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Nazi Concentration Overseer Irma Grese

Daniel Patrick BrownÆs (1996) The Beautiful Beast is a work devoted to the life and crimes of a German woman known as Irma Grese who served as an SS-Aufseherin under the NaziÆs in HitlerÆs Germany during the Holocaust. Aufseherin is roughly translated as a ômatronö or ôoverseerö of the concentration camp prisoners, a role Grese served with honor and relish (Brown, 1996, p. vi). BrownÆs book traces GreseÆs life, though she only lived until she was twenty-two, a life that was fairly undistinguished until she volunteered for duty as an SS-Aufseherin. Brown associates GreseÆs rapacious nature in her duties to the ôfemme fataleö or ôbeautiful beastö included in much mythology (p. xvi). He explains the difficulties in providing accurate details of GreseÆs short life, primarily because she died so young, led an undistinguished life before her time as an SS-Aufseherin, and because she lived her early life in what would become the ôSoviet bloc of Europeö (Brown, 1996, p. xix).

After explaining some of the problems associated with biographic analysis, including the search for answers where none may exist, Brown (1996) provides chapters on GreseÆs formative years and her medical training. The SS-Aufseherinnen appeared in greater numbers later in the war, when Hitler needed to enlist more aid in helping with his Final Solution to the Jewish problem. Brown (1996) maintains that among SS members known for excessive cruelty, Grese ranked ôfirstö among the SS women in terms of her notorious acts, ôit is perhaps the saddest part of this chronicle that one has to document almost unspeakable acts of cruelty and depravity on the part of Grese just to unravel who, exactly, this æcurious womanÆ actually wasö (p. 7).

The author then provides an account of training of the Aufseherin, the genesis of an SS legacy, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, known as the ôhorror campö (Brown, 1996, p. 57). In a section entitled ôJudgmen...

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Nazi Concentration Overseer Irma Grese. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:12, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710902.html