PBS_Women Under Hitler's Flag
Transcript
00:00:00Berlin, January the 30th, 1933.
00:00:18The Weimar Republic was in its last days.
00:00:21Hitler had just been appointed Chancellor of Germany.
00:00:31In the crowd, despite the freezing cold, a 15-year-old girl, Melita Maschmann, was enraptured.
00:00:42The crashing tread of the feet, the sombre pomp of the red and black flags, the flickering
00:00:49light from the torches on the faces.
00:00:52I longed to hurl myself into this current, to be submerged and born along with it.
00:01:13Melita wasn't the only young woman to be enraptured by the new regime.
00:01:20Their names were Hertha, Liesel, Lieselotte, Hildegard.
00:01:28They would be among the hundreds of thousands of women to actively serve the Third Reich.
00:01:35Trained in Nazi ideology, they became secretaries, nurses, concentration camp guards, and wives
00:01:42of SS officers.
00:01:45History has forgotten them, but recent academic research has lifted the veil on the involvement
00:01:49of women in criminal Nazi policies.
00:01:53I think they were ordinary women until they found themselves in an extraordinary situation.
00:02:03Societies think of women as nurturers, as caregivers, as mothers, but the history of
00:02:09the Holocaust show us, in fact, they can be socialized to be violent.
00:02:14It really cuts against our perceptions of women and our bias about women and what their
00:02:18behavior should be.
00:02:22We thought they were the passive witnesses of a genocide carried out by men, but we have
00:02:27discovered that these women were indispensable cogs in the works.
00:02:33Their commitment and violence is intriguing.
00:02:37How did they end up as accomplices and, in some cases, murderers?
00:02:43Why did post-war justice close its eyes to their crimes?
00:02:47What taboos still prevent us today from acknowledging the violence of these women?
00:03:04No sooner had Hitler come to power, the Melita Mashman decided to become part of what she
00:03:09saw as a revolution.
00:03:14Despite her parents forbidding it, she secretly enrolled in the BDM, the girls' branch of
00:03:19the Hitler Youth.
00:03:24It was a way of rebelling against her well-to-do family, which saw the Nazis as a bunch of
00:03:29thugs.
00:03:35Like many of her comrades, Melita had grown to despise her restricted life as a model
00:03:39little girl.
00:03:41In her memoirs, she wrote,
00:03:45At that age, one finds a life which consists of schoolwork, family outings and birthday
00:03:51invitations wretchedly barren of existence.
00:03:55Nobody gives one credit for being interested in more than these derisory trivialities.
00:04:00I needed to free myself from the narrow boundaries of my childhood and attach myself to something
00:04:05grand and essential.
00:04:10The BDM seized upon these hopes.
00:04:24The new regime was intent on attracting teenagers to ensure its future.
00:04:40During 1933, more than 200,000 girls joined the BDM.
00:05:03The girls met up at summer camps, far from their parents, in the great outdoors.
00:05:14Nazism was very ingenious.
00:05:17It used educational methods which today might be called innovative, because they didn't
00:05:23openly indoctrinate young people, but rather present them with lots of leisure activities,
00:05:29which made them feel like they were having fun.
00:05:37Melita and her companions had an unprecedented feeling of freedom.
00:05:43I remember with pleasure the week-long outings, hikes, sports, campfires and youth hosteling.
00:05:59They could play tennis and go horse-riding, which for most working-class girls had been
00:06:04unconceivable a few years earlier.
00:06:10Many of them later said they were the happiest days of their life.
00:06:14Of course, that sounds somewhat indecent when you hear that today.
00:06:19Melita, a high school student, met sales clerks, office workers, seamstresses and domestic
00:06:27employees.
00:06:30The Nazis hoped that this social melting pot would result in a group mentality in which
00:06:34individuality would disappear.
00:06:45In those summer camps, you always had activities that would encourage you to trust your comrades,
00:06:53falling into them.
00:06:54We have these concerts with mosh pits, things where you give up your trust and you place
00:07:01it in your comrade.
00:07:11The Hitler Youth was a powerful indoctrination machine in the service of a profoundly misogynist
00:07:16regime.
00:07:30The Nazis allowed no women to hold responsible or decision-making positions, neither within
00:07:35the party nor the state, when they represented half of the electorate.
00:07:43Many German women were even forced out of the job market.
00:07:49Under the guise of fighting endemic unemployment brought about by the financial crash of 1929,
00:07:54almost a million women were brutally dismissed from their jobs.
00:08:01Federal laws were passed shortly after 1933, like the one concerning double salaries for
00:08:07public servants.
00:08:09If both a husband and a wife worked in a public service of some kind, the woman had to quit
00:08:14her job.
00:08:21And it was out of the question that women should go through higher education.
00:08:27The regime established a so-called numerous clausus, which limited at 10 percent the number
00:08:32of female students in universities.
00:08:36The effect was immediate.
00:08:39In the lecture halls of Münster Law School, you could count the number of young women
00:08:42present on one hand.
00:08:47One of them, Annette Schücking, was from a family of left-wing lawyers.
00:08:52For my mother, it was a very difficult period.
00:08:56There were few female students in universities, and those who did attend were looked down on.
00:09:05My mother was a very gentle, warm and reserved woman, but she wasn't to be underestimated.
00:09:15She was being mocked for wanting to pursue a degree in law.
00:09:21She thought she could battle the system from within and become a lawyer or a judge.
00:09:27She really had a kind of plan.
00:09:29I'd even call it a vision.
00:09:34Annette had been shocked by the terrible treatment of a friend of her father, a Social Democrat
00:09:38member of parliament, who was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp.
00:09:46Like other political opponents, he was humiliated and tortured there.
00:09:53So she thought to herself, what can I do for human rights?
00:10:00I don't want this kind of thing to happen, for people to be treated in this way.
00:10:06Annette didn't state her hopes for democracy openly.
00:10:11Despite not being in the regime's sights, she was heading into a brick wall.
00:10:18She had the best scores, the best grades, but they said, no, you know, you're a woman,
00:10:23you can never practice law, you can never be in the judiciary.
00:10:26So women were limited in their professional tracks.
00:10:35Hitler in person decided to ban the bar and the judiciary to women.
00:10:40He wanted to establish an all-male order and put women in their place.
00:10:46On September the 13th, 1935, before thousands of young Nazi women gathered in Nuremberg,
00:10:52the Führer hailed his action in favor of gender inequality.
00:11:10The German woman of the German girl was hopeless at the time, sad.
00:11:16And today we see countless radiant and smiling faces.
00:11:24There is no greater nobility for a woman to be the mother of her sons and the daughter of her people.
00:11:32This is the highest nobility you can ask for.
00:11:41The future of German young women and girls seemed mapped out.
00:11:45They would bear children, the only way of being useful to the homeland.
00:11:53Their school study programs and activities were consequently changed.
00:12:02In the BDM, the female branch of the Hitler Youth, 1936 was even declared the year of domestic training.
00:12:18All leisure activities were also intended to prepare them for their role as a mother.
00:12:32They also had to do sport to keep them in good enough health to bear children,
00:12:41To monitor the physical condition of girls and preserve what the Nazis called pre-natal potential,
00:12:49BDM leaders called on the few female medical students who were part of the numerous clauses.
00:13:01In Düsseldorf, Hertha Oberhäuser, a final year student, signed with enthusiasm.
00:13:11After the war, she affirmed,
00:13:13I was called on by the BDM. I attended sports meets to make sure the girls didn't exert themselves too much.
