This episode explores how women were active and often violent participants and perpetrators in the war and its attendant atrocities- especially the Holocaust.
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00:00Nazi Germany, two words synonymous with barbarity, terror, hate, and death.
00:11A shock defeat in World War I sows the seeds for discontent in a once prosperous nation.
00:19Adolf Hitler, an unassuming, uninspiring man, seizes the opportunity to take control,
00:26promising to make Germany great again.
00:30But he won't do it alone.
00:32Willing accomplices rally from the most unlikely of places.
00:36The female Führers, Nazi she-devils, cougars, fantasists, and secret lovers.
00:49These are the forgotten Nazis.
00:53These are Hitler's handmaidens.
00:56It was one of the greatest, most seductive of the Nazi propaganda myths.
01:14Motherhood, the one and only purpose for women of the fatherland.
01:18Kinder, krusche, kirche, children, kitchen, church.
01:26The Nazis created a fantasy land of milk and honey, sun-kissed pastures, and fresh-faced maidens.
01:35A utopia for virtuous women and their racially pure Kinder.
01:40The incubator, the incubator for a glorious thousand-year ride.
01:45In their millions, German women embraced that submissive vision.
01:51But not all would.
01:53A select few sought a more active role in the Nazi dream of global domination and racial purity.
02:00They were Hitler's she-devils, ready to follow any order, no matter how horrific.
02:09And it's something history has struggled to reconcile.
02:12I think there is a real social taboo around female violence and the idea that women participated may even have actively chosen to commit acts of brutality and sadism in World War II.
02:26It's fundamentally anathema to stereotypes about womanhood, motherhood, femininity.
02:34From all walks of life they came, to keep the Nazi death machine running at full speed.
02:41Farm girls and factory hands to middle-class professionals, teachers, nurses and doctors.
02:47They flocked to the killing fields and camps, where cruelty knew no bounds.
02:54Not only were they organisers, these women were active participants.
02:59Secretaries, who typed the death lists, who scrupulously recorded the gruesome details of butchery on an unimaginable scale.
03:11Medical professionals, who betrayed their solemn oaths to care for the sick and vulnerable.
03:17Instead, poisoning, mutilating and murdering without pity or remorse.
03:24What makes female guards beat pregnant women and whip prisoners to death?
03:30Or a mother of three, coldly execute a row of children with pistol shots to the head?
03:38These are the stories of Hitler's she-devils and how only a few of them would ever be brought to justice.
03:45When American soldiers liberated the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, they saw evidence of unimaginable atrocities.
04:02Ravensbrück was exclusively for female prisoners, and that's where most of them sort of had their female overseers at the camp.
04:14That's where most of them had their initiation.
04:16That was seen as a kind of a starting block for a career as a female camp guard.
04:21And from there, they could go to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and any of the other camps around the Reich.
04:26That was certainly, for most, a sort of a starting block.
04:32But it was not just the sadism and brutality of the camp guards that haunted survivors.
04:37They told of a beast masquerading as a human.
04:42A beast who was a doctor and a woman who betrayed every oath and tenet of medicine in the most inhumane ways.
04:50Her name was Hertha Oberhousel.
04:56Hertha got her medical degree in 1937, and then she becomes involved in these experiments at Ravensbrück and is working in Ravensbrück inside.
05:06She's been assigned to experiments to test the effects of wounds on the human body.
05:16If they can see how a wound that's inflicted by shrapnel is going to affect an ordinary German soldier and all the ways that could be treated.
05:23She's putting sawdust in there, putting glass shards, putting various chemicals, and rubbing that in.
05:31Of course, these so-called kind of procedures are done with no anesthetic.
05:37The prisoners are conscious.
05:39It's torture. It's sadistic.
05:41Using a smuggled camera, prisoners documented all they could.
05:48Evidence that would later be used in war crime trials at Nuremberg.
05:54Bones broken with hammers, limbs cut off, and transplanted onto other prisoners, all performed without anesthetic of any kind.
06:02It was a butcher's shop, and those that survived were routinely killed by Oberhousel with injections of petrol, murders she'd later try to pass off as humanitarian acts.
06:18One of the victims who testified said that when she was administering these lethal injections, she had an expression on her face, a kind of smug, self-satisfied expression on her face, and you could see her contempt for humanity.
06:37Neither were children spared any of the horror.
06:39Oberhousel killed them with injections of oil and barbiturates, and then cut off their limbs and removed vital organs.
