How did ordinary women, like their male counterparts, become capable of brutal violence during the Holocaust? Cultural historian Elissa Mailander examines the daily work of twenty-eight women employed by the SS to oversee prisoners in the concentration and death camp Majdanek/Lublin in Poland. Many female SS overseers in Majdanek perpetrated violence and terrorized prisoners not only when ordered to do so but also on their own initiative. The social order of the concentration camp, combined with individual propensities, shaped a microcosm in which violence became endemic to workaday life. The...
How did ordinary women, like their male counterparts, become capable of brutal violence during the Holocaust? Cultural historian Elissa Mailander exam...
