She is believed to have spent her childhood in Hamburg, Germany. In 1944, she became an Aufseherin in the Stutthof SK-III women's camp, where she brutalized prisoners, some to death. She also selected women and children for the gas chambers. She was so severe the women prisoners nicknamed her the Beautiful Specter. Barkmann was publicly hanged along with 10 other defendants from the trial on Biskupia Gorka Hill near Gdańsk on July 4, 1946. She was around 24 years old.