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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.
00:00:53I 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
00:03:20the 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
00:03:40little 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.
00:05:15Nazism 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.
00:06:11Many 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, 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
00:07:17regime.
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.
00:08:37The effect was immediate.
00:08:39In the lecture halls of Münster Law School, you could count the number of young women
00:08:43present 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.
00:09:30I'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 favour of gender inequality.
00:11:22The 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.
00:11:57Their school study programmes and activities were consequently changed.
00:12:09the BDM, the female branch of the Hitler Youth.
00:12:121936 was even declared the year of domestic training.
00:12:22All leisure activities were also intended to prepare them for their role as a mother.
00:12:36They also had to do sport to keep them in good enough health to bear children.
00:12:43To monitor the physical condition of girls and preserve what the Nazis called pre-natal
00:12:48potential, BDM leaders called on the few female medical students who were part of the numerous
00:12:54classes.
00:12:57In Düsseldorf, Herta Oberhäuser, a final year student, signed with enthusiasm.
00:13:11After the war, she affirmed, I was called on by the BDM.
00:13:16I attended sports meets to make sure the girls didn't exert themselves too much.
00:13:21I also gave them regular medical examinations.
00:13:29Herta 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 Herta Oberhäuser, allowing her to join
00:14:03the 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
00:14:20racial grounds.
00:14:27Through drawings and slideshows, BDM members were told that the world was divided into
00:14:32hierarchical 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, the depiction that would allow us to recognize
00:15:02a Jew, a big nose, a hunchback, droopy eyes.
00:15:10That was the belief that went round at the time.
00:15:14On the other hand, there was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman, upright, both physically
00:15:21and in attitude and ideology.
00:15:30One was considered healthy, while the other was weak and sickly, and didn't deserve to
00:15:37have descendants.
00:15:48Some BDM leaders went beyond anti-Semitic indoctrination and embarked their comrades
00:15:54in open provocation.
00:15:59Melita Maschmann was 15 at the time.
00:16:03Our leader would often make us march in three ranks and cover part of the distance on the
00:16:09double.
00:16:12We had to stamp our feet as loudly as possible.
00:16:16This is where the rich Jews live, she would say.
00:16:19They need a bit of waking up from their afternoon naps.
00:16:33Since the September 1935 passing of the Nuremberg Laws, which signed a social death sentence
00:16:38for German Jews, and prohibited marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans, the police
00:16:44and the SS intensified public haranguing of mixed couples.
00:17:02Aryan women in mixed couples had their heads shaved and were exhibited in public, notably
00:17:08to children.
00:17:11The newspapers ran headlines of the trials, which sent them to jail, or later to concentration
00:17:17camps.
00:17:20Their Jewish husbands or lovers would be sentenced to death.
00:17:36Aryan women, as future mothers, became the keepers of German blood.
00:17:47They learned the Ten Commandments for finding a husband by heart.
00:17:53Keep your body pure.
00:17:57Examine the genealogy of your fiancé.
00:18:02Strive to have as many children as possible.
00:18:16Amid the excitement of Nazi activist struggles, Liesl Riedel, a young woman from a modest
00:18:21background, chose the path mapped out for German women.
00:18:29She rubbed shoulders with both the rank and file and the rising stars of the party.
00:18:38And that's where she met her husband, Gustav, who was really a street fighter, who was described
00:18:45as someone who was a real brute, kind of barely literate.
00:18:53The novice campaigner was won over by a young man who belonged to the party's elite corps,
00:18:58the SS.
00:19:02For Liesl, marrying 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.
00:19:15Her job at the region's most popular Nazi newspaper wasn't enough.
00:19:22Obtaining permission to marry from the SS was a genuine obstacle course.
00:19:27SS men couldn't marry just any woman.
00:19:31She had to be ideologically stable.
00:19:34So there were tests to take.
00:19:40Every prospective couple had to fill out reams and reams of paperwork.
00:19:45Now, this included medical certificates to show that you were in good health.
00:19:50You had to include references from people in the Nazi party.
00:19:53You had to show your family tree, and you had to go back many, many, many, many generations
00:19:58to show that everybody was good German stock.
00:20:06Liesl had to be examined by an SS doctor.
00:20:11On top of checking her teeth and their state of repair, he noted the dates of her last
00:20:16periods and had her undergo a complete gynecological examination to evaluate whether she would
00:20:22be a good enough progenitor to perpetuate the Aryan race.
00:20:28This complete control of the body was coupled with another requirement.
00:20:32The Third Reich considered the Church a political enemy.
00:20:36So Liesl had to renounce her Catholic faith so that her children would be raised with
00:20:40Nazi ideology alone.
00:20:44Her family wanted her to observe her Catholic upbringing and get married in a Catholic church
00:20:50and baptize 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, socialized and brought into the movement,
00:21:05there were kind of breaks along the way.
00:21:10In late 1938, after these three years of procedure, the SS officially permitted the wedding of
00:21:16Liesl to Gustav Vilhaus.
00:21:26She gave birth to a daughter in the spring of 1939.
00:21:32Like all newborns, her baby was monitored by the midwives.
00:21:47As public servants appointed by the Third Reich, they had to inform their superiors
00:21:52of any malformations or handicaps.
00:21:59That was immediately registered in the system, as well as the vulnerability of that person
00:22:04for the rest of his or her life.
00:22:11It would be part of the machinery of this campaign of what they called a euthanasia.
00:22:24Pauline Kneissler was one of the backbones of this policy, deployed in top secrecy in
00:22:30the spring of 1939.
