cover image Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich

Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich

Alison Owings. Rutgers University Press, $45 (494pp) ISBN 978-0-8135-1992-0

A vivid picture of Germany under the Nazis emerges from this collection of unsettling interviews conducted by freelance TV writer Owings with 29 women of diverse backgrounds, both Aryan and Jewish. Among the women whose lives in Germany's war-torn homefront are chronicled are the widow of a resistance leader and the wife of an SS guard, who refers to her husband's work in the Ravensbrook and Buchenwald ``manufacturing plants.'' Not only did Hitler attract the young but, according to one supporter, ``he understood how to fascinate women.'' Some of these women claim that they privately protested mistreatment of Jews and prisoners and risked their lives to assist them. Only one non-Jewish woman, however, admits to ``hearing'' that Jews were gassed. (Oct.)