by Wendy Lower
[>] “most private wishes”: Urteil Landegericht Zivilkammer Hamburg, 10 June 1942, NARA, BDC, RuSHA file Wohlauf, A3343-RS-G5348, frames 2214–2326.
[>] Vera and Julius were in a rush: Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 92.
[>] Liesel Riedel and her SS fiancé: Willhaus marriage application, NARA, BDC, RuSHA files, A3343-RS-G5242, frames 2524–2710. See Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945 (Fischer Verlag, 2003).
[>] “In the end, blood . . .”: Evans, The Third Reich in Power, p. 626.
[>] “political organization that was . . .”: 2 July 1935 letter of Stabsführer to RuSHA Leader of the 85th Standarte, Cottbus. RuSHA file Willhaus. In 1943 the SS was still investigating the issue of his unapproved marriage. NARA, BDC, A3343-RS-G5242. See Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Hill & Wang, 2000), pp. 102, 116.
[>] developed a split personality: In and around Erna’s hometown, racial anti-Semites and “blood and soil” agitators infiltrated state institutions, with immediate effect. Boycotting of Jewish business started in December 1932 along with the reissuing of school textbooks to re-educate youth. Among the regional Nazi leaders in Thuringia who would later rise and fall with the regime were Fritz Sauckel (later Hitler’s wartime “czar” of forced labor deportations from the East to the Reich, hanged at Nuremberg in 1946), Richard Walter Darré (Himmler’s farming specialist and first chief of the SS racial office), and Professor Dr. Hans F. K. Günther (the intellectual popularizer of Nordicism, a paganist known as the “Race Pope”). But it was Himmler’s trusted expert in matters of colonization, Walter Darré, who would have a direct role in shaping Erna’s future. See Lower, “Living Space,” pp. 310–25; and Evans, The Third Reich in Power, p. 9.
[>] “blood and soil” expert: Darré proposed the creation of a new agrarian nobility founded on pure German blood of men and women in monogamous relationships cultivating large families and large estates, in Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (Munich, 1930), pp. 131, 152, 153. Darré was the son of a merchant in a German trade firm in Argentina; having returned to Germany, he was schooled at the German Colonial School at Witzenhausen and completed a degree in agricultural science at the University of Halle. He was a staunch advocate of völkisch theories. See Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich.
[>] After a yearlong courtship: NARA, BDC, RuSHA file Petri, SSOK, roll 373A, frames 2908, 2910–2936. See Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Appendix A.
[>] no longer the farmer’s daughter: Many farmers’ daughters and wives were not formally registered as laborers, but as “assisting family members.” The centuries of the traditional household economy persisted. See Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany (Longman, 2001), p. 68.
[>] Motor Vehicle Corps: Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 154.
[>] New Woman of the Weimar era: Frevert, Women in German History, p. 203.
[>] “superior” methods of housekeeping: Nancy Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
3. Witnesses
[>] “everything looked totally different . . .”: Erika Summ, Schäfers Tochter: Die Geschichte der Frontschwester (Zeitgut Verlag, 2006), p. 117. Ohr’s description here fits into the typical colonialist discourse about foreign landscapes that lack life and culture, and the dark depths of the Russian steppe.
[>] emaciated Soviet prisoners: See Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1944 (Oldenbourg, 2008). See also Christian Streit, “The Fate of the Soviet Prisoners of War,” in Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York University Press, 1990).
[>] “like animals hanging . . .”: Nurse quoted in Birgit Panke-Kochinke and Monika Schaidhammer-Placke, Frontschwestern und Friedensengel: Kriegskrankenpflege im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg; Ein Quellen- und Fotoband (Mabuse Verlag, 2002), pp. 193–96. See also Magdalena Wortmann, Was haben wir nicht alles mitgemacht: Kriegserinnerungen einer Rotkreuzskrankenchwester (Wim Snayder Verlag, 1995); Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Duke University Press, 2001); and Elfriede Schade-Bartkowiak, Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind . . . Unter der Schwesternhaube. Kriegserinnerungen einer DRK-Schwester im II. Weltkrieg an der Ostfront (Hamburg, 1989), excerpted in Panke-Kochinke and Schaidhammer-Placke, Frontschwestern und Friedensengel, pp. 191–92.
[>] “eyes wide open”: Brigitte Erdmann letter to mother, 24 Jan. 1943, reprinted in Walter Kempowski, Das Echolot (btb Verlag, 2001), p. 339.
[>] letters she sent home: Jens Ebert and Sybille Penkert, eds., Brigitte Penkert: Briefe einer Rotkreuzschwester von der Ostfront (Wallstein Verlag, 2006).
