Pauls was executed by hanging on 4 July 1946 at Biskupia Górka.

 


He was brought to the place of execution along with 10 other prisoners, five men and five women. 


The convicts were on the backs of 11 trucks, bound hand and foot. Pauls was collared with a noose at the center of the central gallows and pushed out of the truck. On one side of him, Gerda Steinhoff, on his other side, an unknown Kapo.

It is generally believed that the execution was filmed.

Above: on one end of the gallows row, the truck has just pulled away from Jenny Wanda Barkmann — a modish Hamburg lass in her mid-20’s known to Stutthof prisoners as “the Beautiful Specter” for her cruelty. Down the row, one can see that some of the prisoners are already swinging, while others have not yet been dropped.


Upon hearing her sentence, Jenny Barkmann retorted, “Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short.” (More about Barkmann, including trial photos, here.) In this closer view of her, just as in the first photo, she is still alive and struggling. Next to her, Ewa Paradies, another guard, is prepared for the same fate

The central triple gallows. Commandant Johann Pauls hangs in the middle with Gerda Steinhoff — one of the senior female guards — in the foreground. The line of five male kapos recedes behind them into the enormous crowd of onlookers.


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