The Most Notorious Female Nazi Guards Ever Executed ACTUAL FOOTAGE JJ

For years, the world watched Nazi leaders face judgment after the fall of Hitler’s regime. But some of the most disturbing cases unfolded far from the famous Nuremberg courtroom. Young women who had guarded concentration camps were captured, confronted by survivors, and sentenced for crimes committed behind barbed wire.

For several of them, the final destination was the gallows. And what happened there became a grim chapter of postwar justice. December 13th, 1945. 13 convicted Nazi war criminals were scheduled to die that day, including three women whose names had become connected to the horrors of Achvitz and Bergen Bellson.

The most infamous among them was Irma Graza. She was only 22 years old, yet survivors had described her as one of the most feared female guards they had encountered. Newspapers gave her names such as the hyena of Awitz. But behind those headlines was the story of a teenager who had entered the Nazi concentration camp system and quickly gained extraordinary power over thousands of prisoners.

Grace was born in Germany in 1923 and lost her mother while she was still young. By the age of 19, she was training as a guard at Ravensbrook, the main concentration camp for women. In 1943, she was transferred to Avitz, where her reputation became far darker. Survivors later accused her of savage beatings, shootings, and other acts of cruelty.

Some witnesses claimed that she seemed to enjoy the control she had over defenseless prisoners. By March 1945, with Nazi Germany collapsing, Grace was transferred to Bergen Bellson. British soldiers liberated the camp the following month and arrested her. At her trial, Gresie pleaded not guilty, but survivor after survivor testified about what they said they had witnessed.

The judges convicted her and sentenced her to death. On the night before her execution, Gresie reportedly spent part of the evening singing. Whether she was hiding her fear or refusing to accept what was coming remains unknown. Shortly after 10:00 a.m. the next morning, she was taken to the gallows and hanged.

At just 22, Irma Grace became the youngest woman executed under British law during the 20th century. But Grace was not the only woman facing the gallows at Hamlin. Another was Elizabeth Vulcanrath, a 26-year-old former supervisor whose rise through the camp system had taken her from ordinary work to one of the most powerful female positions at Achvitz.

Born in 1919, Vulcanrath had worked jobs including child care, kitchen work, and hairdressing before entering the Nazi camp system in 1941. She was first sent to Ravensbrook and then transferred to Awitz in 1942. At first, she supervised prisoners repairing military clothing in a sewing workshop.

But over the next two years, her authority increased dramatically. By November 1944, she had become the senior female supervisor responsible for the women’s sections of Awitz. Survivors later testified that Vulcanrath participated in selections in which prisoners were chosen for the gas chambers. She was also accused of supervising executions and violently punishing prisoners.

When Soviet forces approached Awitz in January 1945, she was transferred to Bergen Bellson, where starvation, disease, and overcrowding were killing prisoners in enormous numbers. British troops arrested her when they liberated the camp in April. During her trial, Vulcanrath admitted that she had slapped prisoners, but claimed it had been necessary to maintain order.

She denied selecting prisoners for death, but the court rejected her defense and sentenced her to hang. At 9:34 a.m. on December 13th, Pierre Point carried out her execution. Vulcanrath was dead at 26. The third woman was Hana Borman. Unlike Gracie and Vulcanrath, Borman was not a young newcomer to the concentration camp system.

She had spent years serving at different camps before eventually reaching Avitz and later Bergen Bellson. Prisoners remembered her as a feared guard and survivor testimony accused her of brutal treatment. When British troops entered Bergen Bellson in April 1945, Borman was arrested along with the other guards.

She was brought before the same military court that judged Graca and Vulcanrath and the testimony against her led to the same verdict guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. On December 13th, Borman was taken to the same gallows and executed. 10 men were also put to death that day including Bergen Bellson commandant Yseph Krommer.

By late afternoon all 13 executions had been completed. Irma Graca, Elizabeth Vulcanrath and Hana Borman were dead, but they represented only three of the women who would face execution after the collapse of Nazi Germany. Seven months later, attention would shift to Poland, where Jenny Wanda Barkman and Elizabeth Becker would face a very different kind of execution.

Not hidden behind prison walls, but in front of an enormous public crowd. 7 months after the executions at Hamlin Prison, another group of former concentration camp guards faced judgment in Poland. This time, there would be no closed execution chamber and no prison walls separating the condemned from the public.

The case centered on Stoof, a concentration camp established near Danzig, now Gdinesk, shortly after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. During the war, tens of thousands of prisoners died there from starvation, disease, executions, forced labor, and mass killing. Among the guards later placed on trial was Jenny Wanda Barkman, a young German woman who had joined the camp system in 1944.

Prisoners gave her the chilling nickname the beautiful spectre because her appearance seemed completely different from the cruelty they associated with her. Survivors accused Barkman of brutally beating prisoners and participating in selections in which women and children were chosen for death. But when Soviet forces reached Stutoff in 1945, Barkman did not stay to face what was coming.

She disappeared into Gdansk and tried to blend into civilian life. Her escape did not last. She was recognized and arrested in May 1945 and within a year she was standing in court accused of crimes committed inside Stoof. Standing trial with Barkman was another young former guard, Elizabeth Becker.

Becker’s path into the camp system had been different. Before the war, she had worked in agriculture and had been involved with the League of German Girls, the Nazi organization created for young women. She later became a guard at Stutoff where she served for only a few months, but the short amount of time she spent there did not protect her after the war.

Becker later admitted that she had taken part in selecting at least 30 female prisoners who were sent to the gas chambers. As Soviet forces moved closer in January 1945, Becker left Stutoff and returned home. She may have believed the collapse of Nazi Germany would allow her to disappear back into ordinary life, but Polish police arrested her at her family home in April.

