Uncovering Holocaust perpetrators where few have looked: Muslim Nazis, female death camp guards, and Dutch ‘bounty hunters’

Via Times of Israel:

With new access to archives and other primary sources, historians are supplanting archetypal images of Aryan Nazi men as the Holocaust’s sole perpetrators. Previously obscured perpetrator “sub-groups” are being exposed one portrait at a time, ranging from women who guarded death camps to Dutch bounty hunters of Jews in hiding.

And as researchers uncover an array of Europeans involved in the murder of Jews and other groups during Hitler’s rule, perpetrators’ motivations are being individually examined.

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According to Lower, half a million “ordinary women” from Germany’s “lost generation” — including teachers, nurses, and secretaries — worked near sites of genocide, as both assistants and even executioners.

“Nearly all histories of the Holocaust leave out half of those who populated that society, as if women’s history happens somewhere else,” wrote Lower in her introduction.

“The dramatic stories of these women reveal the darkest side of female activism,” she said. “They show what can happen when women of varied backgrounds and professions are mobilized for war and acquiesce in genocide.”

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After exhuming police records and other documents tied to the deportation of Dutch Jewry, van Liempt estimated that 15,000 Jews were captured in hiding by reward-driven Nazi collaborators. His 2012 book, “Jew Hunt,” exposed files on 250 Dutch police officers who organized units to locate and arrest Jews in hiding.

“Every large town in the Netherlands had such units,” van Liempt told The Times of Israel in an interview.

In February of 1941, Amsterdam’s Nazi occupiers rounded up 427 Jewish men in their first ‘razzia’ and deportation from the Netherlands. Only two of the men survived the war. (Wikimedia Commons).

In February of 1941, Amsterdam’s Nazi occupiers rounded up 427 Jewish men in their first ‘razzia’ and deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. Only two of the men survived the war. (Wikimedia Commons).

Though it is likely there were far more than 250 police officers who participated in anti-Nazi resistance activities, “the 250 who collaborated in this brutal way did much more harm to the reputation of the Dutch police than any other group in history,” said van Liempt.

During two decades of pursuing bounty hunters, the historian said he occasionally incurred the wrath of people who accused him of “being too critical.”

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According to “IBM and the Holocaust” author Edwin Black, the slaughter inflicted by Muslim SS men in Eastern Europe was exceptional, even by Nazi standards, and involved a surprising collaboration.

“The Ustasha of Yugoslavia [was] a Muslim-Catholic alliance of Nazi killers so gruesome and beastly that even Berlin shrank in horror at the slaughter,” wrote Black in his 2010 book, “The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance During the Holocaust.”
“This berserk army of ghastly murderers, the Ustasha, and three related crack divisions of Arab-Nazi Waffen SS comprised of tens of thousands of Muslim volunteers, terrorized people of all faiths in Yugoslavia,” wrote Black. Among the camps staffed by Muslim SS men was Jasenovac, cited by survivors for unparalleled displays of brutality.

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