06:50Oberhousel would even beat pregnant women to cause miscarriages before killing the newborns.
06:58Oberhousel insisted at her trial that she tried to give her patients care.
07:02But witnesses told how she denied her mutilated victims medical help, even water.
07:12Oberhousel was one of the few Nazi she-devils who'd ever see a courtroom.
07:17And there, she denied everything.
07:21Oberhousel was charged with crimes against humanity, was convicted.
07:25She was actually given a pretty stiff sentence relative to the other cases that were tried at this time.
07:31She was given a 10-year sentence, but she was released earlier, around 1950, early 50s, and she actually resumed her practice, her medical practice.
07:42And a former prisoner from Robinsbrook identified her, and then that was shut down.
07:49So by 1960, she was out of business, and then she kind of died in her 80s peacefully.
07:55Oberhousel was a butcher and a murderer of the highest order.
08:02She betrayed her Hippocratic oath, and serves as perhaps the clearest example of the power of Nazi indoctrination.
08:11That a doctor could turn murderer speaks to the collective brainwashing in Nazi Germany at the time.
08:20It was all pervasive, and as Hitler shifted his focus to state-sanctioned torture, eugenics, and euthanasia in the pursuit of racial purity,
08:29doctors like Hertha Oberözer wouldn't be the only converts.
08:3340 miles from Stuttgart, it still looks picture perfect.
08:51But the fanatical Nazi obsession with the imperfect continues to haunt the corridors and halls of Grafenach Castle.
09:01In late 1939, Hitler signed a euthanasia law, the sinister and secret T4 program.
09:09And this program was an opportunity for the Nazi party to murder anybody who they thought of as disabled,
09:18whether they were actually disabled or not.
09:20And people would come there, and they would be murdered.
09:26It was brutal. It was absolutely brutal.
09:30And that's where a lot of women were involved, because women were actually nurses,
09:33and they'd been involved with caring for less-abled people, people who had disabilities.
09:40And it was an extension of that.
09:41So they just, you know, we will use this, and we will execute.
09:47These nurses had trained to protect human life.
09:50But in these wards, they routinely slaughtered their patients with morphine injections.
09:55One nurse handpicked to make Grafenach Castle an efficient killing site was Pauline Kneisler.
10:05Her task? To travel to nearby institutions with a list of patients,
10:11bust them back to Grafenach, and murder them.
10:15Pauline Kneisler became a career killer.
10:18She killed, on average, between 1939 and 1945, 70 people a day, mostly children.
10:24She moved around different facilities.
10:27She was transferring her expertise to these different facilities,
10:29including going to the eastern territories.
10:33So what made nurse Pauline Kneisler decide to kill, rather than care?
10:39From a wealthy ethnic German household in the Odessa region of Ukraine,
10:43she was born to privilege.
10:45But her family was targeted and stripped of their money in the Bolshevik Revolution.
10:50So they fled to Germany, where her father worked in the German National Railway.
10:57Kneisler studied nursing and qualified as a psychiatric nurse.
11:02Perhaps it was her grievance against communists, or a need for belonging.
11:07But like so many other women, Kneisler was easily seduced by Nazism.
11:12Any woman is likely to have had years of indoctrination.
11:18You know, she may have been at school with textbooks.
11:20She would have been a member of the BDM, the Bundel-Chunadal.
11:23She may have been a member of a different German youth movement.
11:26Jewish people would have been completely dehumanized,
11:29to the point where they were able to detach the situation,
11:33and they saw the Jewish people not as people anymore,
11:35and therefore were able to murder them.
11:37This detachment was so ingrained that it remained evident
11:42in the trials of women like Kneisler long after the war.
11:46At her post-war trial, she confessed,
11:49we didn't feel very good about it, but we had no moral reservations.
11:53I think that tells you everything you need to know.
11:59That any feelings of, should we question this, were quickly dismissed,
12:05and any human instinct to protect or care for others was quelled,
12:10and shows us the mentality of the Nazi soldiers,
12:15and the efficacy of the SS and Hitler himself
12:21in creating that absolute obedience and wish to serve.
12:27In one year at Grefenek Castle,
12:30the medical personnel murdered nearly 10,000 German people.
12:34And this program made it look on the outside
12:37like a nice place that you could send your family member
12:40or if they were disabled, mentally or physically disabled.
12:44And it was here that gas was tested on these patients,
12:47on these people, before being taken to concentration camps.
