by Wendy Lower
We walked a few hundred yards in the direction of the place that was described in the court record as the site where Petri had murdered the six boys. It was a strip of forest along a gully that divided two fields. I was momentarily distracted by the scene around me, which was picturesque and peaceful. Farmers were harvesting in the fields with horse-drawn plows and by hand. A crisp, colorful September sunset illuminated the rolling hills and flashed off several of Ukraine’s newly restored church steeples. Every hectare was being cultivated, except for two weedy swaths: an overgrown graveyard—an impenetrable mass of thorny bushes—and the forested gully we had come to see.
One could descend into the gully, but the prospect was not inviting. Passers-by threw their garbage there—plastic bags, rags, booze bottles. Or perhaps the rains had carried the waste into this crevice. I knew it was not the only site in Ukraine where mass graves from the Holocaust, the bones and often personal possessions of Jewish victims, lie a few meters below a surface covered with weeds, empty bottles, and other refuse. I stood there; I meditated, prayed, and thought about what had happened there, and what those frightened Jewish children who whimpered when Erna Petri drew her pistol might have achieved had they lived. Apparently I stood there too long. A Ukrainian peasant with his wool cap, flannel shirt, threadbare jacket, and mended pants accosted me. It was time to go.
In many ways this book is about how we fail to reckon with the past, not so much as a historical reconstruction or morality tale, but as evidence of a recurring problem in which we all share responsibility. What are the blind spots and taboos that persist in our retelling of events, in individual accounts, memoirs, and national histories? Why does this history continue to haunt us, several generations and many miles removed, in places such as Grzenda?
The teacher Ingelene Ivens attempted her own reckoning with the past. In the early 1970s she returned to her school near Poznań, Poland. Curious, concerned, and nostalgic, she wanted to know what had happened there after she had hastily departed in 1943. She had often thought about her students, and looked at their photos, one showing the children climbing an apple tree on the playground. They were ethnic Germans from Romania and Ukraine whom she was supposed to transform into civilized Aryans. During that return trip Ingelene learned that in January 1945 Red Army conquerors, perhaps with the help of local Poles, gathered the children and other Germans who were left behind, and in a brutal act of revenge, killed them all in the schoolyard. Ingelene mourned the children and struggled with her own role leading up to that tragic event. She wrote and published her memoir about her time in the East, but she decided to omit parts of her story, such as her visit to a Jewish labor camp in Poland. What other stories have been left out?
The secretaries and wives who became killers, such as Johanna Altvater in Volodymyr-Volynsky and Josefine Block in Drohobych, could not possibly have been as rare as we would like to assume. Specifics about who perpetrated the violence in the ghettos and mass shooting sites across the Nazi-occupied East are most often simply lacking. The Germans concealed or destroyed this information, and witnesses and survivors could seldom identify their persecutors by name. The Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal pursued hundreds of leads for decades, an endeavor detailed in his private correspondence in the Simon Wiesenthal Archive. An informant in the 1960s beseeched him to investigate a couple in Poland, a German gendarme named Franz Bauer and his wife. This duo and their German shepherd terrorized inhabitants in Miedzyrzec-Podlaski, near Lublin. The witness stated that Bauer’s wife personally took part in the mass shootings of Soviet prisoners of war. The behavior of the wife was widely discussed among the local inhabitants. Wiesenthal was able to determine that Franz Bauer had died in 1958, but the wife could not be found. Perhaps she had remarried and changed her name. The wife of the commandant at the Jaktorow camp, near Lviv, was also known for her German shepherd. She ordered her dog to attack the Jewish children who worked in the camp garden. The dog tore them apart. I interviewed a survivor who as a young girl in the camp had had the gruesome task of picking up the limbs of the victims of the commandant’s wife and her dog.
Even when there were eyewitnesses, often the suspects could not be tracked down after the war, and victim testimony alone was not strong enough evidence to mount a case, especially in the case of female suspects who did not hold an official position in the system. Given the fact that in places such as Ukraine less than two percent of the local Jewish population survived the war, the existence of any testimony naming German perpetrators, male or female, is itself astounding.
