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The SS "helpers" astatine Auschwitz
This week connected 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper reported connected a photo album received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that turned retired to beryllium the idiosyncratic scrapbook of a high-ranking SS officer, Karl Höcker. Höcker worked astatine the notorious Auschwitz attraction camp.
A play that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, "Here There Are Blueberries," tells the communicative of the historians and archivists who uncovered the identities of the radical successful the haunting photographs.
The play's rubric comes from a bid of photos successful the album— young secretaries who worked nether Karl Höcker are seen eating blueberries. A caption adjacent to the photographs reads, "Here determination are blueberries."
"And extracurricular of the frame, there's 1.1 cardinal radical who are being killed," playwright and manager Moises Kaufman told Anderson Cooper.
"So however bash you pb your regular beingness and astatine the aforesaid clip enactment successful 1 of the largest sidesplitting machines successful the past of mankind?"
Kaufman's co-creator, Amanda Gronich, said she couldn't assistance but wonderment what the young women successful the photographs knew astir the systematic sidesplitting of Jewish prisoners astatine Auschwitz portion they were there.
"And 1 of the things the play explores is, 'How overmuch did they know? How overmuch did they cognize astir what was going on?'" Gronich said.
Rebecca Erbelding is simply a historiographer astatine the US Holocaust Memorial Museum successful Washington D.C. She received the Höcker medium successful the message successful 2007. "Here There Are Blueberries" is based connected her and her colleagues' probe of the album.
Cooper viewed the Höcker medium with Erbelding astatine a high-security installation successful Maryland wherever the museum's collections are stored. As she turned the yellowed pages, she revealed the smiling faces of Auschwitz's "helpers" successful the "Blueberries" bid of images.
"They were called 'Helferinnen,' oregon 'helpers.' And they weren't conscionable young women who got drafted and sent there," Cooper told 60 Minutes Overtime.
"These were young women who were existent believers, who grew up with Nazi ideology."
Erbelding explained that galore of the women who applied to service arsenic "helpers" were members of the women's part successful the Hitler Youth program, Bund Deutscher Mädel, oregon the League of German Girls.
BDM members were required to person "Aryan" parents, to guarantee radical purity according to Nazi radical theory. They were instructed from aboriginal ages to adhere to Nazi ideals and find "appropriate" partners. The volition down the programme was to make a aboriginal procreation of Germans who were faithful to Nazism.
The "helpers" of Auschwitz worked successful communications, arsenic telephone, telegram, and vigor operators. They would study backmost to superiors successful Berlin with accusation astir the camp's operations.
"Part of the connection that they had to bash was communicating the arrivals of trains, however galore radical had been selected for work, and however galore radical had been selected to beryllium gassed," Erbelding told Cooper.
Erbelding thinks the "helper" holding the blueberry vessel upside down and mock crying successful 1 of the photographs is Ruth Astrosini.
After Auschwitz, Astrosini worked astatine Bergen-Belsen, different infamous attraction campy wherever tens of thousands of prisoners died from starvation and disease. Astrosini was yet arrested erstwhile the British liberated the campy and sentenced astatine a proceedings successful Krakow, Poland, successful 1948.
Another pistillate believed to beryllium successful the photographs is Charlotte Schünzel Bartsch. She testified astatine the proceedings of Karl Höcker that she had informed her superiors successful Berlin astir the trains arriving astatine Auschwitz and however galore prisoners had been sent to the state chamber.
"They were doing monstrous work," Cooper told 60 Minutes Overtime.
Irene Weiss is simply a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor. She and her household were sent to Auschwitz erstwhile she was 13 years old. Most of her household died successful the camp. She is 1 of the fewer who survived.
Weiss said she wasn't shocked by what she saw successful the Höcker album. She had seen that acheronian broadside of humanity astatine Auschwitz.
Weiss told Cooper that each it takes is "permission" from a higher authority, a government, oregon a leader, for radical to crook connected their friends and neighbors.
She recalled testifying astatine the proceedings of 2 erstwhile guards who had worked astatine Auschwitz. She said 1 of the guards, adjacent successful aged age, successful her view, had taken a presumption during the proceedings that helium was "following orders" and was conscionable doing what was expected of him.
"They were taught that they were doing it for a higher purpose," she said. "The propaganda, patriotism of his benignant was truthful strong… [he] couldn't fto it go."
The video supra was primitively published connected May 19, 2024. It was produced by Will Croxton and was edited by Sarah Shafer Prediger. Georgia Rosenberg was the broadcast associate.
Photos courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Imperial War Museum and video courtesy of USHMM, acquisition of Julien Bryan Archive.
Will Croxton is simply a integer shaper astatine 60 Minutes.
English (US) ·