Participation of German Women in Genocide Far Greater than Previously Thought
-Isabel Kershner
According to new research, the participation of German women in genocide during the Holocaust, as perpetrators, accomplices or passive witnesses, was far greater than previously thought.
Researcher Wendy Lower, an American historian now living in Munich, has drawn attention to the thousands 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. Ms. Lower, 45, presented her work for the first time at this summer's workshop at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research.
Thousands of German women went to the eastern territories to help Germanize them. Women ran the storehouses of belongings taken from Jews. There were up to 5,000 female guards in the concentration camps, making up about 10% of the personnel.
Several witnesses have described festive banquets near mass shooting sites in the Ukrainian forests, with German women providing refreshments for the shooting squads whose work often went on for days.
(New York Times)
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-Isabel Kershner
According to new research, the participation of German women in genocide during the Holocaust, as perpetrators, accomplices or passive witnesses, was far greater than previously thought.
Researcher Wendy Lower, an American historian now living in Munich, has drawn attention to the thousands 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. Ms. Lower, 45, presented her work for the first time at this summer's workshop at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research.
Thousands of German women went to the eastern territories to help Germanize them. Women ran the storehouses of belongings taken from Jews. There were up to 5,000 female guards in the concentration camps, making up about 10% of the personnel.
Several witnesses have described festive banquets near mass shooting sites in the Ukrainian forests, with German women providing refreshments for the shooting squads whose work often went on for days.
(New York Times)
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