My Enemy's Cradle by Sarah Young

My Enemy's Cradle by Sarah Young - 365 pages

My Enemy's Cradle tells the story of Cyrla Van der Berg, a young half-Dutch, half-Jewish woman living with her aunt, uncle, and cousin, Anneke, in Holland during the beginning of World War II.  While initially Cyrla's Jewish background is not known, someone eventually turns her in.  After this and a tragedy occur within hours, Cyrla takes her cousin's identity and place in a Lebensborn, a maternity home for women who became pregnant by German soldiers.  The book then details the struggle Cyrla had to ensure she was safe and the relationships she had with Anneke' solider.

At times heart-wrenching, this novel opens a whole new can-of-worms not often addressed in literature or non-fiction, as the existence of the Lebensborns is something many in Europe wish to forget.  In essence, it fills a gap while providing an eye-opening experience to an often forgotten horror of World War II.

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower

Hitler's Furies:  German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower - 288 pages

Following in the tradition of Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, Lower looks at the role of ordinary citizens in the Holocaust.  In this case it is the females, a often overlooked category.  While many were direct participants, most were never tried as war criminals.  The book follows approximately a dozen well-documented cases often using surviving Nazi records, war crimes trial transcripts, and memoirs of several of the women to demonstrate their participation.

Most women were in one of three categories: nurses, secretaries (and sometimes also lovers) of top Nazis, or wives of top Nazis.  As the book demonstrates, nurses often participated directly in euthanasia programs and at the gas chambers.  Secretaries often served as desk murders when writing and transmitting orders.  Other times they were observers who did nothing to help the victims.  Nazi wives, especially those with husbands in the SS, often directly killed Jews as sport.

At the book's end, besides completing each woman's story, Lower offered some psychological insights to why these women acted as they did both during and after the war (most denied involvement).  In all, reading this reminded me strongly of Browning's research on the men I read during a college-level Holocaust course and while this book is fresh in my mind I plan to reread that book.  Like Browning's work, I think Hitler's Furies is destined to become a classic of Holocaust scholarship.