00:22:33She was involved in the extermination campaign of the physically and mentally handicapped,
00:22:38both adults and children, a campaign which would go down in history as Action T4.
00:22:46She was in her 40s, an experienced nurse and a member of the Nationalist Socialist Women's
00:22:51League and the Nazi Party.
00:22:57A representative from the Chancellery made us swear an oath of secrecy and obedience.
00:23:05Our involvement was entirely voluntary.
00:23:08Those who didn't agree could withdraw.
00:23:13But not one of us expressed the slightest objection to the program.
00:23:22As part of their training, nurses were taught to no longer show empathy with certain groups
00:23:27of people.
00:23:31This implied the dehumanization of certain patients.
00:23:39Nurses began to see them more as problems than as people who needed to be taken care
00:23:43of or cured, which should be the priority of any health and care establishment.
00:23:49To them, these were people who needed to be kept away from society and then exterminated
00:23:55to prevent them from procreating.
00:24:02Pauline Kneissler and her closest colleagues visited institutions for the handicapped with
00:24:06a list of names of patients to be taken to killing centers.
00:24:15Once they had received their selection orders, they personally took care of those people.
00:24:20They helped them pack their belongings, explaining that they were moving elsewhere.
00:24:25Of course, they never told them the truth.
00:24:27They made up explanations of what was going to happen.
00:24:33And these people were taken to industrial killing centers where they were gassed.
00:24:42It was for Action T4 that the gas chambers were first used, notably at Grafenegg and
00:24:49Hadamar, where Pauline Kneissler was posted.
00:24:56The nurses were so involved that they practically escorted their patients into the changing
00:25:01room next to the gas chamber.
00:25:08Pauline Kneissler also performed lethal injections.
00:25:15She admitted as much after the war.
00:25:17I 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, almost 200,000 people, children and adults, were exterminated
00:25:36as part of Action T4.
00:25:39This was the first mass murder carried out by the Third Reich.
00:25:43And women played a central part.
00:26:05On September the 1st, 1939, German women watched their husbands, brothers and sons go off to
00:26:11war in Poland.
00:26:15They were now called on to leave their homes for a new role.
00:26:42When war broke out, it caused a big change in women's lifestyles.
00:26:50The majority of men were enlisted.
00:26:54The regime found itself torn between upholding its ideology, with women doing their utmost
00:27:01to have children, and necessity.
00:27:07From then on, Germany 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 and colonization of newly conquered
00:27:34lands.
00:27:42Melita Maschmann had climbed the ranks of the BDM, the female branch of the Hitler Youth.
00:27:48She was now a leader herself.
00:27:52Like 19,000 of her comrades, she was dispatched to Poland.
00:28:04Melita 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, by
00:28:25which we believed ourselves to be fulfilling our duty towards the Reich.
00:28:35After a month of fighting, the German army occupied the western part of Poland.
00:28:48The eastern part was controlled by the Soviet Union under Stalin, a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
00:28:53Pact.
00:28:55Melita was appointed leader of a group which was taking part in the Germanization of a
00:28:59region of western Poland, called Warteland by the Third Reich.
00:29:16It became very quickly clear that Poland was going to be a place in which radical measures
00:29:21were going to be taken, where Nazi power would be able to, as it were, rule the country.
00:29:29Rule without any hindrance.
00:29:32So Poland became, if you like, a sort of laboratory for Nazi colonization and Germanization.
00:29:43And of course, all this was at the expense of the native Polish population and the Jewish
00:29:49population.
00:29:51SS units evicted them.
00:29:59Melita, impassive, described one of the raids in her memoirs.
00:30:05One morning we were dragged out of bed for a clean-up operation.
00:30:13The SS officer told me he didn't have enough men to carry it out successfully.
00:30:20At 6am, the wagons had to be ready to leave.
00:30:25Each family was restricted to taking one wagonload of belongings.
00:30:33I heard them protesting sadly and furiously, but I calmly turned my back on them.
00:30:41The BDM was given the job of installing, in the homes from which Poles and Jews had
00:30:57been evicted, minorities of Germanic origin from the Baltic states and Romania.
00:31:05These young women were also tasked with teaching these distant Germanic cousins how to become
00:31:11good Germans.
00:31:14Overnight, young, inexperienced women found themselves in positions of authority.
00:31:24There were students who wrote enthusiastic reports about how they felt, I feel like a
00:31:32demigod here in this village, I feel empowered, I am here on the ground, I will give orders.
00:31:44There was, if you like, a cult of political will.
00:32:02The Jews that had been evicted by the Nazis were locked up in ghettos.
00:32:10They struggled to survive in inhuman conditions, notably in the city of Lodz.
00:32:18Some BDM members would visit the ghetto on their days off, as if it were a tourist attraction.
00:32:37It was a bit like going to the zoo, only here it was to see a human population thought of
00:32:44as exotic, sometimes scary and often scorned.
00:32:53Some women were simply stunned and shocked and, I think, horrified, but there were others
00:33:00who were, I'm sure, actively anti-Semitic, for whom the spectacle of the Jews crammed
00:33:08together in the ghetto did 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 to intimidate
00:33:24the Jewish population in Berlin, suppressed all compassion for those suffering the horrors
00:33:29of the ghettos. She was now a supporter of the murderous policy
00:33:34the Third Reich was about to implement.
00:33:41It's atrocious, but the destruction of Jews is a sad fact to which we must become resolved
00:33:47if we want the Warteland to become German.
00:33:53Nazi policies, tested in Poland since 1939, would suddenly step up a gear early in the
00:34:00summer of 1941 and stretch eastwards.