00:13:21I also gave them regular medical examinations.
00:13:29Hertha Oberhäuser was from a well-off family who had run into financial hardship.
00:13:38She had the typical profile of the young woman who wanted to use the system to get ahead,
00:13:43stand out and make a career for herself.
00:13:47She became a full-fledged member of the Nazi party.
00:13:51She joined every organization.
00:13:58Her medical studies were a good springboard for Hertha Oberhäuser,
00:14:03allowing her to join the most Nazified of professions at the time.
00:14:11During racial hygiene classes, it was the job of doctors and female students like her
00:14:16to educate young women on how to find the most suitable husband based on so-called racial grounds.
00:14:27Through drawings and slideshows, BDM members were told that the world was divided
00:14:32into hierarchical races and that they belonged to the superior race, the Aryans.
00:14:41At the bottom of the ladder were the Jews, thought of as subhuman.
00:14:48They were taught to recognize Jews from physical stereotypes.
00:14:56We all know the Nazis' anti-Semitic stereotype,
00:15:00a depiction that would allow us to recognize a Jew,
00:15:05a big nose, a hunchback, droopy eyes.
00:15:10That was the belief that went round at the time.
00:15:15On the other hand, there was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman,
00:15:19upright, both physically and in attitude and ideology.
00:15:30One was considered healthy, while the other was weak and sickly
00:15:36and didn't deserve to have descendants.
00:15:48Some BDM leaders went beyond anti-Semitic indoctrination
00:15:53and embarked their comrades in open provocation.
00:15:57Melita Mashman was 15 at the time.
00:16:02Our leader would often make us march in three ranks
00:16:06and cover part of the distance on the double.
00:16:11We had to stamp our feet as loudly as possible.
00:16:15This is where the rich Jews live, she would say.
00:16:19They need a bit of waking up from their afternoon naps.
00:16:27Since the September 1935 passing of the Nuremberg Laws,
00:16:32which signed a social death sentence for German Jews
00:16:36and prohibited marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans,
00:16:40the police and the SS intensified public haranguing of mixed couples.
00:16:57Aryan women in mixed couples had their heads shaved
00:17:02and were exhibited in public, notably to children.
00:17:08The newspapers ran headlines of the trials,
00:17:12which sent them to jail or, later, to concentration camps.
00:17:17Their Jewish husbands or lovers would be sentenced to death.
00:17:21Young women, as future mothers, became the keepers of German blood.
00:17:32They learned the Ten Commandments for finding a husband by heart.
00:17:37They were the first to know the meaning of their name.
00:17:41They were the first to know the meaning of their name.
00:17:45They were the first to know the meaning of their name.
00:17:49Ten Commandments for finding a husband by heart.
00:17:53Keep your body pure.
00:17:56Examine the genealogy of your fiancé.
00:18:02Strive to have as many children as possible.
00:18:06Amid the excitement of Nazi activist struggles,
00:18:10Liesl Riedel, a young woman from a modest background,
00:18:14chose the path mapped out for German women.
00:18:19She rubbed shoulders with both the rank and file
00:18:23and the rising stars of the party.
00:18:27I am the leader!
00:18:30I am the leader!
00:18:32And that's where she met her husband, Gustav,
00:18:36who was really a street fighter,
00:18:39who was described as someone who was a real brute,
00:18:43kind of barely literate.
00:18:47The novice campaigner was won over by a young man
00:18:51who belonged to the party's elite corps, the SS.
00:18:57For Liesl Riedel,
00:19:00marrying him would be a way of joining the elite of the regime.
00:19:07But first, she had to obtain permission from the upper echelons of the SS.
00:19:13Her job at the region's most popular Nazi newspaper wasn't enough.
00:19:19Obtaining permission to marry from the SS was a genuine obstacle course.
00:19:25SS men couldn't marry just any woman.
00:19:29She had to be ideologically stable, so there were tests to take.
00:19:37Every prospective couple had to fill out reams and reams of paperwork.
00:19:43Now this included medical certificates to show that you were in good health,
00:19:48you had to include references from people in the Nazi party,
00:19:52you had to show your family tree,
00:19:55and you had to go back many, many, many, many generations
00:19:59to show that everybody was good German stock.
00:20:05Liesl had to be examined by an SS doctor.
00:20:10On top of checking her teeth and their state of repair,
00:20:14he noted the dates of her last periods
00:20:17and had her undergo a complete gynaecological examination
00:20:20to evaluate whether she would be a good enough progenitor
00:20:23to perpetuate the Aryan race.
00:20:27This complete control of the body was coupled with another requirement.
00:20:32The Third Reich considered the Church a political enemy,
00:20:35so Liesl had to renounce her Catholic faith
00:20:38so that her children would be raised with Nazi ideology alone.
00:20:44Her family wanted her to observe her Catholic upbringing
00:20:49and get married in a Catholic church and baptise her children.
00:20:55She had a break with her family at that point.
00:20:59A lot of the story of how women became, you know,
00:21:04socialised and brought into the movement,
00:21:06there were kind of breaks along the way.
00:21:10In late 1938, after these three years of procedure,
00:21:15the SS officially permitted the wedding of Liesl to Gustav Wilhaus.
00:21:26She gave birth to a daughter in the spring of 1939.
00:21:33Like all newborns, her baby was monitored by the midwives.
00:21:45As public servants appointed by the Third Reich,
00:21:50they had to inform their superiors of any malformations or handicaps.
00:21:59That was immediately registered in the system,
00:22:02as well as the vulnerability of that person
00:22:05for the rest of his or her life.
00:22:11It would be part of the machinery of this campaign
00:22:15of what they called a euthanasia.
00:22:24Pauline Kneissler was one of the backbones of this policy,
00:22:28deployed in top secrecy in the spring of 1939.
00:22:33She was involved in the extermination campaign
00:22:36of the physically and mentally handicapped,
00:22:39both adults and children,
00:22:41a campaign which would go down in history as Action T4.
00:22:45She was in her 40s, an experienced nurse
00:22:49and a member of the Nationalist Socialist Women's League
00:22:52and the Nazi Party.
00:22:57A representative from the Chancellery
00:23:00made us swear an oath of secrecy and obedience.
00:23:05Our involvement was entirely voluntary.
00:23:09Those who didn't agree could withdraw.
00:23:11But not one of us expressed the slightest objection to the program.
00:23:21As part of their training,
00:23:23nurses were taught to no longer show empathy
00:23:26with certain groups of people.
00:23:29This implied the dehumanization of certain patients.
00:23:37Nurses began to see them more as problems
00:23:40than as people who needed to be taken care of or cured,
00:23:44which should be the priority of any health and care establishment.
00:23:48To them, these were people who needed to be kept away from society
00:23:53and then exterminated to prevent them from procreating.
00:24:01Pauline Kneissler and her closest colleagues
00:24:04visited institutions for the handicapped
00:24:06with a list of names of patients
00:24:08to be taken to killing centers.
00:24:15Once they had received their selection orders,
00:24:18they personally took care of those people.
00:24:21They helped them pack their belongings,
00:24:23explaining that they were moving elsewhere.
00:24:25Of course, they never told them the truth.
00:24:28They made up explanations of what was going to happen.
00:24:33And these people were taken to industrial killing centers
00:24:36where they were gassed.
00:24:38It was for Action T4 that the gas chambers were first used,
00:24:48notably at Grafenegg and Hadamar,
00:24:51where Pauline Kneissler was posted.
