The SS "helpers" at Auschwitz

60 Minutes Overtime got it good this week on 60 Minutes we're doing a story about a photo album that was sent to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC in 2007 it turned out to be the personal scrapbook of an SS officer named Carl Hawker who worked at awit we looked through the SS records our story centers around a new play that was written by Moises Kaufman and for the last 14 years Kaufman has been working to try to bring this story to to life on stage this album portrays the world the Nazis envisioned the name of the play here there are blueberries comes from a series of photos that are in this album and Carl Hawker in his album wrote here there are blueberries there were just you know teenage girls who were secretaries everyone is showing the photograph for their empty plates but there's one of the women who pretend crying so she's so sad because she's run out of blueberries and outside of the frame there's 1.1 million people who are being killed Amanda gronik is the co-writer of here there are blueberries they were the switchboard Telegraph and radio operators many of these young women can you imagine they're leaving their family For the First Time Imagine you know that's how you go off to to take your job at in a concentration camp and one of the things the play explores is how much did they know about what was going on Rebecca rebeling is a historian at the United States uh Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and she's the person in 2007 who received this album in the mail the album itself is now stored at a high security facility you see photographs of lots of young women at the camp uh turned out they were sort of secretaries to Carl Hawker they were called Hil Forin or helpers and they weren't just young women who got drafted and sent there these were young women who were true believers who grew up with Nazi ideology many of them had been members of the BDM the female version of the Hitler Youth and so in the National Archives here in the US you can actually go and you can read some of their um application essays where they say I have been a loyal member of the BDM this is my way of serving my country and so these are women who had chosen to be here essentially they knew full well what AST was yes part of the communication that they had to do was communicating the arrivals of trains how many people had been selected for work and how many people had been selected to be Gass and so they were sending those messages back to Berlin and so they absolutely know rebelling thinks that this woman is Ruth asini she worked at Bergen bellson which was a notorious concentration camp and and she was eventually arrested and sentenced at a trial in krackow in March 1948 the woman in this photograph is believed to be Charlotte schinzel B she testified at Carl hawker's trial that she sent messages back to her superiors informing them of the number of prisoners and aitz being sent to the gas Chambers it raises the obvious question which is what are you capable of giving right the right or the wrong circumstances right and and I think we do to some extent a disservice when we talk about the Holocaust and we only talk about victims that is incredibly important to memorialize them not just because of how they died but because of who they were and how they lived but we also are not going to figure out how the Holocaust happen by studying the victims so we have to study the perpetrators we have to look at how German Society got to the point where all of these young people are volunteering for this work and thinking that this work is important and why their government has taught them that and how they have come to believe it as soon as permission is given from higher ups from government it accelerates Irene Weiss is a 93-year-old Survivor of aitz whose entire family was sent to aitz uh and she's one of the few people who survived from from her family Irene Weiss wasn't shocked by what she saw in the album she has said that she has seen that side of man before in Germany the propaganda and the in you know the teaching them of how to think was so strong it was so effective they were taught that uh they're doing it for a higher purpose I was testifying against uh two Nazi Germans they were worked in AIT and this old man he said I was strained to obey orders I obeyed orders I was told that the Jews are hurting my country that they are destroying my country the propaganda patriotism of his kind was so strong that he couldn't let go of it in a trial couldn't let go

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 151,649

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News

Id: JZYKIGId-Us

Length: 5min 29sec (329 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024