⚠️ EXTREMELY SENSITIVE CONTENT – 18+ ONLY ⚠️
This post discusses crimes committed at Stutthof concentration camp and the post-war trial in Gdańsk. No graphic details – shared solely for historical education and remembrance.
Ewa Paradies – From a Lauenburg Girl to the Gallows in Gdańsk
Born on 17 December 1920 in Lauenburg, Pomerania, Ewa Paradies grew up during the early years of the Nazi rule. She left school at 14 and was working as a tram conductor in Danzig when war broke out. In 1942, at the age of 22, she volunteered to become one of the infamous female SS camp guards – an Aufseherin.
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Between October 1944 and April 1945 she served at Stutthof concentration camp and its subcamps, especially Bromberg-Ost. Hundreds of survivors later identified her as one of the cruellest guards: constantly seen with a whip and an Alsatian dog, participating in beatings and selections for the gas chambers.
When the Red Army liberated Stutthof on 9 May 1945, Paradies attempted to flee westward but was captured by Polish authorities the same year.
From 25 April to 31 May 1946 the Special Criminal Court in Gdańsk held the first Stutthof trial. Ewa Paradies was one of thirteen defendants – eleven female guards and two male SS men. Former prisoners, still bearing the marks of their suffering, took the stand and gave evidence against her.
On 31 May 1946 the court sentenced Ewa Paradies and ten others to death.
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At dawn on 4 July 1946, on Biskupia Górka hill overlooking Gdańsk, the eleven death sentences were carried out in public before tens of thousands of Polish citizens and former prisoners. Twenty-five-year-old Ewa Paradies was the fourth to mount the scaffold.
We tell her story today not out of hatred, but to honour the memory of the more than 65,000 victims who perished at Stutthof and its subcamps; to recognise the courage of the survivors who testified; and to reaffirm that crimes against humanity, however long it takes, must face justice.
Official sources:
Stutthof Museum archives
Records of the 1946 Stutthof Trial – Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Poland
Marek Orski, “The Stutthof Concentration Camp” (2006)