00:34:09On June the 22nd, Hitler broke the pact that tied him to Stalin and invaded eastern Poland
00:34:17and then the USSR.
00:34:25In the wake of the German army, which was advancing at lightning speed across Soviet
00:34:30territory, almost half a million women crossed the frontiers of the Reich.
00:34:37Not just members of the BDN and specialists of the German army, but women and children
00:34:43Not just members of the BDN and specialists in Germanisation went east.
00:34:51They were also secretaries, nurses, and wives of SS officers.
00:35:03Among them was Annette Schuecking.
00:35:08At age 21, the brilliant student who wanted to defend human rights saw her position as
00:35:13a legal intern blocked due to the democratic leanings of her family.
00:35:20To earn some points with the regime, she volunteered as a nursing assistant.
00:35:27In the train taking her to Ukraine with her new colleagues, Annette discovered the true
00:35:32nature of the war.
00:35:38At some point, everyone took out their packed breakfast and started eating, and while they
00:35:43were doing so, two soldiers told them they had killed some Jews.
00:35:49With no emotion, coldly, that shocked the four women.
00:35:55The worst thing for my mother was that the two soldiers weren't even afraid of being arrested.
00:36:02They were telling this terrible story in front of complete strangers, in the compartment,
00:36:08with impunity.
00:36:14A war of extermination unfurled in the east.
00:36:20As the German army advanced, Jewish men, women, and children were massacred.
00:36:27In Ukraine, on September the 29th and 30th, 1941, more than 33,000 people were shot dead
00:36:35in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev by the SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen.
00:36:44Annette was posted 150km from Kiev, in the city of Zvyagel, to run a soldiers' hostel.
00:36:58On her arrival, she took some photos.
00:37:05Before the war, more than half the population of the city was Jewish.
00:37:11Now, there reigned a strange atmosphere and an unusual calm.
00:37:18An older officer told her, there are no more Jews in the city.
00:37:25Not a single one.
00:37:29And then he showed her the execution sites.
00:37:35Almost 75,000 people had already been executed in the region since the start of the invasion.
00:37:44The young nursing assistant was plunged into the horror.
00:37:51She wrote to her mother, dear mum, if you knew what was going on here, you wouldn't last one day.
00:37:57But I have no idea how to leave this place. I 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.
00:38:13In front of her colleagues and the soldiers, she kept her despair to herself.
00:38:25She didn't trust them.
00:38:29She knew she was surrounded by murderers.
00:38:33People who have no moral inhibitions exude a strange odour.
00:38:38I can now pick out these people, and many of them really do smell like blood.
00:38:46And yet, a few days after Christmas 1941,
00:38:50Annette dared to speak her mind to a non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Frank.
00:38:57He told her he would soon take part in a firing squad.
00:39:03He had volunteered so he could earn a small, rapid promotion.
00:39:10My mother was horrified. Horrified that he would openly tell her something like that.
00:39:15In the end, she said to him, please don't do it. You'll never be able to sleep again if you do.
00:39:22When Schoeneck saw him a few days or weeks later, he said, you were right.
00:39:34Annette was intent on keeping a trace of the crime she was unable to prevent.
00:39:40In her diary, she wrote...
00:39:42December 28th, 1941.
00:39:45Sergeant Frank received the order to shoot 6,000 Jews,
00:39:49and 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 6th, 1942.
00:40:07Last Thursday, 3,000 Jews were rounded up in the night,
00:40:10and transported the next morning 8 kilometres away,
00:40:13and shot by the SS and Ukrainian militiamen.
00:40:18She noted down the numbers of the military postings,
00:40:22wrote her accounts in key words only, the fear of someone discovering her diary.
00:40:28And at one moment, she wrote to her parents,
00:40:32please keep my letters and my photos in a safe place.
00:40:39And I think that gave her strength to get through that period.
00:40:55While these mass executions continued,
00:40:58the occupation authorities set up their headquarters in the conquered territories.
00:41:05And with them came young secretaries,
00:41:09who would play a pivotal role in the exploitation
00:41:12of the surviving Jewish populations in the ghettos.
00:41:21In Lida, 19-year-old Lieselotte Meyer
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, discovered Lieselotte's past after her death.
00:41:54Having a high status was very important to my mother.
00:41:57She always wanted to rise above her social rank, our social rank.
00:42:05At 20, 22, 24 years old, you still have a lot of dreams.
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. It was more dangerous there.
00:42:30She must have been someone who wanted a little adventure
00:42:33and had that kind of gumption.
00:42:40These women in their 20s were still unmarried and without children.
00:42:45The world was their oyster.
00:42:48They wanted to build a career,
00:42:50and they saw themselves in some way as pioneers, as precursors.
00:42:59In the Lida ghetto,
00:43:01the district commissioner had set up workshops
00:43:03where Jews were subjected to forced labour.
00:43:10Lieselotte Meyer was in charge of selecting men and women
00:43:14textile workers, carpenters, joiners and mechanics,
00:43:20in good health and aged between 15 and 60.
00:43:26Lieselotte Meyer is a classic example
00:43:29of a secretary placed in the terror.
00:43:36She was responsible for producing those labour ID cards.
00:43:41They were gold. They 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,
00:44:02the young secretary was present at meetings
00:44:05where mass executions were organised.
00:44:09Her job was to coordinate with the local police and the SS.
00:44:15On several occasions, she even attended executions.
00:44:23She didn't have the reputation as being a sadistic,
00:44:26kind of very visibly violent person.