Again, none of the women in this book had to kill. Refusing to kill Jews would not have resulted in punishment. If one chose to help victims, however, the regime showed no mercy. Women of all ages and professions were not spared the terror of Nazi special courts. The German wife of a forester near Lviv provided aid to Jewish refugees who had fled the final deportations to the killing centers and camp liquidations in the autumn of 1943. For her bravery she was sentenced to death. The judge ruled that this defendant had had the proper anti-Semitic education at home, and that after being a member of the German community in occupied Poland, where the policy regarding Jews was “common talk in the streets,” she should have known better than to sabotage it. In the final months of the war, German leaders in the Justice Ministry, the armed services, and the SS and police ordered that anyone who sabotaged the war effort could be shot on the spot. In the Reich itself, as many as ten thousand Germans were executed. At least fifteen thousand German soldiers were branded deserters and shot. A German businessman thrown into the civil defense of Danzig in early 1945 observed the chilling aftermath of such a drumhead court-martial: “The streets of Danzig look like a desert. Although the authorities repeatedly issued decrees that nobody is to abandon his workplace, anyone who could, fled. Where the boulevard opens at the Oliva Gate, German soldiers were hanged as deserters, 6 of them, among them also a young nurse.”
We do not know the name, let alone the biography, of this young nurse. The stories of German women who were morally courageous and defiant are difficult to uncover. The cases of these women, branded criminals by the Nazis and considered traitors by many Germans, were not reopened after the war.
When I returned to Munich from my research trip to the former Petri plantation in Ukraine, I realized that this journey was not the end of the story. I learned that one of my interview subjects in Germany, Maria Seidenberger, had just died. Ms. Seidenberger was not an accomplice or perpetrator in the Nazi machinery of destruction. During the Nazi era, Ms. Seidenberger and her family lived in a house that was along the perimeter of the Dachau concentration camp. When she and her mother stood at their kitchen window, they saw prisoners being marched into the camp, and heard gunfire. Some forty-five hundred Soviet prisoners of war were shot outside the camp’s walls at a shooting range near the Seidenbergers’ backyard. Maria helped the camp inmates by serving as their courier to the outside world, sending letters to their loved ones, hiding their personal belongings in her family’s beehive, and feeding them. In 2005, sixty years after the end of the war, the city of Dachau recognized Maria Seidenberger with a prize for her civil courage. This public event was a high point in her life but could not make up for the many years of isolation she had experienced. Neighbors and even relatives who did not behave as admirably during the war viewed Seidenberger with suspicion.
Like the stories of female witnesses, accomplices, and perpetrators featured in this book, Seidenberger’s story has come to light, but only recently. We will never know all there is to know about Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. No single story can relate it all, and the pieces that we uncover may not fit together to our satisfaction. But the collage of stories and memories, of cruelty and courage, while continuing to test our comprehension of history and humanity, helps us see what human beings—not only men, but women as well—are capable of believing and doing.
Acknowledgments
I could not have completed this study without the gen
erous support of several institutions, funders, and colleagues. The German Research Foundation (DFG) awarded me a grant to write a book on biographies in the age of extremes. I am grateful to the Foundation and the evaluators who approved my application. During my time as a researcher in Germany, I was supported by the Modern History Department of Ludwig Maximilian University, especially by Petra Thoma and Professors Michael Brenner, Michael Geyer, Martin Schulze-Wessel, Margit Szollosi-Janze, and Andreas Wirsching. My stay in Munich was sustained as well by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and colleagues who agreed to my proposal to collect oral histories from German witnesses. As I completed this book, I joined the History Department at Claremont McKenna College, and during that transition my new colleagues granted me the time and support needed to complete my final edits and photo research.
Researching the Holocaust requires work in several archives across Europe, North America, and Israel. While the digital age has made the material easier to access, we scholars still rely on archivists and colleagues in the field to help us find the material, obtain copies of it, and analyze it.
