Wanda Klaff was born on the 6th of March 1922 as Wanda Kalacinski in Danzig, today’s Gdańsk, which then belonged to a city state named “The Free City of Danzig”. The Free City of Danzig was created following World War I. In the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the victorious powers - the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied states imposed punitive territorial, military, and economic treaty terms on the defeated Germany. One provision required Germany to cede West Prussia including Danzig to the newly reconstructed state of Poland which was given certain rights pertaining to port facilities in the city. Danzig, largely an ethnically German city, became a "free city" under the protection of the League of Nations but with special administrative ties to Poland.
The League of the Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.
However, Germany resented the loss of this largely German city and after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came into power in January 1933, he was determined to overturn the military and territorial provisions of the Versailles treaty.
After in May 1933 the Nazi Party became the leading power in Danzig, anti-Polish sentiment increased and both Germanisation and segregation policies intensified. Political opposition to the Nazis was repressed with several politicians being imprisoned and murdered.
The rights of local Poles were commonly violated and limited by the local administration. As a result, Polish children were refused admission to public Polish-language schools and premises were not allowed to be rented to Polish schools and preschools. Due to such policies, only 8 Polish-language public schools existed in the city, and the Poles managed to organize 7 more private Polish schools. However, in 1937, Poles who sent their children to private Polish schools were demanded to transfer children to German schools, under threat of police intervention, and attacks were carried out on Polish schools and Polish youth.
When Danzig united with Germany in September 1939, only 1,600 Jews were left in the city. Emigration continued until the fall of 1940 and at the end of February 1941, the city's remaining 600 Jews were deported to their deaths in Poland.
In September 1939, the Germans established the Stutthof camp in a wooded area west of Stutthof, a town about 22 miles east of Danzig.
The camp was established in connection with the ethnic cleansing project that included the liquidation of Polish elites such as members of the intelligentsia as well as religious and political leaders.
Wanda Klaff had escaped from the camp in early 1945. In June of the same year, she was arrested at her parents' home and soon after, she fell ill from typhoid fever in prison.
Klaff was then tried at the First Stutthof trial which began on the 25th of April 1946. During the trial she said: "I am very intelligent and I was very devoted to my work in the camps...