00:24:56The nurses were so involved that they practically
00:24:59escorted their patients into the changing room
00:25:02next to the gas chamber.
00:25:08Pauline Kneissler also performed lethal injections.
00:25:15She admitted as much after the war.
00:25:18I was never cruel to anybody.
00:25:20We had been told that each creature had the right to a charitable death.
00:25:30Up until the end of the war,
00:25:32almost 200,000 people, children and adults,
00:25:34were exterminated as part of Action T4.
00:25:38This was the first mass murder carried out by the Third Reich.
00:25:42And women played a central part.
00:26:04On September 1, 1939,
00:26:07German women watched their husbands, brothers and sons
00:26:10go off to war in Poland.
00:26:15They were now called on to leave their homes for a new role.
00:26:34When war broke out,
00:26:37it caused a big change in women's lifestyles.
00:26:41The majority of men were enlisted.
00:26:45The regime found itself torn between upholding its ideology,
00:26:49with women doing their utmost to have children,
00:26:53and necessity to be able to have children.
00:26:57In the end,
00:26:59with women doing their utmost to have children,
00:27:03and necessity.
00:27:06From then on,
00:27:08Germany needed a new workforce to replace the men who had gone to war.
00:27:24Women wouldn't merely take the places of men in the fields and factories of the Reich.
00:27:29They would take an active part in the policy of expansion
00:27:32and colonization of newly conquered lands.
00:27:42Melita Maschmann had climbed the ranks of the BDM,
00:27:46the female branch of the Hitler Youth.
00:27:49She was now a leader herself.
00:27:52Like 19,000 of her comrades,
00:27:55she was dispatched to Poland.
00:27:59The German Red Army
00:28:09Melita was brimming with enthusiasm.
00:28:12We believed that now, at last, Germany's historic hour had come to.
00:28:17Our existence at that time was for us like a great adventure.
00:28:21We felt that we had been summoned to take part in a difficult and noble service,
00:28:25by which we believed ourselves to be fulfilling our duty towards the Reich.
00:28:43After a month of fighting,
00:28:45the German army occupied the western part of Poland.
00:28:48The eastern part was controlled by the Soviet Union under Stalin,
00:28:52a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
00:28:55Melita was appointed leader of a group,
00:28:57which was taking part in the Germanization of a region of western Poland,
00:29:01called Vaterland by the Third Reich.
00:29:16It became very quickly clear that
00:29:19Poland was going to be a place in which radical measures were going to be taken,
00:29:23where Nazi power would be able to, as it were, rule without any hindrance.
00:29:31So Poland became, if you like, a sort of laboratory for Nazi colonization and Germanization.
00:29:42And of course, all this was at the expense of the native Polish population and the Jewish population.
00:29:53SS units evicted them.
00:29:58Melita, impassive, described one of the raids in her memoirs.
00:30:04One morning, we were dragged out of bed for a clean-up operation.
00:30:12The SS officer told me he didn't have enough men to carry it out successfully.
00:30:19At 6am, the wagons had to be ready to leave.
00:30:23Each family was restricted to taking one wagonload of belongings.
00:30:32I heard them protesting sadly and furiously, but I calmly turned my back on them.
00:30:53The BDM was given the job of installing,
00:30:55in the homes from which Poles and Jews had been evicted,
00:30:58minorities of Germanic origin from the Baltic states and Romania.
00:31:06These young women were also tasked with teaching these distant Germanic cousins
00:31:10how to become good Germans.
00:31:15Overnight, young, inexperienced women found themselves in positions of authority.
00:31:23There were students who wrote enthusiastic reports about how they felt,
00:31:30I feel like a demigod here in this village.
00:31:34I feel empowered.
00:31:38I am here on the ground. I will give orders.
00:31:45There was, if you like, a cult of political will.
00:31:53LAUGHTER
00:32:01The Jews that had been evicted by the Nazis were locked up in ghettos.
00:32:10They struggled to survive in inhuman conditions.
00:32:18Notably, in the city of Lodz.
00:32:23Some BDM members would visit the ghetto on their days off,
00:32:28as if it were a tourist attraction.
00:32:36It was a bit like going to the zoo.
00:32:39Only here it was to see a human population,
00:32:42thought of as exotic, sometimes scary and often scorned.
00:32:53Some women were simply stunned and shocked and, I think, horrified.
00:32:58But there were others who were, I'm sure, actively anti-Semitic,
00:33:04for whom the spectacle of the Jews crammed together in the ghetto
00:33:11did fuel and confirm prejudices that they had been absorbing already.
00:33:19Melita Maschmann, who a few years earlier had had fun stamping her feet
00:33:24to intimidate the Jewish population in Berlin,
00:33:27suppressed all compassion for those suffering the horrors of the ghettos.
00:33:32She was now a supporter of the murderous policy
00:33:35the Third Reich was about to implement.
00:33:39It's atrocious, but the destruction of Jews
00:33:42is a sad fact to which we must become resolved,
00:33:46if we want the Warteland to become German.
00:33:59Nazi policies, tested in Poland since 1939,
00:34:03would suddenly step up a gear early in the summer of 1941
00:34:07and stretch eastwards.
00:34:16On June 22nd, Hitler broke the pact that tied him to Stalin
00:34:21and invaded eastern Poland and then the USSR.
00:34:31In the wake of the German army,
00:34:33which was advancing at lightning speed across Soviet territory,
00:34:38almost half a million women crossed the frontiers of the Reich.
00:34:42Not just members of the BDN
00:34:44and specialists in Germanisation went east.
00:34:50There were also secretaries, nurses
00:34:54and wives of SS officers.
00:35:02Among them was Annette Schueking.
00:35:07Aged 21, the brilliant student who wanted to defend human rights
00:35:12saw her position as a legal intern blocked
00:35:15due to the democratic leanings of her family.
00:35:20To earn some points with the regime,
00:35:23she volunteered as a nursing assistant.
00:35:27In the train taking her to Ukraine with her new colleagues,
00:35:31Annette discovered the true nature of the war.
00:35:37At one point, everyone took out their packed breakfast
00:35:42and started eating.
00:35:44And while they were doing so,
00:35:46two soldiers told them they had killed some Jews.
00:35:50With no emotion, coldly, that shocked the four women.
00:35:56The worst thing for my mother
00:35:58was that the two soldiers weren't even afraid of being arrested.
00:36:03They were telling this terrible story
00:36:06in front of complete strangers in the compartment, with impunity.
00:36:12A war of extermination unfurled in the east.
00:36:19As the German army advanced,
00:36:21Jewish men, women and children were massacred.
00:36:28In Ukraine, on September 29th and 30th, 1941,
00:36:33more than 33,000 people were shot dead
00:36:36in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev
00:36:39by the SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen.
00:36:50Annette was posted 150km from Kiev,
00:36:53in the city of Zviagel, to run a soldiers' hostel.
00:37:02On her arrival, she took some photos.
00:37:09Before the war, more than half the population of the city was Jewish.
00:37:13Now, there reigned a strange atmosphere and an unusual calm.
00:37:20An older officer told her,
00:37:22there are no more Jews in the city.
00:37:26Not a single one.
00:37:29And then he showed her the execution sites.
00:37:33Almost 75,000 people had already been executed in the region
00:37:38since the start of the invasion.
00:37:42The young nursing assistant was plunged into the horror.
00:37:49She wrote to her mother,
00:37:51dear mum, if you knew what was going on here,
00:37:54you wouldn't last one day.