I am grateful to staff at the Bundesarchiv in Ludwigsburg, Kirsten Goetze, Tobias Hermann, and Abdullah Toptanci. At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum I received assistance from Vadim Altskan, Michlean Amir, Susan Bachrach, Judy Cohen, Bill Connolly, Michael Gelb, Neal Guthrie, Dieter Kuntz, Jan Lambertz, Steve Luckert, Jacek Nowakowski, Paul Shapiro, Caroline Waddell, and Leah Wolfson. My discovery of the Petri case occurred in the summer of 2005, when I was a participant in the museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies research workshop on punishing perpetrators in war-crimes trials. In the summer of 2010 I experienced another windfall, this one at Yad Vashem, where I was a participant in a summer research workshop on grassroots violence. Colleagues in the workshop, including Rebecca Carter-Chand, David Cesarani, Wolf Gruner, and Alexander Prusin, and scholars in the research institute and archives, including Hari Drefus, Bella Guterman, Dan Michman, Elliot Orvieto, Naama Shik, David Silberklang, and Dan Uziel, shared material and provided invaluable feedback. Furthermore, Yad Vashem arranged my meeting with the New York Times correspondent Isabel Kershner, who published an article about my research. Nancy Toff at Oxford University Press was involved in the early development of my manuscript, and Lisbeth Cohen at Harvard University encouraged me to write a study that might reach a broader audience, and put me in touch with Geri Thoma. In Paris, I received support from Yahad in Unum; I thank Father Patrick Desbois and his team for sharing their findings. At the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Crispin Brooks and Ita Gordon identified relevant material; at the LA Holocaust Museum, Vladimir Melamed helped me research the collection, a little-known treasure trove for scholars. Mike Constady at Westmoreland Research Group promptly responded to my numerous requests for material at the U.S. National Archives. Dr. Walter Rummel at the Speyer Archive helped me obtain rare photographs.
Several colleagues shared their research, taking the time to send me materials and to make suggestions about where to look. Among them were Andrej Angrick, Omer Bartov, Waitman Beorn, Ray Brandon, Martin Dean, Robert Ehrenreich, Christian Gerlach, Stephen Lehnstaedt, Jürgen Matthäus, Jared McBride, Marie Moutier, Dieter Pohl, and Eric Steinhart. I benefited from discussions with Kimberly Allar, Betsy Anthony, Tracy Brown, Joyce Chernick, Marion Deshmukh, Deborah Dwork, Mary Fulbrook, Alexandra Garbarini, Ann Hajkova, Susannah Heschel, Marion Kaplan, Jeffrey Koerber, Deborah Lipstadt, Dalia Ofer, Katrin Paehler, John Roth, Corrine Unger, and James Waller. Timothy Snyder introduced the term “bloodlands” in his outstanding book on the Nazi East. Participants in the Soros ReSet seminar in Kiev and Odessa were also helpful: Anna Bazhenova, Olena Bettlie, Alexei Bratochkin, Oksana Dudko, Diana Dumitru, Anastias Felcher, John-Paul Himka, Georgiy Kasianov, Alexandr Marinchenko, Alexei Miller, Oleksandr Nadtoka, Irina Sklokina, Octavian Tacu, and Oksana Vynnyk. I had the opportunity to present my findings in a workshop at the University of North Carolina, where Christopher Browning, Karen Hagemann, Claudia Koonz, Michale Meng, Karl Schleunes, and Gerhard and Janet Weinberg graciously hosted me and offered valuable suggestions.
This book would not have happened without the support of my agent, Geri Thoma at Writers House. She advised me in preparing my proposal and made sure that my proposal fell into the right hands at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was an honor and pleasure to collaborate with Deanne Urmy, an excellent executive editor and a wonderful person who moved the manuscript forward with diligence and care. Debbie Engel’s enthusiasm and commitment to this research ensured that the book would reach international audiences. Katya Rice assiduously copyedited the manuscript. The historians Richard Breitman and Atina Grossmann read through the final manuscript, catching errors and problems that only experts could detect. I am inspired by their erudition and appreciate their tireless mentoring and service.