00:44:29She was a very efficient administrator
00:44:32and callous to the extent that she didn't care
00:44:35about the fate of the Jews,
00:44:38and that's what makes her an accomplice in my mind.
00:44:46Having become the mistress of her superior, Hermann Hanweg,
00:44:50she not only had access to the safe
00:44:53where 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 to 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.
00:45:28I have these coasters stamped Lieder joinery workshop.
00:45:34They were clearly made in the ghetto.
00:45:39She 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,
00:46:08in front of the Jewish labourers.
00:46:12She talked about going for sleigh rides.
00:46:20She was very nostalgic about the period.
00:46:25For sure, they were the happiest days of her life.
00:46:35The Jews of the ghetto were not only the first
00:46:39The Jews of the Lido ghetto would be systematically murdered
00:46:43during the next phase of the genocide that was being planned,
00:46:47the Final Solution.
00:46:50The women of the Reich,
00:46:52far from being mere eyewitnesses or accomplices,
00:46:55would play a central, deadly role,
00:46:58behind the fences of the camps
00:47:01and within the intimacy of SS families.
00:47:08MUSIC PLAYS
00:47:38MUSIC FADES
00:48:09CHEERING
00:48:20Under the Third Reich,
00:48:22hundreds of thousands of women
00:48:25took up active service within the regime.
00:48:33Their names were Hildegard,
00:48:36Bertha, Liesel, Erna.
00:48:40During the Second World War,
00:48:42these secretaries, doctors,
00:48:45wives of SS officers or concentration camp guards,
00:48:48participated in the criminal policies carried out by the Nazis.
00:48:59Accomplices, and in some cases, murderers,
00:49:02they were essential cogs in the wheel of the regime,
00:49:05at the very heart of the Holocaust.
00:49:21The Netherlands, 1942.
00:49:26Gertrude Slotke, a 40-year-old secretary
00:49:29and member of the Nazi Party,
00:49:31worked in the German occupation administration.
00:49:35CLATTERING
00:49:44She was a lynchpin in the Jewish Affairs Department.
00:49:50This administration,
00:49:52set up in all the countries occupied by the Third Reich,
00:49:55was in charge of organising the deportation
00:49:58of millions of European Jews
00:50:00to concentration and extermination camps
00:50:03as part of the final solution.
00:50:08Gertrude Slotke quickly assumed responsibilities.
00:50:15This came about because her superior left a sort of vacuum.
00:50:20He was not often present.
00:50:23So she took advantage of this opportunity in a very classic way
00:50:27and took over in order to fulfil her own ambitions
00:50:31and implement her own ideas.
00:50:38Gertrude Slotke regularly visited Westerbork,
00:50:41the Netherlands' main transit camp,
00:50:43from where most of the Dutch deportation convoys
00:50:46towards concentration and extermination camps departed.
00:51:02Certain survivors told how she came and went in the camp like a bat,
00:51:09always 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.
00:51:27Armed with forms drawn up upon their arrival,
00:51:31Gertrude Slotke called in the prisoners one by one.
00:51:37She decided which Jews were to be given a respite
00:51:40because they were still useful to the German war industry.
00:51:45The others were in danger of being deported within 48 hours.
00:51:51The decisions that she was making
00:51:54were being made simultaneously all over Europe by German, but by men.
00:51:59The fact that she's a woman is very unusual and rare.
00:52:06She was known for her incredible social coldness
00:52:10towards the people she dealt with on a daily basis
00:52:15during the organisation of deportations.
00:52:19She generally proved to be implacable and decided upon deportation.
00:52:29You could say that the role was a Schreibtischtäter or a desktop murderer.
00:52:35She was giving orders from behind a desk
00:52:38that were ultimately costing people lives.
00:52:42Gertrude Slotke dedicated herself tirelessly to her morbid work.
00:52:52She had no qualms about making her radical views known in high places.
00:52:57On several occasions, she went to Berlin
00:53:00and advocated for the freedom of the Jewish community.
00:53:04She remained at her post until the last deportation convoy left Westerbork.
00:53:11The one carrying Anne Frank and her family.
00:53:16She was the first woman to be deported to Germany.
00:53:22She was the first woman to be deported to Germany.
00:53:28She was the first woman to be deported to Germany.
00:53:35She was the first woman to be deported to Germany.
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.
00:53:59The Dutch resistance fighter Selma van der Peer
00:54:03was deported to Ravensbruck, 80km from Berlin.
00:54:09At the age of 98, she remembers her arrival
00:54:12at the only women's camp in the concentration system.
00:54:18Outside were male guards, SS's, and women guards.
00:54:24They were shouting,
00:54:27snell, snell, snell, quick, quick, quick, out, out.
00:54:30And they were having sticks,
00:54:34and so everybody was very much in a hurry
00:54:37and didn't dare to do anything.
00:54:40There were women, they were in grey uniform,
00:54:43that's why we called them mice.
00:54:45You tried to behave, you tried to do what you were told to do,
00:54:50but then everybody else did.
00:54:53Because if they didn't, we could be killed.
00:55:01Only drawings produced covertly,
00:55:04in particular those of Violette Rougier-Lecoq,
00:55:07who was also deported to Ravensbruck,
00:55:09show the role of the female guards at the camp,
00:55:12omnipresent and threatening, with their capes and dogs.
00:55:20They all began their careers here, at Ravensbruck,
00:55:24the only guard training centre for women,
00:55:27the official album of which shows a sanitised image far from reality.
00:55:34New recruits were carefully chosen by the SS,
00:55:38according to one criterion.