00:37:56But I have no idea how to leave this place.
00:37:59I can't find any way out.
00:38:02Because you need a very good reason to be sent home.
00:38:09Annette did not betray her feelings.
00:38:12In front of her colleagues and the soldiers,
00:38:15she kept her despair to herself.
00:38:25She didn't trust them.
00:38:27She knew she was surrounded by murderers.
00:38:32People who have no moral inhibitions exude a strange odour.
00:38:37I can now pick out these people,
00:38:39and many of them really do smell like blood.
00:38:45And yet, a few days after Christmas 1941,
00:38:48Annette dared to speak her mind to a non-commissioned officer,
00:38:52Sergeant Frank.
00:38:57He told her he would soon take part in a firing squad.
00:39:02He had volunteered so he could earn a small, rapid promotion.
00:39:10My mother was horrified,
00:39:12horrified that he would openly tell her something like that.
00:39:15In the end, she said to him,
00:39:17please don't do it.
00:39:19You'll never be able to sleep again if you do.
00:39:23When she next saw him, a few days or weeks later,
00:39:27she said, you were right.
00:39:34Annette was intent on keeping a trace of the crime
00:39:37she was unable to prevent.
00:39:40In her diary, she wrote...
00:39:42December the 28th, 1941.
00:39:45Sergeant Frank received the order to shoot 6,000 Jews,
00:39:48with 20 other men during the coming week.
00:39:52Human lives are no longer worth anything.
00:39:56From then on, she wrote down all the information she was privy to,
00:40:00to keep a record of the ongoing crimes.
00:40:04June the 6th, 1942.
00:40:07Last Thursday, 3,000 Jews were rounded up in the night
00:40:10and transported the next morning 8km away
00:40:13and shot by the SS and Ukrainian militiamen.
00:40:20She noted down the numbers of the military postings,
00:40:23wrote her accounts in key words only,
00:40:25the fear of someone discovering her diary.
00:40:29And at one moment, she wrote to her parents,
00:40:33please keep my letters and my photos in a safe place.
00:40:42And I think that gave her strength to get through that period.
00:40:53While these mass executions continued,
00:40:56the occupation authorities set up their headquarters
00:40:59in the conquered territories.
00:41:03And with them, came young secretaries
00:41:06who would play a pivotal role in the exploitation
00:41:09of the surviving Jewish populations in the ghettos.
00:41:19In Lida, a Jewish village,
00:41:22in Lida, 19-year-old Lieselotte Meier
00:41:25assisted the district commissioner,
00:41:28the highest German civilian authority in the city.
00:41:35Far from the small town where she grew up,
00:41:38it was the ideal place to make her hopes a reality.
00:41:44Her daughter, Anna Grett,
00:41:46discovered Lieselotte's past after her death.
00:41:52Having a high status was very important to my mother.
00:41:55She always wanted to rise above her social rank,
00:41:58our social rank.
00:42:05At 20, 22, 24 years old,
00:42:09you still have a lot of dreams.
00:42:13Yeah.
00:42:20She didn't want to be in a factory job.
00:42:23She was seeking more social mobility, higher pay.
00:42:26The pay was better in the East.
00:42:28It was more dangerous there.
00:42:30She must have been someone who wanted a little adventure
00:42:33and had that kind of gumption.
00:42:36These women in their 20s
00:42:38were still unmarried and without children.
00:42:41The world was their oyster.
00:42:44They wanted to build a career,
00:42:47and they saw themselves in some ways
00:42:50pioneers, as precursors.
00:42:57In the Lida ghetto,
00:42:59the district commissioner had set up workshops
00:43:02where Jews were subjected to torture.
00:43:05They were subjected to forced labour.
00:43:11Lieselotte Meyer was in charge of selecting men and women
00:43:15textile workers, carpenters,
00:43:18joiners and mechanics,
00:43:21in good health and aged between 15 and 60.
00:43:27Lieselotte Meyer is a classic example
00:43:30of a secretary placed in the terror.
00:43:35She was responsible for producing those labour ID cards.
00:43:41They were gold.
00:43:43They were, you know, tickets to survival.
00:43:45So as an administrator,
00:43:47she had that power of life and death with that card,
00:43:50and of selection of, you know,
00:43:52who could be sorted out to be killed, to be shot.
00:43:59In 1942 and 1943,
00:44:03the young secretary was present at meetings
00:44:05where mass executions were organised.
00:44:10Her job was to coordinate with the local police and the SS.
00:44:16On several occasions, she even attended executions.
00:44:24She didn't have the reputation as being a sadistic,
00:44:27kind of very visibly violent person.
00:44:31She was a very efficient administrator,
00:44:33and callous to the extent that she didn't care
00:44:36about the fate of the Jews,
00:44:39and that's what makes her an accomplice in my mind.
00:44:47Having become the mistress of her superior, Hermann Hanweg,
00:44:51she not only had access to the safe
00:44:54where he kept valuable items confiscated from Jews,
00:44:57but she also exploited the ghetto workers for her own profit.
00:45:07They strolled through the workshops
00:45:09to gather Lieselota and Hermann.
00:45:11They would just pick out things.
00:45:14It was like a courtship, it was a shopping trip.
00:45:17If they wanted special jewellery, a fur coat,
00:45:20they could order these things at whim.
00:45:27I have these coasters stamped Lieder joinery workshop.
00:45:33They were clearly made in the ghetto.
00:45:38She used them all her life.
00:45:46For Hermann and Lieselota,
00:45:48the Jews constructed a swimming pool at the villa.
00:45:52These Jewish servants treated them
00:45:55with cakes and delicacies,
00:45:58you know, what they called post-coital treats.
00:46:01I mean, they didn't care, you know,
00:46:04about remaining private, as it were,
00:46:07in front of the Jewish labourers.
00:46:17She talked about going for sleigh rides.
00:46:22She was very nostalgic about the period.
00:46:27For sure, they were the happiest days of her life.
00:46:37The Jews of the Lido ghetto would be systematically murdered
00:46:41during the next phase of the genocide that was being planned,
00:46:45the Final Solution.
00:46:48The women of the Reich,
00:46:50far from being mere eyewitnesses or accomplices,
00:46:53would play a central, deadly role,
00:46:56behind the fences of the camps
00:46:59and within the intimacy of SS families.
00:47:18This film is dedicated to the memory
00:47:21of the Jewish women of the Lido ghetto,
00:47:24who were killed by the Germans
00:47:27during the Second World War.
00:47:31The film is dedicated to the memory
00:47:34of the Jewish women of the Lido ghetto,
00:47:37who were killed by the Germans
00:47:40during the Second World War.
00:47:43This film is dedicated to the memory
00:47:46of the Jewish women of the Lido ghetto,
00:47:49who were killed by the Germans
00:47:52during the Second World War.
00:47:55This film is dedicated to the memory
00:47:58of the Jewish women of the Lido ghetto,
00:48:01who were killed by the Germans
00:48:04during the Second World War.
00:48:13UNDER THE THIRD REICH
00:48:20Under the Third Reich,
00:48:23hundreds of thousands of women
00:48:26took up active service within the regime.
00:48:33Their names were Hildegard,
00:48:36Hertha, Liesel, Erna.
00:48:39During the Second World War,
00:48:43these secretaries, doctors,
00:48:46wives of SS officers or concentration camp guards,
00:48:49participated in the criminal policies
00:48:52carried out by the Nazis.
