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I recently read 'Hitler's Furies', German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Its author is Wendy Lower.
This book is a history of German women in the Holocaust and the author reveals their roles as plunderers, witnesses, and actual executioners on the Eastern Front during World War 2. Ms. Lower describes how nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives responded to what they believe to be Nazi opportunities, only to perform brutal duties.
These perpetrators were largely ignored after the end of World War 2. The war crimes trials conducted by the victorious Allies focused the female prosecutions on a few thousand concentration camp guards.
I recently read 'Hitler's Furies', German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Its author is Wendy Lower.
This book is a history of German women in the Holocaust and the author reveals their roles as plunderers, witnesses, and actual executioners on the Eastern Front during World War 2. Ms. Lower describes how nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives responded to what they believe to be Nazi opportunities, only to perform brutal duties.
These perpetrators were largely ignored after the end of World War 2. The war crimes trials conducted by the victorious Allies focused the female prosecutions on a few thousand concentration camp guards.
You couldn't indict the whole country. However, its very clear that it took the participation or at least complicity of millions of ordinary Germans to carry out the Holocaust and other repression that occurred in Nazi Germany. Some Germans may not have truly understood what was going on. But others, perhaps most, did. Trains full of people going to concentration camps passed through German cities. Some Germans were sent to concentration camps for short prison terms and came in contact with inmates who were being systematically starved and murdered. Slave labor from the camps was used on many work projects. Germans took orders and didn't ask questions. That was much of the culture at that time. Women were no different than men.
Video of AN INCREDIBLE recently-found scrapbook full of photos showing Nazi officers and female office staff at Auschwitz, all happy, singing, and picnicking in 1944 when camp executions were near their peak
It’s human nature male or female to follow the leader no matter how depraved that leader may be. A few tried it in Germany and were swiftly tried and executed. And many Germans of both sexes profited from the removal of the Jews to the East. Lemming mentality full speed over the cliff.
You know many of us have gotten used to casual killing of young black men. We hear about it, but it has not made a big impression on many of us. I think we mentally shrug it off. I think people get used to certain bad things, thinking it has nothing to do with them. This would be people who are in power, who are not targeted, who have privilege—as these Germans did in 1944.
OP, I taught a course on women & the Holocaust a couple of years ago and we read that book. It was so, so horrifying.
We also watched lots of videos including one of Wendy Lower and Christopher Browning (author of Ordinary Men, which like Lower's book was about what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil") in conversation, and they were incredibly illuminating.
It was a difficult class to teach. My students and I got extremely emotional at many points. But it was so, so worthwhile learning about an aspect of the Holocaust that most people don't consider.
Video of AN INCREDIBLE recently-found scrapbook full of photos showing Nazi officers and female office staff at Auschwitz, all happy, singing, and picnicking in 1944 when camp executions were near their peak
Also consider that, by 1944 the when photos were taken, millions of German soldiers had starved or frozen in Russia.... and millions of German families had been left homeless by Air-raids.....and had endured over 4 years of rationing. How could they all act so happy?
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