12:53Kneisler found the gassings frightening,
12:55but said at her trial,
12:57they were not really all that bad,
12:59because, she reasoned, death by gas doesn't hurt.
13:03To their credit, some German families risked everything
13:09to openly protest the T4 program.
13:13And families started realising what was actually happening,
13:16that these people were being murdered.
13:18And in total, it's estimated that a quarter of a million people
13:21were murdered this way.
13:23Families started protesting,
13:25and the Nazi party, rather than stopping the T4 program altogether,
13:29just made it even more secretive, even more undercover.
13:33Initially, it was fairly easy to disguise, in some respects,
13:40the Nazi euthanisation program.
13:44I mean, when the children that were affected
13:46with physical or mental disabilities,
13:50when they're examined by a doctor,
13:51and the doctor says,
13:52well, look, we may be able to help this child of yours,
13:56but we need to have them sent to the correct establishments.
13:59And the parents would get a letter some months later
14:02saying, well, we're sorry to inform you,
14:04your child has died of measles or chicken pox.
14:09In effect, they'd probably been given a lethal injection,
14:12and sort of euthanised under this program.
14:16Unbelievably, at her trial in Frankfurt in 1948,
14:20Pauline Knieisler was sentenced to only four years in prison.
14:23She would continue to work as a nurse until retirement in 1963.
14:33She was able to live out the full life she denied the thousands she helped to murder
14:39in the name of racial purity.
14:41I think in the 40s and 50s,
14:45a gender of women,
14:46including those concentration camp guards standing trial,
14:49was absolutely central in their receiving lenient sentences or no sentences,
14:55because, again,
14:57the prevailing view that women can't be violent,
14:59that women don't have agency,
15:01that if they're cruel,
15:02it's only under the coercion of men,
15:04it's a myth,
15:05but it's a pervasive one.
15:07So, the women's participation in Nazi brutality
15:12was rendered invisible
15:14or really only focused on just a few cases,
15:18when, in fact, it was far more pervasive.
15:24There was, however, one woman
15:26whose crimes were so prolific and terrible
15:28that even the Nuremberg judges
15:30would have no choice but to order her execution.
15:33At the camps where she plied her evil trade,
15:39she was known variously as the hyena of Auschwitz,
15:43the beautiful beast,
15:44the angel of death.
15:47No men or women have ever faced charges
15:50of such a loathsome nature.
15:52One of the most prominent among the women prisoners
15:54is Irma Greza, number nine.
15:58Irma Greza had a very notorious reputation
16:03for being a sadistic guard,
16:06like stomping on prisoners and shouting
16:08and sending her guard dogs, attack dogs on prisoners.
16:13She was an attractive woman,
16:16but she also just fit this kind of stereotype
16:18of a tough German woman,
16:20and she looked, you know, the part.
16:23And when she was at Auschwitz,
16:26she seemed to, as if she had something to prove.
16:30I mean, her violence knew no bounds.
16:32She would hit, beat a prisoner virtually to death
16:35for no reason at all.
16:37And certainly in Auschwitz,
16:38they nicknamed her the hyena of Auschwitz
16:41was one of her names.
16:43To this day, historians ponder
16:46how a woman could commit such heinous crimes.
16:48But there were 40 million German women in 1939
16:52and 13 million of them
16:55were actively engaged in the Nazi party,
16:58whether directly or through youth groups
17:00like the Bund Deutscher Mädel,
17:03the League of German Girls.
17:07While not a BDM member herself,
17:09Irma was fanatical from a young age
17:11and her penchant for violence
17:13would soon shock all around her.
17:15When women are violent,
17:20it actually offends
17:21our whole set of social stereotypes
17:25about womankind, about femininity,
17:28and it's anathema, it's taboo,
17:31and it becomes much more disturbing,
17:34exciting, horrific.
17:36So it does stick in our mind more.
17:39The BDM and other units like that
17:42were indoctrinated with Nazi ideals.
17:44So that was a theoretical view of it,
17:47you know, that the Aryan race,
17:49the superiority, the position of women,
17:51all of that was indoctrinated.
17:53Get them young, keep them old.
17:55But that was what they did in these groups.
17:57One indoctrination, two training.
17:59As a teenager, Irma was infatuated
18:05by Hitler and the Nazis.
18:07She wanted to join the BDM,
18:09but her father forbade it.
18:12So Irma took matters into her own hands,
18:15leaving home at 15.
18:17The year the war began, 1939,
18:25she joined an SS hospital.