00:55:41They were to have no specific competence
00:55:44and no experience of the prison environment,
00:55:47the so-called normal young women.
00:55:54At that time, a normal woman referred to one who conformed with the regime,
00:55:59who thought that it was right to imprison its opponents,
00:56:03to persecute them,
00:56:06meaning that the female guards weren't the only ones to think like that,
00:56:10but that it was the case with the whole of German society.
00:56:17They came from modest backgrounds, like Hildegard Lechet,
00:56:21who had previously been employed in a munitions factory.
00:56:30For these working-class women, who had worked from the age of 14,
00:56:35who had sometimes had difficult lives,
00:56:38working in the camps represented certain non-negligible advantages.
00:56:44Hildegard Lechet discovered that, in addition to a better salary,
00:56:49she would have health insurance
00:56:52and comfortable accommodation on a new housing estate built by deportees.
00:56:59But that wasn't all.
00:57:02When she came to the camp, she was already looking after two children.
00:57:07It was handy for her because Ravensbruck also had a nursery school.
00:57:13So she easily fitted into the SS community.
00:57:20The rise in social status of Hildegard Lechet and her colleagues
00:57:24is even apparent in the uniform which they were given.
00:57:28Grey, like that of a soldier, with boots like those of the SS,
00:57:32the elite Nazi corps.
00:57:38These new wardens were quite proud.
00:57:44Some 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.
00:58:14The ethnologist Germaine Tillion, deported to Ravensbruck in 1943,
00:58:19remembered precisely.
00:58:22A small warden, 20 years of age,
00:58:25was so little aware of correct behaviour at the camp on the day of her arrival
00:58:29that she said, excuse me, when she passed in front of a prisoner.
00:58:34It took her exactly four days to adapt.
00:58:39The new wardens followed experienced ones,
00:58:43their training being a process of learning by doing.
00:58:46They observed the workings of the entire system
00:58:49and reproduced the way in which things were done.
00:58:52They were told, you have the power here,
00:58:55and you can dominate the others, who are not necessarily human beings.
00:59:02So they thought, I kick a detainee once,
00:59:05I see that nothing happens, I am not held to account,
00:59:08there are no consequences for me, I am not sanctioned,
00:59:11and I feel all-powerful.
00:59:16Out of 3,500 camp guards trained at Ravensbruck,
00:59:20only a handful refused the work.
00:59:26There were three women who, after arriving, said to themselves,
00:59:30this is absolutely terrible.
00:59:33They 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.
00:59:54Hildegard Lechert did not have such scruples.
00:59:59In October 1942, having become a warden,
01:00:03she began her deadly career in the Majdanek camp in Poland.
01:00:10The epicentre of the Holocaust.
01:00:16Majdanek 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 chamber.
01:00:54At Majdanek, most of the detainees did not die in the gas chambers,
01:00:59but from abuse or illness.
01:01:02So it is quite clear that the camp wardens
01:01:05had a lot of responsibility for what happened to them.
01:01:12Hildegard Lechert was nicknamed Bloody Brigida by the deportees
01:01:16because of her extreme violence.
01:01:20Every morning, during roll call, which could last for hours,
01:01:24she decided who was fit for forced labour and who would be gassed.
01:01:31One survivor recalled...
01:01:33Brigida would appear with several SS men
01:01:36who would point fingers at certain women.
01:01:39Brigida would fetch them from the row,
01:01:42yanking them by the shoulders or by the hair or ears.
01:01:46Brigida always had a smile on her face as she worked.
01:01:50She struck our heads and faces in a dreadful manner
01:01:53with her thick, long whip.
01:02:00This violence was also often an escalation game
01:02:04between an SS officer and a warden.
01:02:08Many female wardens tried to gain respect from their superiors
01:02:13by proving that they were just as capable of violence as them,
01:02:19simply to legitimize their own position in this system of violence.
01:02:29The survivor had to be able to defend herself
01:02:34The survivor, Hanna Narkievicz-Jodko, recalled...
01:02:39A 25-year-old female prisoner was caught with turnips.
01:02:43An SS man began carrying out punishment.
01:02:46Lechert jumped forward, grabbed the whip out of his hand
01:02:50and began whipping with all the strength she could muster.
01:02:54Apparently, the SS man wasn't whipping hard enough to suit Frau Lechert.
01:03:00Hildegard Lechert interpreted the rules
01:03:04in a way that she could do whatever she wanted.
01:03:10We know that she trampled one detainee to death.
01:03:24The systematic daily violence of the female wardens
01:03:27ended up breaking the deportees,
01:03:29who were already exhausted from lack of hygiene
01:03:32and the strenuous forced labor.
01:03:41At Ravensbruck, Selma van der Peer tried at all costs
01:03:46to avoid going to the infirmary.
01:03:50She was taken there after having been beaten unconscious.
01:03:58Two girls holed me up for the counting
01:04:03and then took me to the revier, to the hospital.
01:04:06And 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 Ravensbruck hospital alive.
01:04:26I was so badly done that the officer in the guard
01:04:30who was talking there to a German nurse said,
01:04:34I thought that Dutch women would be dead by now.
01:04:38And I saw terrible things happening there.
01:04:41People being thrown from the third floor down
01:04:44because they couldn't get to themselves.
01:04:47They couldn't do it on their own.
01:04:49It was terrible.
01:04:56Hertha Oberheuser, the ambitious medical student
01:04:59for whom the Hitler Youth had been a first stepping stone,
01:05:02had worked in this hospital since 1940.
01:05:09It was an early opportunity in her career.