In May 1946, Becker and Barkman went on trial with other former Stuoff personnel. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty, but as the proceedings continued, the possibility of execution became increasingly real. When prosecutors demanded the death penalty, Becker and several of the other female defendants reportedly broke down and begged for their lives.

Barkman reacted very differently. She remained remarkably calm even after hearing that she had been sentenced to death. Then came July 4th, 1946. On a hillside at Biscupia Gorka overlooking Gdansk, an enormous crowd gathered to witness the executions. Reports estimated that as many as 200,000 people came to watch. Barkman, Becker, and the other condemned prisoners were brought before the crowd and placed on military trucks beneath the gallows.

The method was very different from the carefully calculated long drop hanging used at Hamlin. Here the condemned stood on the backs of trucks with nooes around their necks. When the trucks moved forward, there would be nothing beneath their feet. Former Stoodhoff prisoners had even volunteered to assist with the executions, showing how much anger remained after everything they had endured.

For Barkman, the final moments became especially chaotic when the truck beneath her reportedly failed to move as planned. With the crowd growing restless, a former prisoner rushed forward and pushed her from the vehicle. Barkman was 24 years old. Becker and the other condemned prisoners were executed on the same line of gallows. What happened afterward showed just how intense the public anger had become.

People rushed toward the bodies and took buttons, pieces of clothing, and other objects as grim souvenirs. Barkman’s body was later taken for medical teaching. The public spectacle at Gdansk became one of the most disturbing images of postwar punishment. But not every woman sentenced after the war had worked behind the fences of a concentration camp.

Some had operated quietly inside offices using information rather than uniforms to destroy lives. One of those women was Hera Kashparova. And what made her case especially disturbing was that some of the people she helped condemn were not strangers. They were men from her own hometown, including people she had known since childhood.

The sixth woman in this story never became a concentration camp guard. She did not patrol barracks or supervise prisoners behind barbed wire. Her weapon was information. Herash Barova was born in 1923 in Trish, a small town in what is now the Czech Republic. She came from a Sudatan German family, spoke both Czech and German, and had a disability that caused her to walk with a limp.

Later accounts claimed she had been bullied because of it while growing up. After Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, Kashparova found work with the German authorities. In 1942, she was transferred to a regional Gustapo office where she translated interrogations of people suspected of resisting German occupation.

But witnesses later claimed she did much more. According to testimony, she helped identify suspects, reported local people to German authorities, and sometimes used her position against people she personally disliked. During the final days of the war, Kashbar made decisions that would ultimately lead her to the gallows. In May 1945, only days before Germany surrendered, she helped identify several local men, including people she had known from her hometown.

Some were reportedly former classmates, and several were later executed. Investigators concluded that personal revenge had influenced her actions. As Nazi Germany collapsed, Kashova fled and remained hidden for months. Austrian police finally captured her in February 1946 and returned her to Czechoslovakia. At her trial, families of the victims testified about what had happened.

The judges concluded that she had acted willingly rather than simply following orders and sentenced her to death. On September 13th, 1946, she was brought back to Tre, the town where she had grown up. According to later accounts, Kosharova became terrified when she saw the execution pole and reportedly collapsed.

Guards had to take her toward it. She was executed at only 23 years old, becoming the last woman publicly executed in Czechoslovakia. The same streets she had known since childhood had now become the setting for the final moments of her life. But the final woman in this story had operated on an entirely different level. Her name was Maria Mandel and she rose to one of the highest positions available to a woman inside Ashvitz.

Born in Austria in 1912, Mandel entered the concentration camp system after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. She served at Likenberg and Ravensbrook before being transferred to Ashvitz Burkanau in October 1942. There she became the senior female official responsible for the women’s camp, placing thousands of prisoners under her authority.

Survivors feared her deeply, and her position gave her enormous influence over punishment, forced labor, selections, and ultimately who would live or die. Mandel was accused of participating in selections that sent prisoners to the gas chambers. Later estimates connected her authority and signed records to an enormous number of deaths.

Survivors described a woman who could appear calm one moment and become violently unpredictable the next. She was also responsible for establishing the women’s orchestra of Awitz, where female prisoners were forced to perform music during camp routines and prisoner movements. The contrast was chilling. Music was being played inside a place built around starvation, forced labor, suffering, and mass murder.

As Allied armies closed in during 1945, Mandel fled Awitz and avoided capture for several months. American military police finally arrested her in Bavaria in August. She was later handed over to Polish authorities and brought to Kkow to stand trial alongside other former Awitz personnel. Evidence concerning selections, death lists, and her role at Burkanau became central to the case.

In December 1947, the court found Mandel guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death. Her final morning came on January 24th, 1948 at Montalupich prison in KCO. 21 people convicted during the Awitz trial were scheduled for execution, and Mandel was the first taken to the gallows. At 7:32 a.m., she was hanged.

She was 36 years old. Reports claimed that her final words, spoken in Polish, expressed support for Poland. Her body was later given to a medical faculty before being buried in an unmarked grave. Her family never brought her body back to Austria and her name was reportedly left off the family gravestone. from Irma Graca, Elizabeth Vulcanrath and Hana Borman at Hamlin to Jenny Wanda Barkman and Elizabeth Becker in Poland and finally Hera Kasharova and Maria Mandel.

These seven women entered the Nazi system through very different paths. Some guarded prisoners directly, one worked behind a Gestapo desk. Others rose into positions where their decisions affected thousands of lives. But after Nazi Germany collapsed, the power they once held disappeared. Guards became prisoners, survivors became witnesses, and courts across Europe were left to decide their fate.

Their stories ended in different countries and under different courts, but together they reveal something disturbing about the Nazi system. Its crimes were carried out by people from very different backgrounds who made choices that destroyed countless lives. When the war ended, these seven women faced judgment, leaving behind some of the darkest cases of post-war justice.