18:27Her mentor was Carl Gerbhardt,
18:29the man who would go on to facilitate
18:31Hertha Oberhörst's horrific human experiments.
18:36Nursing didn't suit Irma,
18:38so at the age of 16,
18:39she moved on to an SS female helpers training base
18:42near Ravensbrück concentration camp.
18:45Her Nazi zeal and devotion to duty
18:48caught the eye of the SS hierarchy.
18:51And at the tender age of 19,
18:54Irma Grisa was made a supervisor at Ravensbrück.
18:59Shortly after her training,
19:02she entered the Ravensbrück camp,
19:04where straight away she became pretty notorious.
19:06And she was quite disliked at Ravensbrück,
19:10obviously, because of her violence.
19:12She was prone to violence without provocation.
19:18It was at Auschwitz, though,
19:21that Grisa really came into her own
19:23as the lover and accomplice
19:25of the notorious Dr Josef Mengele.
19:29She helped with the selections,
19:32a process in which prisoners were chosen
19:34for Mengele's monstrous medical experiments
19:36or sent to the gas chambers.
19:43Grisa was highly sexualized,
19:45both at the camp and in the media post-war.
19:49Apart from Mengele,
19:50she also had affairs with the camp commandant,
19:53Josef Kramer, and male guards.
19:56It was alleged she even raped female prisoners.
19:59There were others who were also
20:02kind of sensationalized in the press.
20:05Ilse Koch is probably the most famous.
20:07She was the wife of the commandant at Buchenwald.
20:10It kind of stirs up their sense of lurid fascination
20:13and the kind of pornography of violence.
20:16They're kind of these caricatures,
20:18eroticizing evil, as one scholar says.
20:20My colleague Claudia Kuntz says
20:22it's a kind of eroticization of evil.
20:24So Ilse Koch and Irma Grisa
20:26are a very good example of that.
20:28When she was arrested after the war,
20:32Grisa was unrepentant.
20:34When asked why she took part in the atrocities,
20:37she replied,
20:38it was our duty to exterminate antisocial elements
20:41so that Germany's future would be assured.
20:46They were xenophobic.
20:48They were racists.
20:50And they believed they were on the right side of history.
20:53They were trying to restore Germany's place in the sun
20:57and even expanded as an empire.
20:58And they weren't remorseful.
21:03Irma Grisa was one of the most sadistic concentration camp guards
21:09known to be sexually sadistic as well as just generally.
21:14And yet, at her trial,
21:15she's rolling her eyes, smiling,
21:18acting as though this is a matter of great indifference to her.
21:23It's very interesting to know about that
21:26because it makes me wonder,
21:27was there such a dissociation in her,
21:30such a disavowal of her own aggression?
21:33Despite Irma Grisa ultimately facing the death penalty,
21:38most of the female concentration guards escaped justice.
21:43Most of the guards, the camp guards,
21:47who were pursued after the war and stood trial
21:50did so between 1945 and 1955.
21:54So there were about 3,600 guards,
21:57according to this document that we found in 1945.
21:59But in the post-war period, only 60 actually stood trial.
22:04And so, you know, as far as the pursuit of justice,
22:07we don't see as many women being tried
22:10and even fewer who were actually given the death sentence.
22:15The failure to confront the crimes of some Nazi women
22:18is something history will have to deal with.
22:26Many got away with a slap on the wrist.
22:28Many went on to live long and happy lives,
22:33like a woman known simply as the stomping mare.
22:37Perhaps a consequence of their gender,
22:55but many of the Nazi she-devils managed to escape justice.
22:58And even when they were prosecuted,
23:03the process could sometimes take decades.
23:07One particularly strange case was that of the grey-haired woman
23:11who finally stood trial in 1975.
23:16Presenting herself as an innocent suburban housewife,
23:20Hermione Braunsteiner was anything but.
23:22She was, in fact, the ghastly camp guard of Majnek Prison in Poland,
23:29known by inmates as the stomping mare.
23:34Hermione Braunsteiner was a camp guard at Majdanek,
23:38which was near Lublin, Poland,
23:41another one of the big killing centres.
23:42She was known for stomping on prisoners
23:46and just for her excessive cruelty and sadism.
23:51So she was given this, like,
23:53mayor of Majdanek kind of label.
23:56Yet for many years after the war,
23:59Hermione lived a life of comfort and safety in the USA.
24:02After meeting an American on vacation in her native Austria,
24:08she married him and moved to the USA in 1959.
