Abstract
This chapter is based on the findings from the Gestapo case files pertain-ing to forced foreign workers and foreign minorities. It mainly recon-structs gender oppression as it manifested itself in these files. It looks at gender oppression, first from the angle of forced women workers, mostly young girls, who were employed in industries and households and put up in camps or private houses. By virtue of their legally defenceless and vulnerable position vis-à-vis their ‘Aryan’ male superiors they were exposed to all kinds of sexual and physical exploitation both in the workplace and ‘at home’. Secondly, it explores gender oppression faced by ‘Aryan’ women who dared to have friendly and even physical rela-tions with foreign workers. While female foreign workers denounced their ‘Aryan’ tormentors to the higher authorities for harassing them sex-ually, ‘Aryan’ women who had sexual or friendly relations with foreign workers became victims of predominantly male denouncers who sought to punish them for daring to break the racial laws of the regime, for choosing `racially inferior men’ and for rejecting their own husbands. The chapter is divided into four categories of accused. The first category consists of female foreign workers who were sexually abused by their German superiors. The second deals with foreign workers, mostly young girls, who were selected for Germanisation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Himmler set up the RSHA or the Reich Security Head Office in Berlin on 27 September 1939. He appointed Reinhard Heydrich as the head of the RSHA. It controlled the concentration camp system and ‘processed’ the meagre belongings of murdered camp inmates. The deployment of foreign labour was planned and executed by the RSHA, which contracted out foreign forced labour to both SS and private industries. In fact, in 1942 Himmler managed to get a free hand from the Reich’s Justice Minister Thierack in matters relating to the persecution of Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians and Poles. Henceforth, all cases involving these ethnic minorities were nor-mally referred to the RSHA by the Gestapo for further action, and not to the judiciary. This was considered to be a more effective and speedy means of handling these ‘aliens’ to the community. See Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 272–3. Reinhard Riirup (ed.), Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reichssicherheitshauptamt on the ‘Prinz-Albrecht-Terrain’: a Documentation (Berlin, 1989), p. 70. On the ensuing rivalry between the RSHA and the judiciary regarding the persecution of racially foreign people, see Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, pp. 244–5.
Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, pp. 122–9; Birthe Kundrus, Kriegerfrauen: Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhaltnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1995), p. 382; Tamara Frankenberger, Wir waren wie Vieh: Lebensgeschichtliche Erinnerungen ehemaliger sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiterinnen (Munster, 1997), pp. 39, 46ff.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 199.
Birthe Kundrus, ‘Verbotener Umgang: Liebesbeziehungen zwischen Auslander und Deutschen 1939–1945’, in Katharina Hoffmann and Andreas Lembeck (Hrsg.) Nationalsozialismus und Zwangsarbeit in der Region Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1999), pp. 149–70, here p. 155.
Ibid., p. 165.
Ibid., p. 162–3.
Accounts of such everyday deviance and non-conformism are available in oral history writings on forced women workers. See, for example, Wladimir Lipski and Bogdan Tschaly, Mddchen wo seid Ihr? (Zeuthen, 1995): hunger strike by camp inmates, pp. 81–2, 125; attempt to flee, pp. 93 and 103; refusal to work, p. 107; seeking illegal contact with sympathetic Germans, pp. 25, 64–5 and 119. Ulrich Herbert, A History o f Foreign Labour in Germany 1880–1980 (Michigan, 1990), p. 179; Owings, Frauen, pp. 165–7.
