Wanda Klaff

Female guards of Stutthof and Bromberg-Ost concentration camps at the Stutthof Trial.
Wanda Klaff is on the right, front row.

Wanda Klaff (6 March 1922 – 4 July 1946) was a Nazi camp overseer.

Klaff was born in Danzig to German parents as Wanda Kalacinski. She finished school in 1938 and began working in a jam factory. This lasted until 1942 when she married Willy Gapes and became a housewife.

In 1944, Klaff joined the camp staff at the Stutthof's subcamp at Praust (Pruszcz), where she abused many of the prisoners. On 5 October 1944, she arrived at the Russoschin subcamp of Stutthof (present-day northern Poland). She fled the camp in early 1945 but on 11 June 1945, she was arrested by Polish officials and soon after was laid up in prison with typhoid fever. She stood trial with the other former female guards. It is said, that she stated at the trial, "I am very intelligent and very devoted to my work in the camps. I struck at least two prisoners every day." She was convicted and received a sentence of death. She was publicly hanged (by the short drop method) on 4 July 1946, on Biskupia Górka hill, near Gdańsk, aged 24.

Sources

• Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation, books.google.com; accessed 13 November 2014.