24:13Four years later, she was an American citizen.
24:16She made her way to Queens, New York.
24:20And at some point, I know that Simon Wiesenthal
24:22and other Nazi hunters were pursuing her.
24:25Survivors were talking about her and they couldn't find her.
24:28But she was identified in Queens.
24:29Her husband would testify in her defence, saying,
24:35My wife wouldn't hurt a fly.
24:37There's no more decent person on this earth.
24:40She told me this was a duty she had to perform.
24:45How do these women, after all they've done,
24:47re-enter society with such little remorse
24:50that even their partners carry a sense of denial on their behalf?
24:54Women who took part in the Nazi machinery,
25:02like Hermione Breunsteiner,
25:04did re-enter society.
25:06And in many ways, the kind of denial of their perpetration
25:10and their roles
25:12helped them to feel that they could simply re-integrate.
25:16However, my awareness of how they would have functioned would be,
25:22my suggestion about how they would have managed,
25:25is that they would have gone into denial and dissociation.
25:29They would have shut away the horrors that they had perpetrated.
25:32Brownsteiner was the first Nazi war criminal
25:38to be extradited from the U.S.
25:40She finally stood trial in Düsseldorf in 1975
25:43alongside other Majnek guards
25:46in what would become the longest
25:48and most expensive trial in West Germany.
25:51In 1981, nearly 40 years after her crimes,
25:55the stomping mayor was convicted on three counts.
25:59Direct participation in the murders of 80 people,
26:03abetting the murder of 102 children,
26:06and collaborating in the murder of 1,000 people.
26:10She was sentenced to life in prison
26:13but released on health grounds in 1996.
26:16She died three years later,
26:18having lived more than half a century longer than her victims.
26:21These individuals, like Hermione Braunsteiner,
26:27those who lived on decades, right,
26:30who were not executed by the Allies immediately after the war,
26:34they didn't continue to be serial killers or career killers.
26:37The violence that they demonstrated and committed during the war,
26:40they did not continue to behave violently after the war.
26:43So when the Department of Justice came knocking
26:46on Hermione Braunsteiner's door in Queens and identified her,
26:50and she opened the door in her nice, you know, apron
26:53or whatever she had on, you know,
26:54people couldn't believe that she was that other person
26:5640 years before.
27:06It wasn't just the female camp and prison guards
27:08that showed a taste of brutality.
27:13In the occupied East,
27:15lawlessness would bring out the worst
27:17in seemingly ordinary German women.
27:20Just as America had its Wild West,
27:23Germany saw its new frontiers like Poland,
27:26Ukraine and Belarus as the Wild East.
27:31Heinrich Himmler saw the expansion of Lebensraum
27:33as the Nazis' great destiny.
27:39More than half a million German women
27:41enthusiastically joined this surging colonization.
27:44Though few would ever pull the trigger on a Luger
27:48or the levers in a gas chamber,
27:50they'd work their evil through efficient administration.
27:55They were the 10,000 secretaries
27:57who carefully typed up orders and death lists,
28:01assisting with the paperwork and logistics of mass murder,
28:05and forensically filing it all away.
28:07In the East, the devil was truly in the detail.
28:12Women relied as part of the Holocaust greatly,
28:17just as much as the men, really.
28:20Their role was as significant as the men, certainly.
28:22I mean, everybody who was a Nazi was a part of that.
28:26They were tram drivers,
28:28telephonists, secretaries.
28:30They were working in the munitions factories,
28:32as well as the camps.
28:34They were doing a huge variety of roles,
28:37literally more than what was ever envisaged by Hitler, in fact.
28:44The truth is, for the Holocaust to happen,
28:49the Nazi party needed the support of thousands of people
28:53in every role,
28:55from the secretaries taking down the orders
28:58to the train drivers driving the trains
29:00to concentration camps to the concentration camp guards.
29:04And an awful lot of the people in these roles were women.
29:07The Nazi party would not have been able
29:09to commit the genocide that it did,
29:12the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children,
29:15without massive support from women.
29:19Shockingly, many of these willing participants
29:21would go on to live full and happy lives,
29:25changing their identities
29:26and hiding the horrors of national socialism
29:29in which they were complicit.
29:31One of the secretaries that I interviewed
29:35afterwards
29:37said to me that she didn't see anything wrong with her job.
29:41She wasn't directly involved
29:43in the murder of any Jewish people
29:45or anybody else.