01:05:12Admitted into this closed, masculine domain,
01:05:15she was the only female doctor in the camp for nearly two and a half years.
01:05:20As of the summer of 1942,
01:05:23under the direction of the personal doctor of Himmler,
01:05:26the head of the SS,
01:05:28she participated in a special programme,
01:05:32finding treatments for wounded soldiers.
01:05:39For Hertha, it was an unexpected promotion.
01:05:43It was practically impossible for a woman in Germany
01:05:46to enter a surgical unit.
01:05:48It was only upon arriving at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
01:05:52that I had this possibility.
01:05:58Hertha and her colleagues carried out
01:06:01particularly sadistic experiments on 86 deportees.
01:06:05They inflicted wounds on them to provoke gang violence.
01:06:10They inflicted wounds on them to provoke gangrene.
01:06:17To this effect, foreign bodies were implanted in these women,
01:06:22mainly in the legs.
01:06:24Various foreign bodies were used,
01:06:27such as wood, shrapnel,
01:06:29anything that soldiers might be wounded with in the field.
01:06:35Then they observed the evolution of these wounds.
01:06:41Among these guinea pigs were Polish resistance fighters
01:06:46who nicknamed themselves the Kaninchen, or laboratory rabbits.
01:06:56Risking their lives, they retrieved a camera
01:06:59found in the requisitioned affairs of another deportee
01:07:03and secretly photographed each other.
01:07:11They passed the film to Germaine Tillion
01:07:14in the hope that this visual proof might survive the war.
01:07:24Some of them succumbed to these experiments.
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,
01:07:52that of the SS wives.
01:07:58These families lived in the immediate vicinity
01:08:01of the concentration camps.
01:08:04These housewives lived an upper-middle-class family life,
01:08:08well-ordered and completely normal in appearance.
01:08:19Children were sometimes born in these places.
01:08:27And, of course, people came to visit.
01:08:30Through conversations with other wives,
01:08:33they had quite a clear idea of what happened in the camps.
01:08:39It would be absurd to imagine that these wives
01:08:43could live just next to the concentration camps for years
01:08:47without noticing anything.
01:09:01Liesel Wilhaus, who had had so much trouble
01:09:05having her marriage confirmed by the SS,
01:09:08since 1942 lived with her daughter opposite the Janowska camp,
01:09:13where her husband, Gustav, was commandant in occupied Poland.
01:09:21She lived alongside the camp,
01:09:24in the house which went with her husband's position.
01:09:28For comfort, she had had a balcony built.
01:09:40The tango of death, played by deportees,
01:09:43was regularly to be heard coming from the camp.
01:09:50This was the sign that acts of torture
01:09:53were currently being perpetrated by the SS.
01:09:59One of the prisoners, Ziv Porat,
01:10:03secretly made drawings which show this barbarity.
01:10:09Janowska was one of the worst Nazi killing centres.
01:10:13The cruelty was extreme.
01:10:21The violence was just a few metres away.
01:10:25Death 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.
01:10:35Before the eyes of the family, before the eyes of the wife,
01:10:39before the eyes of the children.
01:10:45On 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
01:11:07by shooting detainees in the camp to the delight of the others.
01:11:14The little girl of the house applauded enthusiastically.
01:11:20We were socialising her in a way that made it seem like
01:11:24this was an acceptable form of recreation.
01:11:29The murders by Liesl Wilhaus were 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 or within the camp
01:11:46with the balcony and the shooting from the balcony and down into the camp,
01:11:51that scene, that was rather common, actually.
01:12:02In this atmosphere of total impunity,
01:12:06Erna Petri, who had grown up in a family of poor country folk,
01:12:10lived a life of lady of the manor on an agricultural domain
01:12:14which her husband managed on behalf of the SS.
01:12:18At the age of 23, she was mother to two children.
01:12:30In September 1943, she brought back to the house six Jewish children
01:12:35who had managed to escape from a deportation convoy
01:12:38and who had hidden at the side of the road.
01:12:42They followed her back to the farm.
01:12:46They trusted her.
01:12:48They saw her in her, you know, 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 on the terrace of their manor
01:13:08and they were talking about doling bullets out in the back of the neck
01:13:12and so she kind of followed that.
01:13:14That's how she learned.
01:13:15She didn't go through any training.
01:13:17She was the wife of an SS officer.
01:13:19And she did that and showed no remorse.
01:13:27These individual crimes, committed in the domestic environment,
01:13:31were part of the genocide.
01:13:34The murderous wives of the SS, such as Liesel and Erna,
01:13:38saw no contradiction with their status as mothers in these actions.
01:13:44They're not homicidal maniacs.
01:13:48They're not really sociopaths.
01:13:52Violence is a necessity as a sign of the strength of the race,
01:13:57as a tool of terror for securing their power.
01:14:03That was part of the Nazi ideology.
01:14:09After the war, Erna stated...
01:14:13In those times, as I carried out the shootings,
01:14:16I was barely 25 years old, still young and inexperienced.
01:14:20I lived only among SS men who carried out shootings of Jewish persons.
01:14:25I wanted to prove myself to the SS men.
01:14:28I wanted to show them that I, as a woman, could conduct myself like a man.
01:14:33So I shot six Jewish children.
01:14:47The war, which was intended to impose the domination of the Third Reich over Europe,
01:14:52turned to the advantage of the Allies.
01:14:56Like all Germans settled in the East,
01:14:58Lieselotter, Erna and Liesel fled before the Red Army with one hope.
01:15:04That of returning home.
