naked women, savagely beating anyone who moved or shivered in pain. Beside the German SS personnel sat several former Capos—prisoners who had been appointed by the guards to maintain internal order over their fellow inmates.

These functionaries had chosen to collaborate with their captors, terrorizing and abusing their fellow citizens to secure small privileges and save their own lives. One of the primary Capos tried in this first proceeding was Wacław Kozłowski, a butcher by trade and a military veteran who had defended Gdańsk against the German invasion in 1939.

Inside Stutthof, Kozłowski turned on his countrymen, murdering civilians without hesitation and traveling between satellite camps carrying a set of portable wooden gallows. After conducting hangings, he would frequently pull out an accordion and force himself to play somber musical pieces for the surviving onlookers.

On May 31, 1946, the judicial tribunal rendered its final verdicts, sentencing eleven of the prominent defendants to death by public hanging. This group included five female camp guards: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Eva Paradis, and Gerda Steinhoff.

The condemned also included the senior guard supervisor Jan Pauls, alongside five Polish Capos: Jan Breit, Tadeusz Kopczyński, Józef Reiter, Wacław Kozłowski, and Franciszek Szopiński. The names of these eleven individuals had long served as feared symbols of absolute cruelty throughout the camp.

Only when the reality of their impending execution became completely inescapable did several of the convicted guards break down, weeping hysterically and begging the court for executive clemency. However, their desperate pleas arrived far too late to alter their fate.

The public execution was scheduled to take place on July 4, 1946, at Biskupia Górka, a prominent hill overlooking the city of Gdańsk. This event would mark one of the very few large-scale public executions of convicted N4zi war criminals carried out in post-war Poland.

Local newspapers publicized the time and location of the execution days in advance. Regional factories and public offices granted employees time off, while extra passenger trains and buses were scheduled to transport citizens from across the country to the hill.

By late afternoon, an immense, dense crowd estimated at nearly two hundred thousand people had assembled around the scaffold area. Among the massive gathering were thousands of former Stutthof prisoners, many wearing their faded, striped concentration camp uniforms.

Punctually at five o’clock in the afternoon, eleven heavy, open-topped military trucks arrived at the hill, each carrying one bound prisoner accompanied by guards. Former camp survivors had voluntarily stepped forward to serve as the official executioners for the occasion.

These former victims stepped onto the flatbeds of the trucks and carefully adjusted simple hemp rope nooses around the necks of their former tormentors. The method selected for the execution was the short-drop hanging technique, which did not break the neck instantly upon falling.

One by one, the heavy trucks accelerated forward, leaving each condemned individual suspended in mid-air at the end of the taut rope. Death by slow strangulation followed, lasting anywhere between ten and twenty minutes for each of the eleven condemned prisoners.

Spectators and journalists present recorded seeing the suspended bodies twisting, jerking, and trembling in what contemporary reports described as a grim rope dance. As soon as the final body ceased moving and hung completely still, the massive crowd surged forward past the security barriers.

Enraged citizens tore at the clothing on the hanging corpses, kicked the swinging bodies, and attempted to rip away swatches of fabric to keep as dark souvenirs of the event. Security personnel eventually managed to regain control of the site, pushing the crowd back so the medical officers could officially pronounce the prisoners dead and clear the corpses.

The extreme public nature of this mass spectacle generated several disturbing, unintended psychological side effects among the local population. In the weeks following the event, local authorities reported that young children in the region had begun playing games where they pretended to hang their toys.

Tragically, several isolated incidents were reported in which young children accidentally hanged playmates after attempting to recreate the public spectacle they had witnessed on the hill. The public execution of these eleven Stutthof guards could never repair the massive loss of life or undo the immense human suffering inflicted within the camp system.

Yet, following the total collapse of the totalitarian regime that had granted them absolute authority over human life, this final act marked a definitive moment in history when those who chose to rule through terror were finally brought face-to-face with the ultimate consequences of their actions.