The Shame Of Survival: Working Through A Nazi Childhood

E-Book Overview

While we now have a great number of testimonials to the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors of that dark episode of twentieth-century history, rare are the accounts of what growing up in Nazi Germany was like for people who were reared to think of Adolf Hitler as the savior of his country, and rarer still are accounts written from a female perspective. Ursula Mahlendorf, born at the height of the Great Depression in 1929 to a middle-class family, was for a long while during her childhood a true believer in Nazism, the daughter of a man who was a member of the SS at the time of his early death in 1935--and a leader in the Hitler Youth herself. This is her vivid and unflinchingly honest account of her indoctrination into Nazism and of her gradual awakening to all the damage that Nazism had done to her country. It reveals why Nazism initially appealed to people from her station in life and how Nazi ideology was inculcated into young people. The book recounts the increasing hardships of life under Nazism as the war progressed and the chaos and turmoil that followed Germany's defeat. In the first part of this absorbing narrative, we see the young Ursula as she becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and then goes on to a Nazi teacher training school at age 15. In the second part, which traces her growing disillusionment with and anger at the Nazi leadership, we follow her story as she flees from the Russian army's advance in the spring of 1945, works for a time in a hospital caring for the wounded, returns to Silesia when it is under Polish administration, and finally is evacuated to the West, where she begins a new life and pursues her dream of becoming a teacher. In a moving Epilogue, Mahlendorf discloses how she learned to accept and cope emotionally with the shame that haunted her from her childhood allegiance to Nazism and the self-doubts it generated.

E-Book Content

The Shame of Survival Working Through a Nazi Childhood Ursula Mahlendorf The Shame of Survival ursula mahlendorf The Shame of Survival Working Through a Nazi Childhood the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Mahlendorf, Ursula R. The shame of survival : working through a Nazi childhood / Ursula Mahlendorf. p.  cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “An autobiographical account of the author’s childhood and young adulthood in Nazi Germany, the postwar occupation, and her eventual relocation to the West. Contributes to current debates on history and memory, and on everyday and women’s history from a feminist, psychoanalytically informed perspective” — Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-271-03447-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  Mahlendorf, Ursula R. — Childhood and youth. 2.  World War, 1939–1945 — Personal narratives, German. 3.  College teachers — California — Santa Barbara — Biography. I.  Title. D811.5.M25165  2009 943.086092— dc22 [B] 2008034248 Copyright © 2009 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. This book is printed on Natures Manual, containing 50% post-consumer waste, and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. Contents list of illustrations   vii acknowledgments   ix introduction   1 one  |  My Family and the Nazis, 1929–1936  12 two  |  A Small Quarry Town, 1936–1938  36 three  |  Kristallnacht and the Beginning of World War II, 1938–
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