‘We Forgot All Jews and Poles’: German Women and the ‘Ethnic Struggle’ in Nazi-occupied Poland

Abstract

During the Second World War, the Nazi regime sent thousands of German women to occupied Poland to work with the ethnic German population, comprising native ethnic Germans and resettlers from the Baltic states, eastern Poland and Romania. They were to be trained to act as model colonisers for the newly conquered territories. Meanwhile the non-German population was subjugated and terrorised. This article examines what German women witnessed in Poland and how far they can be seen as complicit in acts of violence and injustice committed against Poles and Jews. To what extent did a gendered division of labour prevent women actively being involved in or witnessing acts committed against the Polish and Jewish populations? Did a construct of ‘womanly work’ help women to ‘look away’ from the evidence of oppression and persecution?