[>] Nurses, teachers, and secretaries: Franka Maubach, “Expansionen weiblicher Hilfe: Zur Erfahrungsgeschichte von Frauen im Kriegdienst,” in Sybille Steinbacher, ed., Volksgenossinnen: Frauen in der NS-Volksgemeinschaft (Wallstein Verlag, 2007); and Marita Krauss, ed., Sie waren dabei: Mitläuferinnen, Nutzniesserinnen, Täterinnen im Nationalsozialismus (Wallstein Verlag, 2008), p. 13.
[>] Stories about the mass shootings: Karel Berkhoff, “Babi Yar: Site of Mass Murder, Ravine of Oblivion,” J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture, 9 Feb. 2011 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Occasional Paper Series, May 2012); Peter Longerich, “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!” Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung, 1933–1945 (Siedler, 2006); and Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Belknap Press, 2008).
[>] operations such as those at Belzec: For an example of an exchange about mass murder in Belzec as a train passed by the camp, see “Aufzeichnungen eines deutschen Unteroffiziers vom 31 August 1942, Rawa Ruska, Anlage 36,” in Raul Hilberg, Sonderzüge nach Auschwitz: The Role of the German Railroads in the Destruction of the Jews (Dumjahn Verlag, 1981), pp. 188–91. Similar recollections about train conversations are in Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Reich (Rutgers University Press, 1995).
[>] an inadequately heated train: Paul Salitter, captain of the Schutzpolizei in Düsseldorf, was assigned by the Gestapo to guard this transport. At Konitz the local German train official tried to prevent the train from passing through; Salitter denounced him as a friend of the Jews, and not a member of the German racial community. Salitter went to the German Red Cross station to deal with a medical issue and the train departed without him. His wartime report is reprinted in Hilberg, Sonderzüge nach Auschwitz, p. 134. See also Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein, Die “Endlösung” in Riga: Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941–1944 (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006).
[>] “killing all the Jews there”: Quotations in this paragraph and the next are from Annette Schücking-Homeyer interview with author and Dr. Christof Mauch, 30 Mar. 2010, Lünen, Germany. Some of the material used here appeared first in an interview conducted by Martin Doerry and Klaus Wiegrefe and published in Der Spiegel online, 25 Jan. 2010, “They Really Do Smell Like Blood: Among Hitler’s Executioners on the Eastern Front.” Thanks to Mr. Wiegrefe for his assistance.
[>] “shoot a Jewish woman in Brest”: On massacres and ghettoization in and around Brest, see the German military commander’s report of 11 Oct. and 10 Nov. 1941, cited in Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburger Edition, 1999), p. 610. See also Jürgen Matthäus, Konrad Kwiet, and Jürgen Förster, eds., Ausbildungsziel Judenmord? “Weltanschauliche Erziehung” von SS, Polizei und Waffen-SS im Rahmen der “Endlösun” (Fischer Verlag, 2003).
[>] Their responses ranged: Frau Leonhard, for instance, who went to the ghetto out of curiosity, also secretly gave food to the Jewish laborer. She was reprimanded but not punished (BAL, B162
/1682; testimony of Erna Leonhard, 14 Dec. 1960). Helmy Spethmann, too, cared for Jews in the ghetto. An older nurse with experience in World War I, Spethmann entered the Warsaw ghetto in August 1941, despite the ban (the ghetto was under quarantine). She brought her camera and photographed the extreme poverty and suffering of the Jews. After the war, she hid the photos; shortly before her death, she asked her niece to care for them and publicize them after she died. See “Zeugin des Grauens: Lazarettschwester im Warschauer Ghetto,” 24 Sept. 2010, Der Spiegel online. http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/authoralbum background/15081/zeugin_des_grauens.html. Thanks to Susan Bachrach for bringing this article to my attention.
[>] sites of German tourism: Erdmann letter to her mother, 30 Jan. 1943, in Kempowski, Das Echolot (2001), pp. 613–14. See also Alexander B. Rossino, “Eastern Europe through German Eyes: Soldiers’ Photographs, 1939–42,” History of Photography 23, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 313–21.
[>] “Today we are going in the ghetto”: Quoted in Susi Gerloff, “Kriegsschwestern: Erlebnisberichte, 1995,” in Panke-Kochinke and Schaidhammer-Placke, Frontschwestern und Friedensengel, p. 196.
