Elisabeth Becker

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This article is about the concentration camp guard. For the U.S. journalist and author, see Elizabeth Becker.

Elizabeth Becker, front row, left

Elisabeth Becker (20 July 1923–4 July 1946) was born in Neuteich (Nowy Staw), Poland to a German family. In 1936, she joined the Nazi Party and the League of German Girls.

In 1938 she became a cook in Danzig. In 1939 the Germans arrived in the city, and Becker reportedly adapted successfully. In 1940 she began working for the firm Dokendorf in Neuteich, where she worked until 1941, when she became an agriculture assistant in Danzig.

In 1944, the German Army needed more guards at the nearby concentration camp at Stutthof, and Becker was called up for service. She arrived at Stutthof on September 5, 1944 to begin training as an SS Aufseherin. She later worked in the Stutthof women's camp at SK-III. There, she personally selected women and children for the gas chamber.

Becker fled the camp on January 15, 1945 and went back home to Neuteich. On April 13 Polish police arrested and placed her in prison to await trial. The Stutthof Trial began in Danzig on May 31, 1946 with five former SS women and several kapos as defendants. Becker was sentenced to death. She sent several letters to Polish president Bolesław Bierut asking for a pardon, claiming her actions hadn't been as severe as Gerda Steinhoff's or Jenny-Wanda Barkmann's. No pardon was issued and she was publicly hanged on 4 July 1946 at Biskupia Gorka Hill along with several other SS supervisors and kapos.