01:15:08As they advanced, the Soviets and the Anglo-Americans
01:15:12discovered the horror of the camps.
01:15:26At Ravensbruck, Selma van der Peer, the Dutch resistance fighter,
01:15:31was liberated by the Red Cross in April 1945,
01:15:35a week before the arrival of the Red Army.
01:15:39A nice man gave me a cigarette.
01:15:42And he gave me a light on the first cigarette in all this time.
01:15:47And my guard, my female guard, was hanging on the wall.
01:15:53My guard, my female guard, was hanging out of the window of her barrack.
01:15:59And she called out and said,
01:16:01Don't smoke, Marga.
01:16:04And he said, the boy said,
01:16:06She has nothing to tell you about anymore.
01:16:08You can smoke as much as you like.
01:16:10You are free.
01:16:12It was at that moment that I knew I was free.
01:16:16The guards who were still inside the camps were arrested.
01:16:25For the stunned allies, judging the crimes of the Third Reich was imperative.
01:16:31The female guards were amongst the first to be judged for their crimes,
01:16:35as of the autumn of 1945 in occupied Germany, as in communist Poland.
01:16:44For the first time, Hildegard Lechert,
01:16:47now a member of the Red Army,
01:16:49was allowed to join the Red Army.
01:16:53For the first time, Hildegard Lechert,
01:16:56nicknamed Bloody Brigida,
01:16:58appeared in front of the cameras.
01:17:03She appeared before the Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow
01:17:07for crimes committed at Auschwitz,
01:17:10where she worked after Ravensbruck and Majdanek.
01:17:16Amongst the accused were four other female guards,
01:17:19and 35 SS men.
01:17:25For many of the journalists and judges of the time,
01:17:28the crimes of the female guards were incomprehensible.
01:17:33How could women be involved in such violence?
01:17:42The reasoning was as follows.
01:17:44Women are peace-loving by nature.
01:17:47They have a maternal streak,
01:17:51and therefore could not have committed acts of violence.
01:17:57Today, it's still difficult to imagine
01:18:00that women could have been criminals,
01:18:03Nazi criminals.
01:18:10During the post-war trials,
01:18:12judges adhered to this gender-based rule.
01:18:18and condemned only 77 female guards out of 3,500.
01:18:24Amongst them, most were given prison terms,
01:18:26like Hildegard Lechert,
01:18:28who was sentenced to 15 years
01:18:30for the ill-treatment that she inflicted upon deportees.
01:18:34In total, only 25 of these women were condemned to death.
01:18:40For being chief warden,
01:18:42or because in the eyes of the judges,
01:18:44their particularly sadistic crimes
01:18:46had stripped them of their femininity.
01:18:50They deserved to be sentenced as men.
01:19:00Another woman, directly implicated in Nazi crimes,
01:19:04faced the death penalty.
01:19:08Before the International Tribunal in Nuremberg,
01:19:11a year after the trials of the principal heads of the Reich,
01:19:1423 doctors appeared.
01:19:18Amongst them, Hertha Oberhäuser.
01:19:24Accused of crimes against humanity,
01:19:26she faced questions on the experiments on human guinea pigs
01:19:29in which she had participated.
01:19:31...of the right leg, including thigh, leg and foot.
01:19:38Most remarkable finding in Miss Dido's case...
01:19:44Four Polish victims, who had survived deportation,
01:19:47bore witness to the torture
01:19:49which Hertha Oberhäuser had inflicted upon them.
01:19:53Would you please stand up?
01:19:56Please stand.
01:19:57And will you gradually turn around.
01:19:59Very slowly turn around.
01:20:02You can compare here the two legs,
01:20:04and you notice the marked accuracy of the legs compared to the other.
01:20:13With her lawyers, Hertha Oberhäuser struck on a line of defence
01:20:17which was to be systematically taken up by women
01:20:20accused of crimes perpetrated under the Nazis.
01:20:24In her defence, Hertha Oberhäuser used the image of the woman
01:20:29such as the tribunal, and the prosecution undoubtedly saw her.
01:20:36She described herself as merely an assistant
01:20:39who was obliged to obey orders from her male superiors.
01:20:47On the 20th of September, 1947, the verdict was given.
01:20:51Military Tribunal 1 has found and adjudged you guilty of war crimes
01:20:55and crimes against humanity,
01:20:57and sentences you, Hertha Oberhäuser,
01:21:00to imprisonment for a term of 20 years, to be served as...
01:21:04It's clear that in a certain way, her strategy worked,
01:21:08because many of her male colleagues were condemned to death.
01:21:13Out of the 20 years of prison to which she was sentenced,
01:21:17Hertha Oberhäuser only served four,
01:21:20being granted a reduction for good conduct.
01:21:27She opened a doctor's surgery in a small town in northern West Germany.
01:21:33Hertha Oberhäuser was not an exception.
01:21:39The de-Nazification, which sought to purge German society,
01:21:43spared the women implicated in Nazi crimes
01:21:46even more than it did the men.
01:21:49Nobody asked Hertha Oberhäuser for help.
01:21:54Hertha Oberhäuser was the only woman in Germany
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.
01:22:11Annette Schücking weighed up the reasons for this indulgence each day.
01:22:16Having achieved her dream of becoming a magistrate,
01:22:19one of the first in West Germany,
01:22:22she couldn't submit the proof of mass shootings
01:22:25which she'd gathered during the war to the authorities.
01:22:29As she explains...
01:22:31It was impossible to speak openly to my colleagues who had been in the East.
01:22:36Former Nazis were everywhere.