29:47And she actually really enjoyed her time
29:49as a secretary for the Nazis
29:50because she was very well looked after.
29:53And when she was sick,
29:54she got sent what was called a Führerpaket,
29:56a gift from the Führer to help her get better.
30:00And she was made to feel appreciated.
30:04One such secretary went to the East in a support role
30:07with no direct orders to take part in killings.
30:12But whether it was her lust for blood
30:14or twisted sense of duty,
30:16she quickly became immersed in murder.
30:18Her name was Johanna Altvater.
30:26Johanna Altvater grew up in this small town,
30:29went through the League of German Girls,
30:31also about 20 years old
30:33when she was sent to the Eastern Front.
30:36And she wanted to go to the Eastern Front.
30:39She's someone who was described
30:41as someone who had the toughness
30:45to go to the Eastern Front.
30:47Like a cattle herder, a frontier girl,
30:49that's how Altvater was described
30:51during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto
30:53in May 1943.
30:57She would roam the camp in her riding breeches,
31:00cracking her whip
31:01and prodding prisoners into a truck.
31:05Altvater started as an administrative aide,
31:08but she couldn't help but get involved in the killing.
31:11So there was a machinery of that,
31:14and she helped organize that.
31:15But she also participated.
31:18When the Jews were being rounded up
31:20and brought to the mass murder site,
31:22the forest outside of Vladimir Volensk,
31:25she went into the infirmary
31:27and grabbed the children
31:29and the patients in the infirmary.
31:31And if some of them were too ill,
31:33she just threw them over the balcony
31:35and they died.
31:36You know, it was several stories.
31:41She was seen going into this ghetto one day
31:44and gesturing to a Jewish child
31:47to come over to her.
31:48And the father was standing nearby,
31:50he witnessed the whole thing.
31:52And she picked the child up by the legs
31:54and bashed it against the ghetto wall
31:57until it died.
31:58Killing Jewish children wasn't enough
32:03for the Nazis of the occupied Eastern Territories.
32:07They also abducted children
32:09they classified as Aryan.
32:12This was part of a program
32:14to stop the Reich
32:15with what was seen
32:16as racially valuable children.
32:20The Lebensborn program,
32:22once a beacon of the regime's promise
32:24to help German women
32:25become successful mothers,
32:27became a state-sanctioned kidnapping program.
32:32The kidnappers were called
32:34the Brown Sisters,
32:36women in brown coats
32:37who trawled through the countryside
32:38searching for Aryan-looking children
32:41to steal
32:41and send to German nurseries
32:44and SS families.
32:48This Lebensborn,
32:50it didn't stay in Germany.
32:52It moved, particularly Poland,
32:53but other countries as well.
32:56Even to the extent of
32:57kidnapping children,
33:00which I think is the most amazing thing.
33:02The Brown Sisters,
33:04you know, in particular,
33:05how they would move in,
33:06kidnap the children of
33:07purely, you know,
33:08people who looked Aryan,
33:10blonde hair,
33:11you know, pale skins.
33:14Many children
33:15that were encountered
33:16by the German forces
33:17that were sort of viewed
33:19as being children
33:22who could be Aryanised.
33:24And they, of course,
33:25would be taken
33:26from their parents forcibly.
33:27Sometimes if the parents protested,
33:29they'd be shot.
33:30Sometimes the parents
33:31would be shot anyway.
33:33And these children
33:34would then be moved back
33:35to Germany
33:35and placed with
33:37German families
33:38where they would be raised
33:39as Germans
33:40with no form of history whatsoever.
33:42Using candy
33:46and slices of bread
33:47as lures
33:47to attract boys and girls,
33:49the Brown Sisters
33:50travelled behind
33:51advancing German forces
33:53into the occupied east,
33:55locating
33:55and interrogating youngsters
33:57about their family trees.
34:01This horrific harvesting
34:02was grotesque
34:03in practice and scale.
34:06It's estimated
34:07that up to 400,000 children
34:09were abducted
34:10from their families
34:11in Eastern Europe.
34:12Women stood at the forefront
34:14of this effort
34:15as trustworthy
34:16and motherly figures.
34:19Women being used
34:20in this way
34:21makes me think
34:22about some of the work
34:23I do now
34:24with female sex offenders,
34:26for example,
34:27who are using their status
34:28as trustworthy figures,
34:31mothers, sisters,
34:33friends, teachers,
34:36nursery nurses,
34:37whatever,
34:38and then using
34:39that power
34:40and that respect
34:42affect in order
34:42to access
34:43and damage children.