In the first phase of birth policies regarding women workers, pregnant workers from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine were dispatched to collection camps, and then returned to their homeland to avoid the cost of having to care for them. This practice resulted in some women deliberately incapaci-tating themselves in order to be reunited with their families. To counter this, abortions were encouraged for Polish and Russian women from 1942 onwards. Those who were expected to bear racially ‘undesirable’ babies were forcibly aborted. If it was too late to perform abortions, the babies were deposited in ‘child collection centres’ where they were either starved or mur-dered with lethal medication. The children of racially ‘valuable’ female foreign workers were separated from their mothers and farmed out to German foster parents by the Nazi welfare services. See Burleigh and Wippermann, Racial State, p. 263; Johanna Seebacher, ‘Vor Maschinen stelle ich keine deutschen Frauen: Ausländische Zwangsarbeiterinnen in Bonn 1939–1945’, in Annette Kuhn (Hrsg.), Frauenleben im NS Alltag (Pfaffenweiler, 1994), pp. 97–131, here pp. 114–15; Herbert, Foreign Labour, p. 170.
Johan Meijer and Diete Oudesluijs, ‘Sag, wann haben diese Leiden endlich mal ein Ende? Schicksale polnischer Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangaarbeiter’, in Rimco Spanjer, Diete Oudesluijs and Johan Meijer (Hrsg.), ZurArbeitgezwungen (Bremen, 1999), pp. 119–32 (123).
Franz Siedler, Prostitution, Homosexualitat Selbstverstummelung: Probleme der deutschen Sanitatsfuhrung 1939–1945 (Neckargemund, 1977), pp. 135–92.
Himmler’s directive of 31 January 1940 pertaining to contacts between German women and prisoners of war stated: I. German women and girls whose contacts with prisoners of war are of a nature which grossly offend healthy racial feeling are to be taken into pro-tective custody until further notice, and are to be sent to a concentration camp for at least one year. Any social contact and specially all sexual inter-course is understood as a gross offence against the healthy racial feeling. II. Should women and girls of a locality want to pillory the woman in question publicly, or want to shave off her hair prior to her transporta-tion to a concentration camp, the police is not to intervene (source: Riirup (ed.), Topography o f Terror, p. 103). However, in most of the cases where women were put in a pillory, it was done on the initiative of the state and party functionaries. For example, Ulrich Herbert tells that in Gifhorn the NSDAP Kreisleiter himself cut the hair of Frau W. for sullying the honour of German women (source: Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, p. 80). Benjamin Eckstein/Elmar Welter cite a case from Bornheim of 17-year-old B. whose head was shaved. She was placed on the pillory in front of the Rathaus of Bonn. A sign hanging around her neck said, ‘I have a love affair with a Pole’, and her love letters were read aloud by the circle propaganda leader of the Nazi party. Source: Benjamin Eckstein and Elmar Welter, ‘Denunziationen: ein Element der NS-Frauen Offentlichkeit’, in Annette Kuhn (Hrsg.), Frauenleben im NS Alltag (Pfaffenweiler, 1994), pp. 132–45, here pp. 144–5. Gellately cites cases of such ‘popular justice’ carried out on the initiative of party functionaries from Unterfranken, whereby German women were placed in caged pillories with shaven heads. They were carrying signs saying, ‘I have sullied the honour of the German woman’, ‘I have been a dishonourable German woman in that I sought and had relations with Poles. By doing that I exclude myself from the community of the people’ (source: Gellately, Gestapo, pp. 236–9). In a case cited by Erich Kasberger, even the BDM girls took part in shaving the heads of two German women who had affairs with French POWs. See Kasberger, Heldinnen Waren Wir Keine, pp. 93–8. This pattern of popular justice was repeated across the Reich for creating a terri-fying impact on German women in order to keep them away from foreign men. It created a fear psychosis in the womenfolk. An SD report of August 1942 mentions that some German women committed suicide upon learn-ing that their involvement with foreign workers had been reported. Source: Gellately, Gestapo, p. 243.
Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, pp. 122–9; Bernd Schlimmer, Recht ohne Gerechtigkeit: Zur Tatigkeit der Berliner Sondergerichte im Nationalsozailismus (Berlin, 1984), pp. 85–91.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2003 Vandana Joshi
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Joshi, V. (2003). Faces of Gender Oppression: the ‘Aryan’ Interface with ‘Racially Foreign’ Workers. In: Gender and Power in the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511071_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511071_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51075-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51107-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)