Erna Wazinski

Erna Gertrude Wazinski (born September 7, 1925, in Ihlow (Oberbarnim); died November 23, 1944, in Wolfenbüttel) was a German armorer worker. She was denounced by a neighbor at the age of 19 for alleged looting after the bombing of Braunschweig and sentenced to death as a "public enemy" by the Special Court of Braunschweig on the basis of the Ordinance Against Public Enemies, (VVO), issued on September 5, 1939. Wazinski, who had confessed only after being mistreated by criminal investigators and for whom two pardons for clemency had previously been filed, died under the guillotine in Wolfenbüttel Prison. The case came back before German courts several times over a period of 40 years after the war. In 1952, a court mitigated the old sentence; in 1991, an acquittal was issued on the basis of new testimony. After the law called Gesetz zur Aufhebung nationalsozialistischer Unrechtsurteile in der Strafrechtspflege came into force on September 1, 1998, all sentences under the Ordinance Against Public Enemies were sweepingly repealed. The almost completely preserved trial files are now in the Wolfenbüttel Department. Wazinski was the only child of Wilhelmine Wazinski, née Chmielewski and Schmielewski, respectively, and her later husband, the invalid Rudolph Wazinski. Her parents were both born in East Prussia and worked as farm laborers on Brandenburg properties around 1925. Her father, 24 years older than her mother, did not marry her until after the family moved to Essen in the Ruhr region in 1930.