00:48:58Accomplices, and in some cases murderers,
00:49:01they were essential cogs in the wheel of the regime,
00:49:04at the very heart of the Holocaust.
00:49:13GERMAN OCCUPATION
00:49:21The Netherlands, 1942.
00:49:26Gertrude Slotke, a 40-year-old secretary
00:49:29and member of the Nazi Party,
00:49:32worked in the German occupation administration.
00:49:43She was a lynchpin in the Jewish Affairs Department.
00:49:49This administration,
00:49:52set up in all the countries occupied by the Third Reich,
00:49:55was in charge of organizing the deportation
00:49:58of millions of European Jews
00:50:01to concentration and extermination camps
00:50:04as part of the Final Solution.
00:50:07Gertrude Slotke quickly assumed responsibilities.
00:50:13This came about
00:50:16because her superior left a sort of vacuum,
00:50:19who was not often present.
00:50:22So she took advantage of this opportunity
00:50:25in a very classic way
00:50:28and took over in order to fulfil her own ambitions
00:50:31and implement her own ideas.
00:50:38Gertrude Slotke regularly visited Westerbork,
00:50:42the Netherlands' main transit camp,
00:50:45from where most of the Dutch deportation convoys
00:50:48towards concentration and extermination camps departed.
00:51:04Certain survivors told how she came and went in the camp like a bat,
00:51:08always with a briefcase in hand.
00:51:13One described her as being like a ghost.
00:51:20Slotke's job was to fill the trains
00:51:23in accordance with the instructions she had.
00:51:29Armed with forms drawn up upon their arrival,
00:51:32Gertrude Slotke called in the prisoners one by one.
00:51:38She decided which Jews were to be given a respite
00:51:41because they were still useful to the German war industry.
00:51:46The others were in danger of being deported within 48 hours.
00:51:52The decisions that she was making
00:51:55were being made simultaneously all over Europe,
00:51:58you play German, but by men.
00:52:01The fact that she's a woman is very unusual and rare.
00:52:05She was known for her incredible social coldness
00:52:09towards the people she dealt with on a daily basis
00:52:15during the organisation of deportations.
00:52:22She generally proved to be implacable
00:52:25and decided upon deportation.
00:52:29You could say that the role was a Schreibtischtheater
00:52:33or a desktop murderer.
00:52:35She was giving orders from behind a desk
00:52:38that were ultimately costing people lives.
00:52:48Gertrude Slotke dedicated herself tirelessly to her morbid work.
00:52:53She had no qualms about making her radical views known in high places.
00:52:59On several occasions, she went to Berlin
00:53:02and advocated stricter regulations.
00:53:06She remained at her post
00:53:08until the last deportation convoy left Westerbork,
00:53:12the one carrying Anne Frank and her family.
00:53:19She was the first woman to be deported,
00:53:22and the last woman to be deported to Germany.
00:53:27She was the first woman to be deported,
00:53:30and the last woman to be deported to Germany.
00:53:34TRANSIT CAMPS
00:53:41Transit camps like Westerbork were anti-chambers of death,
00:53:47active at all stages of the murderous policies of the Third Reich.
00:53:51Women were also at work at the very heart of the genocide,
00:53:55in the concentration and extermination camps.
00:53:58The Dutch resistance fighter, Selma van der Per,
00:54:02was deported to Ravensbruck, 80km from Berlin.
00:54:08At the age of 98,
00:54:10she remembers her arrival at the only women's camp
00:54:14in the concentration system.
00:54:17Outside were male guards, SS's, and women guards.
00:54:22They were shouting,
00:54:25quick, quick, quick, out, out,
00:54:28and they were having sticks,
00:54:31and so everybody was very much in a hurry
00:54:35and didn't dare to do anything.
00:54:37There were women.
00:54:39They were in grey uniform.
00:54:41That's why we called them mice.
00:54:43You tried to behave,
00:54:45you tried to do what you were told to do,
00:54:48but then everybody else did.
00:54:50Because if they didn't behave,
00:54:54because if they didn't,
00:54:56we could be killed.
00:55:02Only drawings produced covertly,
00:55:05in particular those of Violette Rougier-Lecoq,
00:55:08who was also deported to Ravensbruck,
00:55:10show the role of the female guards at the camp,
00:55:13omnipresent and threatening, with their capes and dogs.
00:55:17They all began their careers here, at Ravensbruck,
00:55:21the only guard training centre for women,
00:55:24the official album of which shows a sanitised image,
00:55:28far from reality.
00:55:32New recruits were carefully chosen by the SS,
00:55:35according to one criterion.
00:55:38They were to have no specific competence
00:55:41and no experience of the prison environment,
00:55:45just so-called normal young women.
00:55:52At that time, a normal woman
00:55:55referred to one who conformed with the regime,
00:55:58who thought that it was right to imprison its opponents,
00:56:02to persecute them,
00:56:04meaning that the female guards
00:56:06weren't the only ones to think like that,
00:56:09but that it was the case with the whole of German society.
00:56:14They came from modest backgrounds,
00:56:17like Hildegard Lechert,
00:56:19who had previously been employed in a munitions factory.
00:56:27For these working-class women,
00:56:30who had worked from the age of 14,
00:56:33who had sometimes had difficult lives,
00:56:36working in the camps represented
00:56:39certain non-negligible advantages.
00:56:42Hildegard Lechert discovered that,
00:56:45in addition to a better salary,
00:56:48she would have health insurance
00:56:51and comfortable accommodation on a new housing estate,
00:56:55built by deportees.
00:56:58But that wasn't all.
00:57:01When she came to the camp,
00:57:03she was already looking after two children.
00:57:06It was handy for her
00:57:08because Ravensbrück also had a nursery school.
00:57:12So she easily fitted into the SS community.
00:57:19The rise in social status of Hildegard Lechert and her colleagues
00:57:23is even apparent in the uniform which they were given.
00:57:27Grey, like that of a soldier,
00:57:29with boots like those of the SS, the elite Nazi corps.
00:57:38These new wardens were quite proud
00:57:42because some of them had photographs taken in their uniforms,
00:57:48which they sent to their families.
00:57:52In a certain way, this was an expression of their pride.
00:58:01For the first time, they held a position of authority.
00:58:06The violence apprenticeship could begin.
00:58:12The ethnologist Germaine Tillion,
00:58:15deported to Ravensbrück in 1943, remembered precisely.
00:58:20A small warden, 20 years of age,
00:58:23was so little aware of correct behaviour at the camp
00:58:26on the day of her arrival that she said,
00:58:29excuse me, when she passed in front of a prisoner.
00:58:32It took her exactly four days to adapt.
00:58:36The new wardens followed experienced ones,
00:58:39their training being a process of learning by doing.
00:58:42They observed the workings of the entire system
00:58:45and reproduced the way in which things were done.
00:58:49They were told, you have the power here
00:58:52and you can dominate the others, who are not necessarily human beings.
00:59:00So they thought, I kick a DJ out of the camp,
00:59:04I kick a detainee once, I see that nothing happens,
00:59:07I am not held to account, there are no consequences for me,
00:59:10I am not sanctioned and I feel all-powerful.
00:59:16Out of 3,500 camp guards trained at Ravensbrück,
00:59:20only a handful refused the work.
00:59:26There were three women who, after arriving,
00:59:29said to themselves, this is absolutely terrible.
00:59:34They said that they didn't want to remain.
00:59:37Obviously, they couldn't leave as easily as that,
00:59:40but in the end there were no reprisals and they simply went back home.
