Stutthof Trial

Stutthof trials

Female guards of the Stutthof concentration camp at a trial in Gdańsk between April 25 and May 31, 1946. First row (from left): Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff, Wanda Klaff. Second row: Erna Beilhardt, Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. None of the Stutthof commandants were ever tried in Poland. SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was sentenced to death in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.

The first Polish war crimes tribunal was convened at Gdańsk, Poland, from April 25, 1946 to May 31, 1946. The next three trials took place at the same court in 8–31 October 1947, 5–10 November, and in 19–29 November of that year. The fifth trial was held before the court in Toruń in 1949. The sixth and the last Stutthof trial in Poland took place in 1953 also in Gdańsk. In total, of the approximately 2,000 SS men and women who ran the entire camp complex, only 72 SS officers and 6 female overseers were brought to justice.

During the first war crimes tribunal held at Gdańsk from April 25, 1946, to May 31, 1946, the joint Soviet/Polish Special Criminal Court tried and convicted of crimes against humanity a group of thirteen ex-officials and overseers of the Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo and its Bromberg-Ost subcamp for women located in the city of Bydgoszcz. The accused were arraigned before the court and all found guilty. Eleven were sentenced to death, including the commander of the guards Johann Pauls, while the remainder were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The death sentences were carried out on July 4, 1946 at the Biskupia Górka in Gdańsk, by short-drop hanging.