Article on Female Guards in Ravensbruck

[Demi]

Hello,
I want to share this article, which some members might find interesting.

Joining the SS to survive and get a job, sending you somewhere not knowing the destination, HATING the place and wanting to leave more than anything in the world, but being told if you do, you are 'finished"... wow...resonates with anyone?

Oh, and signing top secret document for loyality, before being shipped off.. not in the story but those are the strong reactions that I had while reading this article...

Demi


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101413.html

[Leutnantzursee]

Wow - that makes for pretty harrowing reading. My first thoughts about the lady were how she'll have to take on the full burden of her guilt in the next life. It's only when on a soul level when we integrate our shame and guilt, how terrible it all was, what monsters we became and with such ease, that we can begin to live lives with open hearts. I kind of feel for the lady on those terms, she's a part of the lessons we all took on in those lives, one the few remaining alive today, maybe they really did get the raw deal. For those of us who died in service and have reincarnated now, we had a chance to move on quickly and process our guilt and collusion, for those who survived and have lived into old age, they have had to carry this shame for so long, perhaps without really taking on the full implications of that.

Thanks for sharing that Demi, really fascinating to see life through the eyes of the female SS personnel.

[gumby]

I think that this article confirms my impression that most German people did not know about the genocide that was happening in the camps. Margarete says that she was not aware of it until the end, it was done in complete secrecy so that most ordinary people did not know. Of course when I lived then as Katie I was not associated with any concentration camps, I served faithfully in BDM and working in the Bosch factory in Stuttgart. We ordinary citizens were led to believe that it was our adversaries who were doing the killing and harming us. I was also young and impressionable, and did not fully comprehend the horrors perpetuated by the Reich until the war was over. Even then we did not want to believe it to be true. We knew our own suffering and pain, and the fight for survival in the devastated cities. So in a sense when we first learned of the horrors of the concentration camps, it did not fully sink in, as the horror of war was all around us. It was too much to grasp, we had to concentrate on our own survival in a time of despair.

[Demi]

Nobody knew anything. Incredible skill of deception. What's going on in one place did not go outside... That was before the internet and i-phone and real-time google maps age and all media were controlled by the government. Many Jews did not believe what they heard from the few who managed to escape... Had they believed!
I was initially convinced that my first PL experiences (which happen around the 30's) were not at Nazi places, until I got some more "downloads".

Demi

[Demi]

Describing the horrors of being a guard in Ravensbruck, she also says it was 'the best time of her life'.

I kept reading to see if she would expand on that point.

I wonder about what is it that she liked about working in the camps.

Suggestions, anyone?

[Laurasia]

Hi Demi.

Describing the horrors of being a guard in Ravensbruck, she also says it was 'the best time of her life'.

I kept reading to see if she would expand on that point.

I wonder about what is it that she liked about working in the camps.

The comraderie? The illusion of being in control? Being "better than others"? Being of use & serving a purpose? Belonging to a large group?

Sincerely,
Laurasia

[Demi]

Good suggestions, Laurasia!
Yes, I think that too.

All the best,
Demi

[doctorwhat]

interesting my PL self was a guard at Ravensbruck.

[Demi]

doctor, male or female? (just curious).
Got your story posted in here?

All the best,
Demi

[doctorwhat]

Jan 4, 2013 17:29:56 GMT -5 Demi said:

doctor, male or female? (just curious).
Got your story posted in here?

All the best,
Demi

male, no doctor. i think it's somewhere on the Members Only board. i really need to write more on here