00:59:46This shows that it was possible to refuse for reasons of conscience.
00:59:55Hildegard Lechert did not have such scruples.
00:59:59In October 1942, having become a warden,
01:00:02she began her deadly career in the Majdanek camp in Poland.
01:00:09The epicentre of the Holocaust.
01:00:15Majdanek was one of the six extermination camps built by the Nazis.
01:00:29In terms of status,
01:00:31the guards were not directly implicated in the assassination of deportees.
01:00:39They weren't present during the gassing.
01:00:42However, they were very involved in preparatory work.
01:00:49At Majdanek, most of the detainees did not die in the gas chambers.
01:00:54But from abuse or illness.
01:00:56So it is quite clear that the camp wardens
01:00:59had a lot of responsibility for what happened to them.
01:01:06Hildegard Lechert was nicknamed Bloody Brigida by the deportees
01:01:10because of her extreme violence.
01:01:17Every morning, during the night,
01:01:21every morning, during roll call, which could last for hours,
01:01:26she decided who was fit for forced labour and who would be gassed.
01:01:33One survivor recalled...
01:01:35Brigida would appear with several SS men who would point fingers at certain women.
01:01:42Brigida would fetch them from the row,
01:01:44yanking them by the shoulders or by the hair or ears.
01:01:48Brigida always had a smile on her face as she worked.
01:01:53She struck our heads and faces in a dreadful manner with her thick, long whip.
01:02:03This violence was also often an escalation game between an SS officer and a warden.
01:02:09Many female wardens tried to gain respect from their superiors
01:02:15by proving that they were just as capable of violence as them,
01:02:21simply to legitimise their own position in this system of violence.
01:02:31The survivor, Hanna Narkievicz-Jodko,
01:02:36recalled...
01:02:38A 25-year-old female prisoner was caught with turnips.
01:02:42An SS man began carrying out punishment.
01:02:45Lechert jumped forward, grabbed the whip out of his hand
01:02:49and began whipping with all the strength she could muster.
01:02:53Apparently, the SS man wasn't whipping hard enough to suit Frau Lechert.
01:03:01Hildegard Lechert,
01:03:05interpreted the rules in a way that she could do whatever she wanted.
01:03:12We know that she trampled one detainee to death.
01:03:26The systematic daily violence of the female wardens
01:03:29ended up breaking the deportees,
01:03:32who were already exhausted from lack of hygiene and the strenuous forced labour.
01:03:44At Ravensbrück, Selma van der Peer tried at all costs to avoid going to the infirmary.
01:03:53She was taken there after having been beaten unconscious.
01:03:58Two girls holed me up for the counting
01:04:02and then took me to the revier, to the hospital.
01:04:05And I was very scared,
01:04:08because you knew it was very dangerous to be taken to the hospital.
01:04:19Selma knew that few deportees left the Ravensbrück hospital alive.
01:04:25I was so badly done that the officer in the guard
01:04:29who was talking there to a German nurse said,
01:04:33I thought that Dutch women would be dead by now.
01:04:37And I saw terrible things happening there,
01:04:41people being thrown from the third floor down,
01:04:44because they couldn't get themselves, they couldn't do it on their own.
01:04:48Oh, it was terrible.
01:04:51Hertha Oberheuser, the ambitious medical student
01:04:55for whom the Hitler Youth had been a first stepping stone,
01:04:59had worked in this hospital since 1940.
01:05:05It was an early opportunity in her career.
01:05:08Admitted into this closed, masculine domain,
01:05:11she was the only female doctor in the camp for nearly two and a half years.
01:05:17As of the summer of 1942,
01:05:19under the direction of the personal doctor of Himmler, the head of the SS,
01:05:24she participated in a special programme,
01:05:28finding treatments for wounded soldiers.
01:05:36For Hertha, it was an unexpected promotion.
01:05:41It was practically impossible for a woman in Germany to enter a surgical unit.
01:05:46It was only upon arriving at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
01:05:50that I had this possibility.
01:05:57Hertha and her colleagues carried out particularly sadistic experiments
01:06:01on 86 deportees.
01:06:04They were forced to leave the camp,
01:06:07they inflicted wounds on them to provoke gangrene.
01:06:16To this effect, foreign bodies were implanted in these women,
01:06:21mainly in the legs.
01:06:24Various foreign bodies were used, such as wood, shrapnel,
01:06:28anything that soldiers might be wounded with in the field.
01:06:34Then they observed the evolution of these wounds.
01:06:43Among these guinea pigs were Polish resistance fighters
01:06:47who nicknamed themselves the Kaninchen, or laboratory rabbits.
01:06:57Risking their lives, they retrieved a camera
01:07:01found in the requisitioned affairs of another deportee
01:07:05and secretly photographed each other.
01:07:13They passed the film to Germaine Tillion
01:07:16in the hope that this visual proof might survive the war.
01:07:26Some of them succumbed to these experiments.
01:07:31A film by Germaine Tillion
01:07:41The generalised violence of the camps
01:07:44spread beyond the watchtowers and the barbed wire.
01:07:48It contaminated the domestic environment,
01:07:51that of the SS wives.
01:07:54These families lived in the immediate vicinity
01:07:58of the concentration camps.
01:08:05These housewives lived an upper-middle-class family life,
01:08:10well-ordered and completely normal in appearance.
01:08:16Children were sometimes born in these places.
01:08:24And of course, people came to visit.
01:08:27Through conversations with other wives,
01:08:30they had quite a clear idea of what happened in the camps.
01:08:37It would be absurd to imagine that these women
01:08:42could live just next to the concentration camps for years
01:08:47without noticing anything.
01:09:05Liesl Wilhaus, who had had so much trouble
01:09:08having her marriage confirmed by the SS,
01:09:11since 1942 lived with her daughter
01:09:14opposite the Janowska camp,
01:09:16where her husband, Gustav, was commandant in occupied Poland.
01:09:24She lived alongside the camp,
01:09:26in the house which went with her husband's position.
01:09:30For comfort, she had had a balcony built.
01:09:41The tango of death played by deportees
01:09:44was regularly to be heard coming from the camp.
01:09:52This was the sign that acts of torture
01:09:55were currently being perpetrated by the SS.
01:10:00One of the prisoners, Ziv Porat,
01:10:03secretly made drawings which show this barbarity.
01:10:08Janowska was one of the worst Nazi killing centers.
01:10:13The cruelty was extreme.
01:10:21The violence was just a few meters away.
01:10:24Death and slaughter was happening so close.
01:10:28Detainees were even employed in these houses,
01:10:31taking care of upkeep in those very gardens.
01:10:34Before the eyes of the family,
01:10:38before the eyes of the wife,
01:10:40before the eyes of the children.
01:10:46On several occasions, in 1942 and 1943,
01:10:51Liesl stepped out of her role as housewife.
01:10:56A former detainee recalled...
01:11:00When guests came to pay a visit to the Wilhaus family,
01:11:04she gave a display of her marksmanship
01:11:08to the delight of the others.
01:11:14The little girl of the house applauded enthusiastically.
01:11:20They were socializing her in a way that
01:11:23made it seem like this was an acceptable form of recreation.
01:11:29The murders by Liesl Wilhaus
01:11:32were not considered to be Nazi crimes.
01:11:35However, they were not unusual.
01:11:39She's not the only one who did this.
01:11:42Commandant's wives having the villa at the camp
01:11:45or within the camp with the balcony
01:11:48and the shooting from the balcony and down into the camp,
01:11:51that scene, that was rather common, actually.