34:47Nazi doctrine determined
34:49that Aryan-looking
34:50Polish children
34:51were actually Nordic
34:52and could be taught
34:53to be German.
34:56Birth documents
34:57were destroyed
34:58and many children
34:59never discovered
35:00their origins.
35:01It is estimated
35:02that only 20%
35:04of the stolen children
35:05were reunited
35:07with their families
35:08after the war.
35:24The Nazi-occupied territories
35:26in the East
35:26were a free-for-all.
35:30Jews were murdered
35:30by the thousands
35:31in slums and ghettos,
35:33while Aryan children
35:36were snatched up
35:37and taken back
35:38to pure German families.
35:43Alongside the barbarity
35:44of the concentration camps,
35:46the horrors
35:47of the Wild East
35:48were among the worst
35:49of the Nazi crimes.
35:51half of the victims
35:55of the Holocaust
35:56died in ghettos
35:59and in mass shootings.
36:01One out of four victims
36:02of the Holocaust
36:02died in places like,
36:04you know,
36:05Ukraine
36:05in these ravines
36:07and these mass shootings.
36:09So as we understand
36:11the history of the Holocaust
36:11as this much bigger
36:13operation
36:14that enters into
36:17all these realms
36:18of everyday life,
36:20of professional work,
36:22of how you wage a war.
36:24In a forest
36:25near Lida, Belarus,
36:27there are stark monuments
36:29to a massacre
36:29of more than 6,000 Jews
36:32on the 8th of May, 1942.
36:36One depicts
36:36two mournful female figures,
36:39the personification
36:39of inconsolable grief.
36:42The cruel irony
36:43is that the massacre
36:44was organized
36:45by a woman,
36:46a Nazi secretary
36:48called Lieselot Meyer.
36:52Meyer was the constant
36:53companion,
36:54lover
36:55and secretary
36:56of the district commissar,
36:58Hermann Hanweg.
37:00They had an all-consuming
37:02passion for each other,
37:03for the high life
37:04of their luxury villa
37:05and for the sport
37:06of hunting
37:07and killing Jews.
37:10When I think
37:11about the psychology
37:12of the wives
37:13of soldiers
37:14who then go on
37:14to perpetrate,
37:16I mean,
37:16it's an exhilarating
37:17intoxicating,
37:19freeing experience
37:20to remove
37:21your moral shackles.
37:23And once it's happened
37:24once,
37:25you see,
37:25it just takes on
37:26a different meaning.
37:28So having overcome
37:29that moral force,
37:32that boundary,
37:33we know this
37:34in forensic psychotherapy
37:35that once you've broken
37:36the body boundary,
37:37it's so much easier
37:38to do it again
37:39and again.
37:42Lieselot Meyer
37:43was a woman
37:43who rejected factory work
37:45as her contribution
37:46to the Reich.
37:47Instead,
37:48she chose to join
37:49the exodus
37:50to the Nazis'
37:51wild east
37:52to ply her trade
37:53as a secretary.
37:55Through her relationship
37:56with Hermann Hanweg,
37:57Lieselot got caught up
37:58in what the Nazis
37:59called
38:00Ostrausch,
38:02Eastern Rush,
38:04an orgy of sex
38:06and violence
38:06in the occupied territories.
38:10Lieselot and her lover
38:11were all powerful
38:12in their domain.
38:14They had the authority
38:15to decide
38:16who lived
38:17and who died.
38:20Hanweg and Meyer
38:21end up taking over
38:23a villa
38:24with a swimming pool
38:25and they're having
38:27their relationship there
38:28and these Jewish laborers
38:30are like serving them
38:31post-coital delicacies
38:33and they're,
38:34you know,
38:34so there's the debauchery.
38:36And when the couple
38:37got bored,
38:38it was hunting time.
38:41And we hear stories
38:43after the war,
38:44a survivor
38:45ended up testifying
38:47that he saw
38:48Hanweg
38:50and his female colleagues.
38:52It was a Sunday afternoon,
38:55you know,
38:55the office was closed
38:56and there were Jews nearby
38:59who were shoveling the snow
39:00and when the Germans
39:02couldn't find any rabbits
39:03or any animals
39:05to shoot,
39:06they told the Jewish laborers
39:08to just run
39:09into the direction
39:09of the force
39:10and they were just
39:10going to take shots
39:11at them
39:12and they just started
39:13shooting them
39:14and they killed
39:14some of them.
