Elisabeth Becker
Elisabeth Becker was a German woman born in Neuteich, Prussia (now Poland), who became a notable figure associated with the Stutthof concentration camp during World War II. After moving to Danzig in 1938, she held various jobs, ultimately taking a position as a guard at Stutthof in 1944. Becker's role involved overseeing female prisoners, many of whom were Polish, and designating individuals for execution in gas chambers as part of the Nazi regime's genocidal policies.
Following the war and the liberation of Stutthof by Russian forces, Becker was arrested and tried for war crimes in 1946. Despite her claims of innocence regarding the treatment of prisoners, she was convicted, along with other camp personnel, for her involvement in atrocities that claimed the lives of numerous individuals. The court deemed her actions deserving of the death penalty, and she was executed on July 4, 1946.
Becker's case highlights the broader efforts by Allied powers to bring justice for war crimes during the Holocaust, reflecting the intense feelings of vengeance among Poles against those who collaborated with the Nazi regime. Today, the Stutthof museum serves to commemorate the victims and preserve the history of the atrocities committed there, including the roles played by figures like Becker.
Subject Terms
Elisabeth Becker
German-Polish war criminal
- Born: July 20, 1923
- Birthplace: Neuteich, West Prussia, Germany (now Nowy Staw, Poland)
- Died: July 4, 1946
- Place of death: Biskupia Gorka Hill, Gdańsk, Poland
Major offenses: War crimes, specifically participating in mass murder
Active: September, 1944-May, 1945
Locale: Stutthof concentration camp, Poland
Sentence: Death by hanging
Early Life
Elisabeth Becker (BEHK-uhr) was the daughter of Germans who lived in Neuteich, Prussia (now Nowy Staw, Poland) at the time of her birth. Not much is known about Becker’s early life or family. Some sources state that Becker was married in 1936 but do not clarify whether Becker was her maiden or married surname. Becker affiliated with the League of German Girls and the National Socialist German Workers Party.
After relocating in 1938 to nearby Danzig (later Gdańsk), Poland, by the Baltic Sea, Becker secured employment as a cook. When German troops invaded Danzig in early September, 1939, Becker’s Germanic heritage assured her safety. She returned to her hometown the following year to take a position with a local company. By 1941, Becker had again relocated to Danzig for an agricultural job supporting the German war effort.
Criminal Career
Becker accepted a guard assignment at the Stutthof (Sztutowo) concentration camp, approximately thirty-five kilometers (twenty-two miles) east of Danzig, in summer, 1944. Camp officials particularly sought women workers from local communities who, like Becker, had proven their loyalty to the Nazi Party. At Stutthof she supervised prisoners, mostly Poles of all religions, who had been deported to Stutthof in order to support Adolf Hitler’s Lebensraum, the plan to move Germans onto lands seized from other ethnic groups.
Starting on September 5, 1944, Becker began preparing for Schutzstaffel (SS) Aufseherin (woman overseer) duties. Once assigned to area SK-III of Stutthof, Becker managed female internees and their children. Her primary task was to designate which women and young prisoners were murdered in Stutthof’s gas chambers.
Legal Action and Outcome
Hearing news of Russian troops approaching to liberate Stutthof in spring, 1945, and fearing retaliation, Becker slipped away, seeking sanctuary among relatives and friends in Neuteich. After Russian troops arrived at Stutthof on May 9, 1945, officials collected information including the names of Stutthof workers and the atrocities they had committed. Police arrested Becker, who was suffering from typhoid, in a Danzig hospital.
Beginning on April 25, 1946, Becker was tried in Danzig’s Polish Special Law Court. She was accused of being a murderess. Declaring themselves not guilty of war crimes, Becker, five other women personnel from Stutthof, several male workers, and the camp’s commandant, Max Pauli, listened to eyewitness testimony. On May 31, the court found Becker and her associates guilty, declaring death sentences to be justifiable punishment for their wartime crimes at Stutthof.
Becker resisted being condemned. She wrote to Poland’s president, Bolesław Bierut, insisting she had not treated prisoners cruelly, even though other female camp staffers had. Although court officials suggested that Becker serve fifteen years in prison instead of being executed, Bierut disagreed. Polish police delivered Becker to the gallows on Biskupia Gorka Hill on the early evening of July 4, 1946. They hanged her simultaneously with several other convicted Stutthof war criminals.
Impact
Although the trial of the Stutthof camp personnel was not as well known as the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Elisabeth Becker’s case and other smaller tribunals represented Allied efforts to achieve justice for civilians by punishing identified war criminals, regardless of their status. Becker’s public execution provided some vengeance for Poles enraged by German collaborators’ abuses during World War II.
Becker’s crimes exemplified the horrors Jews and marginalized people encountered during the Holocaust. One of approximately twenty-one women war criminals executed by Allied authorities after the war, Becker had participated in the murders of many of the sixty-five thousand people who died at Stutthof. Today, the museum at Stutthof preserves artifacts and prisoners’ accounts of ordeals they suffered, inflicted by collaborators like Becker.
Bibliography
Harvey, Elizabeth. Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. Includes a chapter examining occupied Poland and why Poles like Becker with German identities embraced the Nazi ideology and agenda.
Piotrowski, Tadeusz. Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces, and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998. Discusses the diversity among Poles deported to Stutthoff. Text contains excerpts from liberated prisoners’ depositions regarding the death camp.
Rabinovici, Schoschana. Thanks to My Mother. Translated by James Skofield. New York: Dial Books, 1998. Memoir of a woman who was interned in Stutthof as a child. Provides details about that camp and the maliciousness during the time Becker worked there.