VCU author’s new book sheds light on Nazi women and war crimes

By Sian Wilkerson

At the start of her latest book, Jessica Trisko Darden invites readers to imagine a Nazi, someone directly involved in the murder of thousands. As the mind inevitably wanders to male faces, the Virginia Commonwealth University author continues, "What does she look like?"

"Women have long been portrayed as vulnerable in times of war, but what of the women who defy this characterization?" said Trisko Darden, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Humanities and Sciences whose research looks at women as political actors. "Some of the most heinous acts committed in the name of Nazism were perpetrated by women - young and old, single and married, mothers and childless - going about their everyday lives."

Released this month, "The Accused: How Women Faced Justice for Nazi-Era Crimes" is Trisko Darden's examination of hundreds of Nazi atrocity criminal cases, prosecuted in Germany and formerly Nazi-occupied countries, to understand what led women to commit war crimes - and the consequences they ultimately faced.

VCU News spoke to Trisko Darden about her research and the wide-ranging women perpetrators of "The Accused."

What is the origin of "The Accused"?

On my first trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I did what I typically do at museums: check out the gift shop. At the time, I was researching women's involvement in the emerging conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which erupted into full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.

While I was walking around the gift shop, I saw Wendy Lower's 2013 book, "Hitler's Furies," on the shelves. Here was a book examining women's participation in political violence in a very different context: the Holocaust.

Lower's research unnerved me in what could only be termed an "academically productive" way. I went on to write a book and several articles on women's involvement in the war in Ukraine as well as contemporary war crimes in other contexts.

Still, I was plagued by a question that I just couldn't let go: How many women were involved in Nazi-era crimes?

So, how did you go about answering that question?

I emailed prominent scholars asking whether they knew how many women had been charged with war crimes in their respective countries. I was told that records had been destroyed or were still locked up, if they were kept at all.

Finally, I turned to the reference librarians at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to see if they knew of more stones for me to overturn. There, where my very obsession with the question of the extent of women's involvement in the crimes of the Holocaust began, I received the beginning of the answer: I could simply count them. So, I spent the next three years doing just that.

Were you surprised by what you found?

I was certainly surprised by the wide range of women who were accused of participating in Nazi-era crimes. There was no one "type." Elderly women, who came of age well before the Nazis came to power, reported Jewish women for failing to wear their mandatory yellow Jewish stars. Young women who had just finished school went to work in concentration camps. Even best friends or sisters-in-law turned on one another and used the Nazi system to settle scores.

Widely held conceptions of war criminals can be one-dimensional. But you argue that there is far more nuance.

Examining women's power in context - by focusing on the conditions under which women perpetrated atrocity crimes, rather than solely on the specific crimes that they committed - provides a more holistic understanding of women's behavior and can help us understand why such a broad range of women were accused of Nazi-era crimes.

It is undoubtedly true that women suffer, in unique ways, during war. However, women nevertheless have access to unique sources of power and influence that are not available to all men, and even the most oppressed and underprivileged women still have personal agency.

The book argues that we need to pay more attention to the complex relationships between gender, race (Jews were defined as a distinct race) and power in Nazi Germany. The interaction of these factors shaped whether women had access to power and how that power could be harnessed.

Can you share some examples?

For instance, empowered perpetrators benefited from the racial policy of Nazi Germany and the privileges given to Nazi Party members. The women I call subjected servants had formal roles in the Nazi regime as teachers, nurses, etc. and were protected from persecution, but for the most part they were simply trying to do their jobs as they understood them in a turbulent time. In comparison, opportunistic beneficiaries used the Nazi system to their advantage by exploiting forced laborers, attempting to appropriate property or obtaining divorces.

Some of the most interesting stories in "The Accused" are about those who were entangled victims - who were victimized by the Nazi regime but nevertheless put in positions where they committed crimes on its behalf.

For instance, unemployed German women were subject to conscription into the military. They were put to work in military factories or as guards in concentration camps. This was also true of women who were imprisoned because they violated Nazi law by, for instance, having personal relationships with Jewish or Polish men. Once in the camps, these German women were privileged in comparison with Jewish and other prisoners who faced extermination. But their stories are complex and worthy of our investigation.

What can this history teach us in the present?

We should never underestimate women's contributions, no matter what the context. We tend to think of women exclusively as victims, but women are also regime supporters and enforcers. Women commit acts of terrorism and violence. We do history a disservice when we look away from this reality.