Most of all I am grateful for the forbearance of my family and friends who have lived with this research too, and not by choice. This book is dedicated to my grandmothers, mother, and sisters, but I also want to thank my father, James Lower; my brother, Joshua Lower; my husband, Christof Mauch; my sons, Ian Maxwell Mauch and Alexander Morgan Mauch; and my other sisters, Millie Gonzalez, Sally George, Susan Hercher, Sylvia Szeker, and Valerie Henry, for keeping me grounded in the present day and raising my spirits with their love and good humor.
It was possible to feature certain women in this study because they or their families responded to my inquiries and graciously opened their homes to me. The Petris, the Schücking-Homeyers, Ingelene Ivens Rodewald, Renate Summ Sarkar, and the late Maria Seidenberger trusted me with their stories. I have tried my best to render their accounts with the understanding that they expect and with the integrity and compassion that the victims of the Holocaust deserve.
Notes
ARCHIVES
Germany
BAB Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Berlin
BAK Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Koblenz
BAL Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Ludwigsburg
BSL Bavarian State Library, Munich
ICH Institute for Contemporary History, Munich
ITS International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen
LAS Landesarchiv Speyer, Speyer
MCA Munich City Archive, Munich
Austria
SWA Simon Wiesenthal’s Office Archive, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna
VCA Vienna City and State Archive, Vienna
Ukraine
CSA Central State Archives of Civic Organizations of Ukraine, Kiev
ZSA State Archives, Zhytomyr
United States
BDC Berlin Document Center Collection, NARA, Washington, D.C.
IMT International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, NARA, Washington, D.C.
NARA U.S. National Archives Record Administration, Washington, D.C.
SFA Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
USHMMA U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, D.C.
France
Yahad Yahad in Unum Collection, Paris
Israel
YVA Yad Vashem Archive, Jerusalem
Introduction
[>] “just that a few Jews . . .”: Elisabeth H., Neustadt, 11 Aug. 1977, BAL, 76-K 41676-Koe.
[>] studies by pioneering historians: Theresa Wobbe, ed., Nach Osten: Verdeckte Spuren nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen (Verlag Neue Kritik, 1992); Gudrun Schwarz, Eine Frau an seiner Seite: Ehefrauen in der “SS-Sippengemeinschaft” (Hamburger Edition, 1997); Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization (Yale University Press, 2003); Susannah Heschel, “Does Atrocity Have a Gender? Feminist Interpretations of Women in the SS,” in Jeffrey Diefendorf, ed., Lessons and Legacies, vol. 6, New Currents in Holocaust Research (Northwestern University Press, 2004), pp. 300–321.
[>] “Our people immigrating here . . .”: Christa Schroeder, He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Ado
lf Hitler’s Secretary (Frontline Books, 2009), pp. 99, 114–15. The German edition appeared in 1985.
[>] recognized their imperial role: Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Duke University Press, 2001). For the related pre-Nazi history, also see Katharina Walgenbach, Die weisse Frau als Trägerin deutscher Kultur: Koloniale Diskurse über Geschlecht, “Rasse” und Klasse im Kaiserreich (Campus Verlag, 2005). On the integration of female aristocrats into the imperial projects, see the biography of Hildegard von Rheden, department leader for ideological work in the Reich Main Office of the Reich Nährstandes, and active in the German Red Cross; and von Rheden’s appointment with Himmler, 17 June 1941, as the Landesbauerführerin, in Peter Witte et al., eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Christians Verlag, 1999).
[>] Hitler’s Furies: Rosemarie Killius, ed., Frauen für die Front: Gespräche mit Wehrmachtshelferinnen (Militzke Verlag, 2003), pp. 69–70; and Franka Maubach, “Expansionen weiblicher Hilfe: Zur Erfahrungsgeschichte von Frauen im Kriegdienst,” in Sybille Steinbacher, ed., Volksgenossinnen: Frauen in der NS-Volksgemeinschaft (Wallstein Verlag, 2007), pp. 93–94. Women were sent to the police training school in Erfurt, and graduates from this school were allowed to enter the SS training school in Alsace in early 1945. See Gudrun Schwarz, “Verdrängte Täterinnen: Frauen im Apparat der SS, 1939–1945,” in Theresa Wobbe, ed., Nach Osten: Verdeckte Spuren nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen (Verlag Neue Kritik, 1992), p. 210.