[>] “death crates,” in Goebbels’s term: See Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (Jewish Publication Society, 1980), p. 69. See also Eric Sterling, ed., Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust (Syracuse University Press, 2005); and Daniel Michman, The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
[>] showgirl Brigitte Erdmann: Erdmann letter to her mother, 30 Jan. 1943, in Kempowski, Das Echolot (2001), pp. 613–14. Approximately 55,000 Jews were living in Minsk at the time of the Germans’ arrival there on June 28, 1941. Most were shot or shoved into gas vans along with the thousands who, starting in November 1941, were deported to Minsk from Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna, and other cities in the Reich. See deportation lists of Jews from Hamburg to Minsk ghetto, 18 Nov. 1941, Bundesarchiv, Dahlwitz Hoppegarten Records on microfilm at USHMMA, RG 14.050, reel 1, frames 827–841. On the Organization Todt, the Minsk ghetto, and ghetto tourism in Minsk, see Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp. 57–63.
[>] “filth, laziness, primitiveness . . .”: Letter of Marianne Peyinghaus, 17 July 1942, on Plöhnen in the Warthegau, reprinted and analyzed in Margarete Dörr, “Wer die Zeit nicht miterlebt hat. . .”: Frauenerfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und in den Jahren danach, vol. 2, Kriegsalltag (Campus Verlag, 1998), p. 132.
[>] “unreal city” and “greasy kaftans”: Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization (Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 130–31, 122.
[>] “It’s really fantastic . . .”: Letter quoted in Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 169. The letter continues with the young woman’s statement that if she were a Jew in the ghetto, she would be outraged by the confinement.
[>] For the young women: In the summer of 1944 a German secretary in a construction office near Danzig watched each morning as 100–150 Polish Jewish female laborers were herded to work. They had come from the Stutthof concentration camp. They were guarded by SS women dressed in black with whips and boots. See Walter Kempowski, Das Echolot (btb Verlag, 1979), pp. 107–8.
[>] “nice lads in the office”: Erna Leonhard, statement of 14 Dec. 1960, BAL, 162/1682; and Rosemarie Killius, ed., Frauen für die Front: Gespräche mit Wehrmachtshelferinnen (Militzke Verlag, 2003), pp. 71–74.
[>] “it stuck on me . . .”: Anna Luise von Baumbach, Frauen an der Front: Krankenschwestern im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 2010 (DVD).
[>] the water tasted strange: Testimony of Henriette Bau, former wife of Richard Lissberg, 23 Apr. 1969, BAL, 162/1673. Thanks to Omer Bartov for sharing this source.
[>] Mass murder transforms: The wife of a railway official in Lida recalled the mass shooting of 5,200 Jews in a mass grave that was covered with chlorine, which in the heat of the day exploded “like a fountain.” Testimony of Liselotte Wagentrotz, 11 Oct. 1965, Staatsanwaltschaft Mainz, 3 Js 155/64, BAL, 162/3446. See also Father Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets (Macmillan, 2008).
[>] “as big as our house . . .”: Testimony of Florentina Bedner, 29 Nov. 1976, BAL, Bayer, Landeskriminalamt 76-K 41676, Koe. See NSV “tasks” under the district commissars, “IV. Vorläufige Aufgaben,” regarding “Judennachlass.” CSA, Kiev, 3206–6–254, microfilm held at USHMMA, RG31.002M, reel 6, p. 5.
[>] away from the street in Zhytomyr: Erika Ohr’s daily routine included a walk through the city to the canteen where they had lunch. Summ, Schäfers Tochter, pp. 132, 141.
[>] “fenced, miserable ghetto . . .”: The reference to Rivne/Rovno’s Jewish community as a “nest” also appeared in the testimony of the Commander of the Order Police for Ukraine, Otto von Oelhafen, 7 May 1947, NARA, RG 238, roll 50, M1019. See Ilse Schmidt, Die Mitläuferin: Erinnerungen einer Wehrmachtsangehörigen (Aufbau Verlag, 2002), pp. 73–75.
[>] “One night I was awakened . . .”: Schmidt, Die Mitläuferin, pp. 74–76. See also Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews, 1941–1944 (Yad Vashem, 1990), pp. 113–15, 184–85. On the massacres of Jews in Rivne, see testimony of Herman Graebe, NARA, RG 238, Document 2992-PS, International Military Tribunal Nuremberg. See also Dieter Pohl, “The Murder of Ukraine’s Jews under German Military Administration and in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine,” in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 49. According to Pohl’s research, local collaborators and the first company of Order Police Battalion 33 supported the SD units. The ghetto liquidation probably witnessed by Struwe occurred on July 13, 1942.
