Wanda Kallenbach — born Wanda Möhring — was a German housewife who resisted the Nazis.

 

She grew up in the countryside north of today's Poznań, Poland, and moved to Berlin to work as a domestic aid and as a packer, also joining a trade union. She married Fritz Kallenbach and in 1933 they had had a daughter, Inge.

 

In 1939, Kallenbach's home region was annexed by Germany. She went to visit her sister there in Jankedorf (now Budzyń) in August 1943. Several months after her return, in January 1944, she was arrested by the Gestapo; a German woman from Jankedorf had denounced her on account of the anti-Nazi statements Kallenbach had made during her visit. Her connections with trade unions made her a further target, as did her sympathies with Jews. On 20th April 1944, she was formally charged with "undermining the war effort and helping the enemy".

 

Despite pleas from others to spare her life for the sake of her child — from her husband, as well as a local pastor, Dr Wilhelm Harnisch — Kallenbach was sentenced to death. She was executed by guillotine at Plötzensee Prison, Berlin.

 

A number of injustices and indignities afflicted her even in death. As he did with many other women executed by the Nazis, like Mildred Fish-Harnack, anatomist Hermann Stieve dissected Kallenbach's remains for gynaecological research. Bruchhaus, the judge who had condemned her, had been allowed to continue his career after the war, with full pay until early retirement.

 

Wanda Kallenbach was posthumously pardoned in 1998 when a new law came into force to repeal charges made by the Nazis (Gesetz zur Aufhebung nationalsozialistischer Unrechtsurteile in der Strafrechtspflege). Only in 2019 were her remains from the experiments buried at Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, Berlin-Mitte.

 

Sources:

DEwiki
Wikipedia (1, 2)