01:11:55In this atmosphere of total impunity,
01:11:58Erna Petri, who had grown up in a family of poor country folk,
01:12:02lived a life of lady of the manor
01:12:05on an agricultural domain
01:12:07which her husband managed on behalf of the SS.
01:12:11At the age of 23, she was mother to two children.
01:12:16She was a mother to three children.
01:12:20At the age of 23, she was mother to two children.
01:12:31In September 1943, she brought back to the house
01:12:34six Jewish children who had managed to escape
01:12:37from a deportation convoy
01:12:39and who had hidden at the side of the road.
01:12:43They followed her back to the farm.
01:12:46They trusted her.
01:12:48They saw her in her apron as a maternal figure.
01:12:56Her husband wasn't around, but she knew what to do.
01:13:01She'd overheard her husband with her colleagues.
01:13:04She was serving them cake and coffee
01:13:06on the terrace of their manor,
01:13:08and they were talking about doling bullets
01:13:11out in the back of the neck.
01:13:14She followed that. That's how she learned.
01:13:16She didn't go through any training.
01:13:18She was the wife of an SS officer.
01:13:20She did that and showed no remorse.
01:13:27These individual crimes,
01:13:29committed in the domestic environment,
01:13:31were part of the genocide.
01:13:34The murderous wives of the SS,
01:13:36such as Liesel and Erna,
01:13:38saw no contradiction with their status as mothers
01:13:41in these actions.
01:13:44They're not homicidal maniacs.
01:13:48They're not really sociopaths.
01:13:52Violence is a necessity
01:13:54as a sign of the strength of the race,
01:13:58as a tool of terror for securing their power.
01:14:03That was part of the Nazi ideology.
01:14:09After the war,
01:14:11Erna stated
01:14:14In those times, as I carried out the shootings,
01:14:17I was barely 25 years old,
01:14:19still young and inexperienced.
01:14:21I lived only among SS men
01:14:23who carried out shootings of Jewish persons.
01:14:26I wanted to prove myself to the SS men.
01:14:29I wanted to show them that I, as a woman,
01:14:32could conduct myself like a man.
01:14:34So I shot six Jewish children.
01:14:44The war,
01:14:46which was intended to impose
01:14:48the domination of the Third Reich over Europe,
01:14:51turned to the advantage of the Allies.
01:14:54Like all Germans settled in the East,
01:14:57Lieselotter, Erna and Liesel
01:14:59fled before the Red Army with one hope.
01:15:03That of returning home.
01:15:07As they advanced,
01:15:09the Soviets and the Anglo-Americans
01:15:11discovered the horror of the camps.
01:15:29At Ravensbruck,
01:15:31Selma van der Peer, the Dutch resistance fighter,
01:15:34was liberated by the Red Cross in April 1945,
01:15:37a week before the arrival of the Red Army.
01:15:41A nice man gave me a cigarette.
01:15:44And he gave me a light,
01:15:47the first cigarette in all this time.
01:15:50And my guard, my female guard,
01:15:54was hanging out of the window of her barrack.
01:15:58And she called out and said,
01:16:01Don't smoke, Marga.
01:16:03And he said, the boy said,
01:16:05She has nothing to tell you about anymore.
01:16:08You can smoke as much as you like.
01:16:11You are free.
01:16:12It was at that moment that I knew I was free.
01:16:21The guards who were still inside the camps were arrested.
01:16:29For the stunned Allies,
01:16:31judging the crimes of the Third Reich was imperative.
01:16:41The female guards were amongst the first
01:16:44to be judged for their crimes,
01:16:47as of the autumn of 1945 in occupied Germany,
01:16:50as in communist Poland.
01:16:56For the first time, Hildegard Lechert,
01:16:59nicknamed Bloody Brigida,
01:17:01appeared in front of the cameras.
01:17:06She appeared before the Supreme National Tribunal
01:17:10in Krakow for crimes committed at Auschwitz,
01:17:13where she worked after Ravensbruck and Majdanek.
01:17:19Amongst the accused were four other female guards
01:17:22and 35 SS men.
01:17:28For many of the journalists and judges of the time,
01:17:31the crimes of the female guards were incomprehensible.
01:17:36How could women be involved in such violence?
01:17:39The reasoning was as follows.
01:17:41Women are peace-loving by nature.
01:17:45They have a maternal streak
01:17:48and therefore could not have committed acts of violence.
01:17:54Today, it's still difficult to imagine
01:17:57that women could have been criminals,
01:18:00Nazi criminals.
01:18:04During the post-war trials,
01:18:06judges adhered to this gender-based vision
01:18:09and condemned only 77 female guards out of 3,500.
01:18:14Amongst them, most were given prison terms,
01:18:17like Hildegard Lechert,
01:18:19who was sentenced to 15 years for the ill-treatment
01:18:22that she inflicted upon deportees.
01:18:26She was sentenced to 15 years in prison
01:18:29for the crimes she committed.
01:18:33In total, only 25 of these women were condemned to death.
01:18:39For being chief warden,
01:18:41or because in the eyes of the judges,
01:18:44their particularly sadistic crimes
01:18:47had stripped them of their femininity.
01:18:50They deserved to be sentenced as men.
01:18:53Another woman, directly implicated in Nazi crimes,
01:18:56faced the death penalty.
01:19:00Before the International Tribunal in Nuremberg,
01:19:03a year after the trials of the principal heads of the Reich,
01:19:0623 doctors appeared.
01:19:10Amongst them, Hertha Oberhäuser.
01:19:17Hertha Oberhäuser was a German doctor
01:19:21Accused of crimes against humanity,
01:19:24she faced questions on the experiments on human guinea pigs
01:19:28in which she had participated.
01:19:43Four Polish victims, who had survived deportation,
01:19:47bore witness to the torture
01:19:50which Hertha Oberhäuser had inflicted upon them.
01:20:13With her lawyers, Hertha Oberhäuser
01:20:16struck on a line of defence
01:20:18to be systematically taken up by women
01:20:21accused of crimes perpetrated under the Nazis.
01:20:25In her defence, Hertha Oberhäuser
01:20:28used the image of the woman such as a tribunal,
01:20:31and the prosecution undoubtedly saw her.
01:20:37She described herself as merely an assistant,
01:20:40who was obliged to obey orders from her male superiors.
01:20:45On the 20th of September, 1947, the verdict was given.
01:20:51Military Tribunal 1 has found and adjudged you guilty
01:20:55of war crimes and crimes against humanity,
01:20:58and sentences you, Hertha Oberhäuser,
01:21:01to imprisonment for a term of 20 years,
01:21:04to be served as judge.
01:21:06It's clear that in a certain way, her strategy worked,
01:21:09because many of her male colleagues were condemned to death.
01:21:14Come on.
01:21:20Out of the 20 years of prison to which she was sentenced,
01:21:23Hertha Oberhäuser only served four,
01:21:26being granted a reduction for good conduct.
01:21:33She opened a doctor's surgery in a small town
01:21:36in northern West Germany.
01:21:44Hertha Oberhäuser was not an exception.
01:21:51The denazification, which sought to purge German society,
01:21:55spared the women implicated in Nazi crimes
01:21:58even more than it did the men.
01:22:01Nobody asked them any embarrassing questions,
01:22:04and they slipped easily through the judicial net.
01:22:08Annette Schücking weighed up the reasons for this indulgence each day.