01:22:42In West Germany, tracking down Nazi criminals was not a priority.
01:22:47The new state needed to concentrate its strength on construction.
01:22:56The family was all that remained for many people immediately after the war.
01:23:04Families were not to be destroyed
01:23:07by sending both the husband and the wife to prison.
01:23:15The 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 Lothar Meyer,
01:23:29the administrator of the Lieder district,
01:23:31who had the power of life or death over the workers in the ghetto,
01:23:35and for Liesel Wilhaus,
01:23:37who had killed Janowska camp deportees from her balcony.
01:23:42There were chameleon effects,
01:23:44so they just kind of, I don't know, reinvent themselves,
01:23:48change their behaviour.
01:23:53Amongst these women,
01:23:56very few were caught up by their past lives in the following decades.
01:24:08Liesel Wilhaus was questioned simply as a witness
01:24:12during enquiries into crimes carried out at Janowska.
01:24:17Even though investigators had gathered damning statements.
01:24:23One Sunday in April 1943,
01:24:26from the balcony of her house,
01:24:28in the presence of her four-year-old daughter,
01:24:31she fired on a group of about 20 Jewish forced labourers
01:24:34who were working in the garden adjoining the house.
01:24:38At least two to four deportees died,
01:24:41including Jakob Helfer from Bobkar.
01:24:46But the magistrates didn't consider these witness statements sufficient
01:24:51to charge Liesel Wilhaus.
01:24:54Accusations needed mainly to be based upon written proof, orders.
01:25:00Liesel Wilhaus definitively escaped the justice system.
01:25:06Even when investigators did manage to amass incontestable material proof,
01:25:11the response from the judicial authorities
01:25:14was not in line with the crimes committed.
01:25:20The trial of Gertrude Slotka in 1967
01:25:24was one of the most blatant examples.
01:25:28Along with her superiors,
01:25:30she was questioned concerning the deportation of Dutch Jews,
01:25:34including Anne Frank,
01:25:36who, with the publication of her diary,
01:25:39became the symbol of Holocaust victims.
01:25:48At the end of an 11-day hearing,
01:25:51Gertrude Slotka was found guilty of murder.
01:25:55At the end of the 11-day hearing,
01:25:58Gertrude 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.
01:26:11To this day, she remains the only secretary to be sentenced.
01:26:25The Nazi murders, with similar verdicts,
01:26:28were 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
01:26:53without revertible proof.
01:27:00Hildegard Lechert,
01:27:02who had already been found guilty for 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.
01:27:12But this trial was a turning point.
01:27:17In German public opinion,
01:27:19it was the one which made the voices of victims of the Holocaust resonate.
01:27:25The documentary filmmaker Eberhard Fechner
01:27:28captured 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.
01:27:50SPEAKS GERMAN
01:28:01Fechner captured the provocative severity of Hildegard Lechert
01:28:06when she spoke of the deportees.
01:28:09SPEAKS GERMAN
01:28:17A staggering blow to the silence of German society,
01:28:21the documentary was seen by nearly two million viewers in 1984.
01:28:26It called for increased vigilance
01:28:28in a society beginning its work of remembrance.
01:28:32Like many others, Annette Schuching participated in this movement.
01:28:39Some years earlier, she gave the evidence of mass shootings
01:28:43which she had collected
01:28:45to the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.
01:28:49But it was too late.
01:28:51The addresses had changed.
01:28:53The criminals could not be found.
01:28:56It seemed necessary for her to bear witness
01:28:59in order to break the powerful taboos which persisted in German society.
01:29:06She was horrified that people could say that none of it had happened.
01:29:11She was horrified that they could pretend that few people were aware.
01:29:16And she knew she wouldn't always be around.
01:29:21She wanted to furnish the proof as a witness to the events.
01:29:26A book.
01:29:28Something which couldn't be erased,
01:29:30so that people couldn't say,
01:29:32we didn't know.
01:29:37Annette Schuching died at the age of 97,
01:29:40two years after the publication of her secret diary,
01:29:43written during the war.
01:29:49Within families,
01:29:51the work of remembrance painfully broke through the silence.
01:29:56Eighty years after the war,
01:29:58certain children dared to confront the past of their mothers.
01:30:03Like Anna-Grette Jordan,
01:30:05who after the death of Lisa Lotte
01:30:07discovered 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.
01:30:25I rediscovered my mother,
01:30:27because it revealed facets of her which I didn't know before.
01:30:34I also discovered how convinced she was by this ideology.
01:30:41At the end of 1944,
01:30:43she still believed in a miracle.
01:30:45She 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.
01:31:01For me this was totally delirious.
01:31:05Yes, I was ashamed of my mother.
01:31:08And after that I was angry.
01:31:11But I ended up saying to myself,
01:31:14you were born in 1951.
01:31:18I accorded myself no further responsibility in the matter.
01:31:23I finally handed over the letters.
01:31:27I didn't throw them away.
01:31:29I gave them.
01:31:31And now that chapter of my life is closed.
01:31:34Now I can start reading other books and novels.
01:31:38And not only this type of material.
01:31:49Anna 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 history,
01:32:06and the judicial authorities fail to uncover their crimes and sanction them,
01:32:10the work of historians is to reveal this little-known area of the Holocaust,
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.
01:32:37The Holocaust
01:32:41The Holocaust
01:32:46The Holocaust
01:32:51The Holocaust
01:32:56The Holocaust
01:33:01The Holocaust
01:33:06The Holocaust
01:33:16The Holocaust
01:33:22The Holocaust
01:33:26You