[>] She could close her eyes: Another, more famous witness, Melita Maschmann, stated that when she saw the violence she went blind. See Maschmann’s Fazit: Mein Weg in der Hitler-Jugend (dtv, 1983).
[>] orders of Heinrich Himmler: On Himmler’s verbal order in Zhytomyr, see Lower, Nazi Empire Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 8; testimony of Paul Albert Scheer, 29 Dec. 1945, USHMMA RG 06.025 Kiev; and Peter Witte et al., eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Christians Verlag, 1999), pp. 498–99.
[>] “What am I doing here . . .”: Schmidt, Die Mitläuferin, p. 81.
[>] “crumpled down . . .” and “a part of me . . .”: Schmidt, Die Mitläuferin, pp. 38, 76–77.
[>] “I have unlearned my Todesangst. . .”: Brigitte Erdmann, letter of 21 Jan. 1943, in Kempowski, Das Echolot (2001), p. 237.
[>] On her first day in Novgorod Volynsk: The destruction of the Jews of Zwiahel (Novgorod Volynsk) began in July 1941, when the command staff of Einsatzgruppe C established headquarters there. A sub-unit, Sk4a, with the help of local Ukrainian and ethnic German collaborators and Waffen-SS units under HSSPF Jeckeln, identified and arrested Jewish men and women. Wehrmacht units assisted the effort by organizing and carrying out “reprisal” measures: local Jews and Jewish POWs were killed as retaliation for any attacks against Germans and German installations. A mass grave unearthed in May 1945 revealed the “half rotten women’s and children’s clothes, shoes, cemented by blood.” According to Soviet Extraordinary Commission investigators, the corpses lay in chaos; heads and skulls were damaged; some women were hugging children and toys. According to an eyewitness, a Ukrainian peasant, the shooting took place at the end of August 1941. On the POWs, see Fernspruch 16 Pz.-Div. 14 July 1941, NARA, RG 242, T314, roll 1146, frame 000467. On the massacres of Jews, see Ereignismeldung 38, Einsatzgruppe C, 30 July 1941, NARA, RG 242, T175, reel 233; Soviet Extraordinary Commission reports, 24 May 1945, copy in ZSA, file 413, and copy at Jewish Culture Society in Novgorod Volynsk. I am grateful to Daniel Redman for sharing these Soviet reports. See also Jeckeln’s Einsatzbefehl of 25 July 1941 for Novgorod Volynsk, NARA, RG 242, T501, roll 5, frames 000559–560, and Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes Reichführer SS, Tätigkeitsberichte der 1
. Und 2. SS-Inf., Brigade der 1. SS-Kav. Brigade und von Sonderkommandos der SS (Europa Verlag, 1965), pp. 95–96.
[>] “Oftentimes conversations . . .”: See letter of Annette Schücking-Homeyer to author, 17 May 2010, excerpted from her wartime correspondence. I am grateful to Ms. Schücking-Homeyer for sharing copies of her letters. (Originals are deposited in the Warendorf district archive.)
[>] “their eyes burning . . .”: Brigitte Erdmann, letter of 15 Feb. 1943, quoted in Kempowski, Das Echolot (2001), p. 780.
[>] “it would give him nightmares”: Annette Schücking-Homeyer, letter to author, 17 May 2010. Massacres at Khmilnyk were corroborated in wartime documents and testimonies gathered by investigators at BAL—see Abschlussbericht, BAL II, 204 AR-Z, 135/67, 23–24.
[>] “went on a rampage . . . Jude kaput!”: Testimony of Blyuma Bronfin, 1944, in the form of a letter to Ilya Ehrenburg, reprinted in Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman, eds., The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories (Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 151–54.
[>] clothing piled in a warehouse: Schücking-Homeyer interview with author and Christof Mauch, 30 Mar. 2010; also in Der Spiegel article, 28 Jan. 2010.
[>] Every week she drove: On November 5, 1941, the district commissar of Rivne, Werner Beer, organized the massacre of about 17,000 Jews, which occurred on November 6–7, 1941, and was carried out by Orpo 320, 315, 69, and EK 5. See Brandon and Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine, p. 43.
[>] “what an enormous slaughterhouse . . .”: Letter of 5 Nov. 1941, Zwiahel, Annette Schücking to parents. Schücking-Homeyer, interview with author and Christof Mauch, 30 Mar. 2010, deposited in the USHMMA.
[>] A secretary in Slonim: Frau Emilie Horst, statement of 10 May 1961, BAL, 162/5088.