01:22:14Having achieved her dream of becoming a magistrate,
01:22:17one of the first in West Germany,
01:22:20she couldn't submit the proof of mass shootings
01:22:23which she'd gathered during the war to the authorities.
01:22:27As she explains...
01:22:29It was impossible to speak openly to my colleagues
01:22:32who had been in the East.
01:22:34Former Nazis were everywhere.
01:22:37In West Germany,
01:22:39tracking down Nazi criminals was not a priority.
01:22:43The new state needed to concentrate its strength on construction.
01:22:54The family was all that remained for many people
01:22:57immediately after the war.
01:23:01Families were not to be destroyed,
01:23:05families were not to be destroyed
01:23:07by sending both the husband and the wife to prison.
01:23:16The women of the Reich began a new life,
01:23:19married, had children,
01:23:22as if the war had been a simple parenthesis.
01:23:26This is how it was for Lisa Lotte Meyer,
01:23:29the administrator of the Lieder district,
01:23:31who had the power of life or death
01:23:33over the workers in the ghetto,
01:23:35and for Liesel Wilhaus,
01:23:37who had killed Janowska camp deportees from her balcony.
01:23:42They're a chameleon effect,
01:23:44so they just kind of, I don't know, reinvent themselves,
01:23:47change their behaviour.
01:23:55Amongst these women,
01:23:57very few were caught up by their past lives in the following decades.
01:24:03MUSIC
01:24:08Liesel Wilhaus was questioned simply as a witness
01:24:12during enquiries into crimes carried out at Janowska,
01:24:19even though investigators had gathered damning statements.
01:24:24One Sunday in April 1943,
01:24:27from the balcony of her house,
01:24:29in the presence of her four-year-old daughter,
01:24:32she fired on a group of about 20 Jewish forced labourers
01:24:35who were working in the garden adjoining the house.
01:24:39At least two to four deportees died,
01:24:41including Jakob Helfer from Bobka.
01:24:48But the magistrates didn't consider these witness statements
01:24:51sufficient to charge Liesel Wilhaus.
01:24:55Accusations needed mainly to be based upon written proof,
01:24:58orders.
01:25:02Liesel Wilhaus definitively escaped the justice system.
01:25:13Even when investigators did manage to amass incontestable material proof,
01:25:17the response from the judicial authorities
01:25:20was not in align with the crimes committed.
01:25:27The trial of Gertrude Slotka in 1967
01:25:31was one of the most blatant examples.
01:25:35Along with her superiors,
01:25:37she was questioned concerning the deportation of Dutch Jews,
01:25:40including Anne Frank,
01:25:42who, with the publication of her diary,
01:25:45became the symbol of Holocaust victims.
01:25:54At the end of an 11-day hearing,
01:25:57Gertrude Slotka was sentenced to five years in prison
01:26:01for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity,
01:26:04to the booing of the public.
01:26:10To this day, she remains the only secretary to be sentenced.
01:26:24These trials, with similar verdicts,
01:26:27were a symbol for West German youth.
01:26:31That of a country which refused to look its Nazi past in the face.
01:26:39Protests were organised,
01:26:41to the point of bursting into the courtroom at the third Meideneck trial,
01:26:49when three of the seven female guards on trial were discharged
01:26:52through lack of incontrovertible proof.
01:27:01Hildegard Lechert, who had already been found guilty
01:27:04for crimes carried out at Auschwitz,
01:27:06was only to serve five out of the 12 years of prison
01:27:09to which she was sentenced on this occasion.
01:27:13But this trial was a turning point.
01:27:18In German public opinion,
01:27:20it was the one which made the voices of victims of the Holocaust resonate.
01:27:26The documentary filmmaker, Eberhard Fechner,
01:27:29captured survivors' statements for posterity.
01:27:39Before the camera, they spoke of the painful face-to-face
01:27:42with their torturers, particularly Hildegard Lechert.
01:27:59Fechner captured the provocative severity of Hildegard Lechert
01:28:04when she spoke of the deportees.
01:28:16A staggering blow to the silence of German society,
01:28:19the documentary was seen by nearly two million viewers in 1984.
01:28:25It called for increased vigilance
01:28:28in a society beginning its work of remembrance.
01:28:34Like many others, Annette Schuching participated in this movement.
01:28:40Some years earlier, she gave the evidence of mass shootings
01:28:43which she had collected to the Central Office
01:28:46for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.
01:28:50But it was too late.
01:28:52The addresses had changed.
01:28:54The criminals could not be found.
01:28:58It seemed necessary for her to bear witness
01:29:00in order to break the powerful taboos which persisted in German society.
01:29:07She was horrified that people could say that none of it had happened.
01:29:12She was horrified that they could pretend that few people were aware.
01:29:17And she knew she wouldn't always be around.
01:29:22She wanted to furnish the proof as a witness to the events.
01:29:27A book, something which couldn't be erased,
01:29:30so that people couldn't say,
01:29:32we didn't know.
01:29:38Annette Schuching died at the age of 97,
01:29:41two years after the publication of her secret diary
01:29:44written during the war.
01:29:50Within families, the work of remembrance
01:29:53painfully broke through the silence.
01:29:57Eighty years after the war,
01:29:59certain children dared to confront the past of their mothers.
01:30:04Like Anna-Grette Jordan,
01:30:06who after the death of Lisa Lotte
01:30:08discovered the letters she had addressed to her lover during the war.
01:30:15There was a note on the suitcase which said,
01:30:18to be burnt without reading after my death.
01:30:21I rediscovered my mother,
01:30:24because it revealed facets of her which I didn't know before.
01:30:31I also discovered how convinced she was by this ideology.
01:30:37At the end of 44,
01:30:40she still believed in a miracle.
01:30:44She still believed that when Hanweg returned from the war,
01:30:49they would leave together, with his son,
01:30:52and settle in the east.
01:30:55That they would run a large farming property,
01:30:58and that the Führer would come to visit.
01:31:02For me this was totally delirious.
01:31:07Yes, I was ashamed of my mother,
01:31:10and after that I was angry.
01:31:14But I ended up saying to myself,
01:31:18you were born in 1951.
01:31:22I accorded myself no further responsibility in the matter.
01:31:27I finally handed over the letters.
01:31:31I didn't throw them away, I gave them,
01:31:34and now that chapter of my life is closed.
01:31:38Now I can start reading other books and novels,
01:31:42and not only this type of material.
01:31:48Anna Grett gave the letters and photos of her mother
01:31:52to the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich.
01:31:57The memory of the women of the Reich has become a historical object.
01:32:02While the judicial authorities fail to uncover their crimes and sanction them,
01:32:07the work of historians is to reveal this little-known area of the Holocaust,
01:32:13which questions this unspoken history.
01:32:16Which questions this unspoken and unimagined side of women,
01:32:20and the violence of which they are capable,
01:32:23underlining that genocide is the crime of an entire society.
01:32:46The Holocaust
01:32:50The Holocaust
01:32:54The Holocaust
01:32:56The Holocaust
01:32:58The Holocaust
01:33:00The Holocaust
01:33:02The Holocaust
01:33:04The Holocaust
01:33:06The Holocaust
01:33:08The Holocaust
01:33:10The Holocaust
01:33:12The Holocaust
01:33:15The Holocaust
01:33:17The Holocaust
01:33:19The Holocaust
01:33:21The Holocaust
01:33:23The Holocaust
01:33:25The Holocaust
01:33:27The Holocaust
01:33:29The Holocaust