39:16When later questioned,
39:18Lysalot denied
39:19ever killing anyone herself
39:20but she continued
39:22to refer to the Jews
39:23as dreck
39:24which basically means
39:26scum.
39:29According to post-war
39:30trial statements,
39:32all the logistics
39:32of the massacres
39:33carried out in Lida
39:34were orchestrated
39:35by the secretary
39:36from Saxony,
39:38Lysalot Meyer.
39:40So she's never indicted
39:42but she's, you know,
39:43has life and death power
39:45over that Jewish population.
39:47She also was seen
39:50issuing orders
39:50to execute Jews.
39:53She was handling
39:53those orders
39:54and the distribution
39:55of the bullets
39:57and the material
39:58to carry out
39:58those executions.
39:59In 2007,
40:02a photo album
40:03was donated
40:03to the United States
40:04Holocaust Museum.
40:06The scenes
40:06in and around Auschwitz
40:08reek of symbolism,
40:10obscenity,
40:11cynicism.
40:13But the photos
40:14are not of corpses.
40:16They show Nazi men
40:17and women at play
40:18enjoying picnics
40:19with their families
40:20in the sun.
40:21This is the true picture
40:23of Nazi female perpetrators,
40:26women who could live
40:27two lives
40:28during one of histories
40:29most atrocious chapters.
40:32It's very common
40:33for people
40:34to cut off
40:35or deny
40:36unacceptable aspects
40:38of themselves
40:38and the women
40:40who seem to be
40:41picnicking
40:42and frolicking
40:43with their families
40:45by day
40:46or on the weekends
40:47and are brutally
40:48sadistic in the camps
40:50on other days
40:51don't really see
40:53any contradiction
40:54in that behaviour.
40:56So on the one hand,
40:57it's absolutely
40:58human to cut off
41:00and compartmentalise
41:02unacceptable behaviour,
41:04deny that it happens.
41:06On the other hand,
41:08even if the female prison guards
41:10were to acknowledge
41:11what they were doing,
41:12because the Jews
41:13weren't people anyway,
41:14it really doesn't matter.
41:16to suggest they didn't know
41:25what was going on
41:26or they were simply
41:27following orders
41:29isn't compatible
41:30with what we know today.
41:32The story of women
41:34in Nazi Germany
41:35is one of means,
41:37motive
41:37and opportunity.
41:39Not all were campguards
41:41or torturers,
41:41and yet most played
41:43some role
41:44in propping up
41:44the Holocaust machine.
41:47And part of it
41:48was the actual
41:50day-to-day administration
41:51typing the orders,
41:53answering the telephone,
41:54and part of it
41:55was creating
41:55an environment
41:56that allowed the men
41:57to then go and physically
41:58be the murderers
42:01behind the genocide.
42:02And it's interesting
42:03that women were involved
42:04in every single role
42:05across the spectrum,
42:07and very few of the women
42:09I researched
42:10saw a problem
42:11with what they were doing,
42:12saw any issues
42:13with what they were doing.
42:19Lots of women afterwards
42:21pleaded that they were just young,
42:22they didn't know
42:23what was going on,
42:25but I don't think
42:26that's a great response
42:27because there are examples
42:29of young women
42:29that did stand up to Hitler.
42:30But I think it's fair to say
42:33that ordinary German people
42:35knew what was happening.
42:37It was in the newspapers,
42:38it was in the radio,
42:40concentration camps
42:41were in Germany,
42:41Jewish people were disappearing.
42:43And so ordinary German people
42:45knew about the Holocaust.
42:47The women who were
42:48the secretaries,
42:48the women who were
42:49the administrators,
42:50were even closer
42:51to the knowledge.
42:52They had evidence
42:53in front of them,
42:54they knew the names
42:55of concentration camps,
42:56they knew what was
42:57happening there.
42:58In many ways,
42:59history let Hitler's
43:01she-devils off the hook.
43:03A justice system
43:04which either failed
43:05to prosecute them
43:06or gave light sentences
43:08and early releases.
43:10Traditional views
43:12of gender and violence
43:13played a part in this.
43:15Perhaps they still do.
43:17But history mocks
43:18the female cliches.
43:20Given the right circumstances
43:22and environment,
43:24women too
43:25will commit genocide
43:26as faithful enablers
43:28and bloody participants.
43:30essential views
43:31of gender and violence
43:51of gender and violence.
43:56The
44:00Transcription by CastingWords