Translated material
"Hitler's furies"
The microphone has the host of the "Book Review" Marina Efimova.
Marina Efimova: The book of historian Wendy Lawer is called "Hitler Furia: German - participants in the Nazi atrocities." The names of the two nonsense that directly participated in the Nazi atrocities are known widely and for a long time, and one of them even became a household name - the name of Ilsa Koch, nicknamed the “Buchenwald bitch” - the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Maidanek concentration camps. This name has become synonymous with sadism. The second name is more known in Germany-Gertrude Scholz-clink-one of the most senior figures in the Nazi party, an expert on racial policy. As for the majority of the weaknesses, they, according to general ideas, were the same modified sheep as (and there are) many women in countries with totalitarian regimes. But Professor of the University of California Claremon College Wandy Lower in the book “Hitler's Furia” claims that at least half a million non -schools were active performers and conductors of Nazism - in all its forms:
Announcer: “These women born before the First World War, surviving shame and the hardships of the defeat, grew and grew up in the Third Raych. They learned to succeed in a regime that had extremely clear goals and who defiantly exalted the role of a woman in the fate of the nation. Racist utopia and extreme nationalism aroused public ambitions in the German and the desire to become not only mothers of impeccable Germans, but also useful participants in the grandiose task of transforming the world. Conquest and genocide were included in this task as its natural components. Therefore, the women left houses and went to the Eastern Front - to Poland, to Ukraine, to Belarus - not only as the wives of occupation officials, but also to work there overseers, secretaries, teachers, nurses and become necessary and important employees of the regime. ”
Marina Efimova: Many examples given by the author of the book “Hitler Furia” are especially difficult for the Russian reader-because of arising suspicions, or even associations with a different regime of the same time. Well, let's say, such an example:
Announcer: “The duties of Hannah Altwater and Sabina Hyrsbst Dick - an assistant to a high -ranking Nazi official - included staffing the lists of the next group of Jews to be destroyed. Whoever gets into the shot list usually depended on the Assistant themselves. Sometimes one of them asked the other: “How about this? .. Yes, or not?”
Marina Efimova: Teacher Ingelina Ivan and her colleagues were assimilated by ethnic Germans in the occupied territories. They led the propaganda courses of Nazism and helped create a "racial and national hierarchy, which allowed only German children to schools." (Another regime allowed only people of proletarian origin to higher education).
The author of the book repeatedly emphasizes that the majority of nonsense did not participate in direct violence of the regime, or even in its propaganda, but passively used the benefits of Nazi policy, including the benefits of violence: they occupied the workplaces of exiled “unwanted elements”: they occupied the houses from which people were evicted (or were forced to quit), and many did not disdain the collapse of the Jewish houses and apartments whose owners were sent to the ghetto and camps. Of course, there were a huge number of passive observers like Ilsa Struve. She watched with curiosity a bedroom of the Jews, who were driven into a cinema to destroy from the windows of the bedroom.
However, the main theme of the book “Hitler's Furias” is the direct part of hundreds of thousands of women in the atrocities of Nazism. Nurses (such as Erica Okh - the daughter of a shepherd) worked during the war in Ukraine, not only caring for German wounded, but also assisting doctors in sterilization and euthanasia of “undesirable elements”: mentally ill, cripples and people who, for various reasons, are deprived of the right to produce offspring. It turned out to be a lot among active non -schools and real monsters - even among those who did not hold any posts, but were simply the wives of the officers of the occupation administration:
Announcer: “These women raised their children there, arranged parties and entertained guests, like all sorts of welcoming housewives. They encouraged husbands who returned after mass executions, and comforted them, tired of hard work and departmental squabbles. Among these was Erna Petri, who noticed six hungry Jewish children at her house, fed them, and then shot everyone. Many of these women knew how to shoot aptly: Lisel Wilhaus shot from her balcony the victims that had attracted her in the crowd of Jews, driven to work. This "hunt" was watching her own child standing next to her. "
Marina Efimova: Again and again, the author of the book Wandy Lower repeats that most of the weaknesses of that time are difficult to blame. She even gives a letter to one of those women who were horrified by what was happening and decided to write about it - albeit only in personal correspondence. Lawyer Annetta Shyuking wrote home: “Dad was right when he said that immoral people smell bad. I was convinced of this now, because I learned to distinguish them from others. It smells of blood. ” The letter ended with the words: "But what can be done?"
Based on this helpless question, Wendy Lawer insists that the Germans then have in general, and women in particular, still had a choice:
Announcer: “The Germans were not punished if they refused to participate in anti -Jewish actions. But in the choice: duty to regime or morality, humanity, justice-men and women in Tog-Dashny Germany were slightly different from each other. The genocide arranged by the Nazis is not only male, but also female atrocities. ”
Marina Efimova: I think that Wandy Lawer never lived under totalitarian regime and knows about the fear of getting into his punishing machine only in literature. If we consider it necessary to condemn the world community of the people for their tolerance to the punitive and totalitarian regime, then the German people received this condemnation - at the world -famous Nuenberg trial. However, the impunity of the Nazi women, which Lawer writes about, is indignant even now. By the way, this was also described in the American-German film “Reader”, which shows a court in Germany over a group of Nazi overseers. Only one receives a prison term, and even then only because of his stupid straightforwardness. The rest, with the help of lawyers and under pressure from public opinion, easily and cynically dodge a fair punishment. And if we talk about reality, the fate of the Gertrude Scholz -clink mentioned at the beginning of this essay is especially striking - the head of women's Nazi organizations, an expert at the Nazi racial policy: after the war, she got to the camp in the Soviet zone, but was not identified, freed and hidden by like -minded people in the castle near the tubing - in the French occupation zone. In 1947 she was identified. The French occupation court judged her and sentenced her to 18 months in prison, but, recollecting himself, he added 2.5 years of labor camps. Scholz clink was released in 1953 and lived peacefully in Tubingen, remaining true to the ideas of National Socialism. She died in 1999.
In the book "Hitler Furia" Lawer writes:
Announcer: “What happened to the German Nazi after the war? They slipped back into a normal, civilian life. Of the tens of thousands, only a handful fell on trial and only a few were convicted. In short, all the killings got away with them. ”
Marina Efimova: Reading about women in the Nazi extermination machine, it is impossible to dismiss the question: will the book about the Stalin Furies will ever be written? Or three quarters of a century have already delayed their atrocities in a web of oblivion?