Ewa Paradies

Ewa Paradies (17 December 1920 - 4 July 1946) was a Nazi concentration camp overseer.

Paradies was born in Lauenburg, Pomerania (now Lębork, Poland), Neuendorferstrasse 100. She was a Protestant Christian and not married. In 1935 she left school and worked various jobs in Wuppertal, Erfurt and Lauenburg.

In August 1944 she went to Stutthof SK-III camp for training as an Aufseherin. She soon finished training and became a wardress. In October 1944 she was reassigned to the Bromberg-Ost subcamp of Stutthof, and in January 1945, back to Stutthof main camp. In April 1945 she accompanied one of the last transports of women prisoners to the Lauenburg subcamp and fled.

In May 1945 she was found and arrested by Polish officers in Lębork. At the Sztutowo trial, several witnesses told of Paradies abuse. One told the court: "She forced a group of women prisoners, in the dead of winter to undress. Then she poured icy water over them. If they moved then she [Paradies] would beat them." During the Stutthof Trial, Paradies cried and pleaded for her life. Paradies was subsequently found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

Ewa Paradies was publicly hanged at Biskupia Górka near Gdańsk, along with 10 others who had been sentenced to death (six men: the camp commandant Johann Pauls and five kapos; and four women: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff and Gerda Steinhoff).

Sources

• Daniel Patrick Brown: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Nazi Concentration Camp System. Atglen PA: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2002. p. 288. ISBN 0764314440
• Jack G. Morrison: Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women's Concentration Camp 1939-45. Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000. p. 380. ISBN 1558762183
• Rochelle G. Saidel: The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. p. 336. ISBN 029919860X

External links

• ExecutedToday.com » 1946: Eleven from the Stutthof concentration camp
• Death on the gallows (many photos)