Women’s Role in Holocaust May Exceed Old Notions

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Women’s Role in Holocaust May Exceed Old Notions
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: July 17, 2010

JERUSALEM — Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated by a few brutal women have always stood out, like aberrations of nature.

There were notorious camp guards like Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. And lesser known killers like Erna Petri, the wife of an SS officer and a mother who was convicted of shooting to death six Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland; or Johanna Altvater Zelle, a German secretary accused of child murder in the Volodymyr-Volynskyy ghetto in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

The Nazi killing machine was undoubtedly a male-dominated affair. But according to new research, the participation of German women in the genocide, as perpetrators, accomplices or passive witnesses, was far greater than previously thought.

The researcher, Wendy Lower, an American historian now living in Munich, has drawn attention to the number of seemingly ordinary German women who willingly went out to the Nazi-occupied eastern territories as part of the war effort, to areas where genocide was openly occurring.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/world/europe/18holocaust.html?ref=world

[proteus_lives]

1. Unsurprising.

I've read over and over how brutal female camp guards were.

[SoapBox]

9. Unrelated but I just can't help but think...

about how many really, REALLY aggressive, mean and nasty females
there are today, basking in the light of the RushTurdLican Party
and especially the TeaTalibanTraitorBaggers.

I find the likes of St. Quitter Sarah, Crazy Shelly, Insane Angle,
NutMeg Whitman, Creepy Fiorina...disturbing.

...they hate, hate, hate. The message is always negative and
against NORMAL Americans.

[CTyankee]

2. Mass kool-aid drinking affects both sexes...nt

[Warpy]

3. Look at all the women at Klan rallies

Yeah, they're outnumbered by the men, but they are in every hyper macho, patriarchal authority system. They're certainly there and probably represent a lot of "good" wives and girlfriends who are dutifully at home.

We're all the same species. While there are differences between the sexes, I'm afraid this isn't one of them.

[stevenleser]

5. There are many studies of not only this phenomenon, but how members of the oppressed group will

participate. Certain percentages of us will become vicious overseers and Kapos in those kinds of environments. Sad really.

[EFerrari]

10. It couldn't have been so "successful" without women. n/t

[SILVER__FOX52]

4. And this is news?

[sarge43]

6. Not surprising at all.

Women are quite capable of the most brutish actions. It's a myth that we're somehow morally superior to men.

[JustAnotherGen]

7. ITA sarge43

It's called 'Mean Girls' . . . I'd bet the majority of women at DU can attest to the 'mean' calculated behavior of our gender . . . as most of us survived Jr. High School in America. Add a desire to fit in to male approval in a patriarchial society and - there ya' go!

[sarge43]

12. Yup. Remember it well yea these fifty plus years.

Look what happen to that poor girl from Boston. She was driven to suicide by Mean Girls.

Anyone who says women/girls just couldn't do those awful things needs to get out more.

[SoapBox]

8. This stuff just makes me sick...and,

wake up WORLD...there are forces out there that would love to
re-create Nazi Germany and the death camps.

Look at the TeaTalibanTerroristBaggers...they make jokes about this stuff.

[Meldread]

11. People actually believed otherwise?

This is some type of shock? I mean, really... It's not like 50% of the population just decided to bite their tongues as atrocities occurred (which would have been a moral crime in and of itself). The only reason females do not play a more visible role is because of the gender roles of the time. If the Nazi's were to rise to power today, with our modern view of gender roles - females serving in the military, in government, and equal rights in the workplace - we'd see them as leaders of the movement right alongside the men. It shouldn't be a huge logical leap to envision the wives of some of the most prominent Nazi's supporting, endorsing, and defending the actions of their husbands and the Nazi's in general.

It's some type of weird twisted misconception that women are somehow immune to radicalism, bigotry, or hate. I'm not sure who should be more insulted by that point of view - women or men.

[CTyankee]

13. I hope you are wrong and that women in a true democracy where they feel empowered, not

by their husband's power, but on their own, don't have to ape them and those in power who are monsters and thereby become monsters themselves.

Let us remember that women were DISEMPOWERED by the Nazis from what they had in the Wiemar Republic, which, for one thing, legalized abortion. So it is entirely logical that the "pure" German women would have allied themselves with the powers that be and become monsters just to maintain their own power. A horrible case in point, but useful in pointing out the many sins of Nazism and totalitarianism...is it not?

Let's hope that as women's liberation continues, women will emerge more humanistically, not less...