TAINTED BLOOD

Margaret Baacke, Tainted Blood? Memoirs of a Part-Jewish Girl in the Third Reich, 1933-1945.

As far as memoirs go, not a particularly smooth reading book. However, it gives a good overview of one young girl’s growing-up experience under the Nazi regime from 1933 until 1945. As a Mischlinge she was not sent to the concentration camps, but if Hitler had won, she certainly would have been. She was forced to leave the Hitler youth and suffered discrimination, although she ended the war working as a nurse for the military. Fortunately, her hospital was captured by the Americans; if the Soviets had captured her, there may not have been a book. A reader of the book will get a first-hand account of the war-years and all of the challenges faced by “average” citizens.

1. She discusses Hitler’s euthanasia program which began with the mentally retarded and moved on to the insane.

The regime tried to prepare us in many ways, through movies, books, newspaper- and magazine articles to appreciate sterilization and mercy-killing. The message was that mercy-killing would relieve the poor suffering individuals painlessly from their torment—they might even be thankful to be delivered from their agony.

One of the most memorable films of the time was Ich Klage an (’I Accuse’), with the famous actress Christina Soederbaum. In the film, she suffered in great pain through the last stage of multiple sclerosis, and implored her husband, a medical doctor, to give her the final injection. But he refused. For a medical doctor, he said, this would not only be unethical, it was also prohibited by law, by the Christian Churches, and, of course, by themedical profession. Lastly, he told his beautiful wife that he loverd her so dearly that he recoiled at the idea of killing her.

The film lead [sic] the viewer to the edge of what seemed tolerable. I felt like screaming at the hesitant doctor to go ahead and do it, honor her last wish and relieve her from her unbearable suffering. He finally complied, but was sentenced by the Court of Justice to a long prison term.

Hans and I saw this film with our Aunt M.M.. “Yes,” she agreed with us, after a lengthy discussion of the film on the way home, “were were all deeply moved by this film. But I have to tell you something you don’t want to hear right now.” She looked around to see if there were any listeners and then said almost in a whisper, “This is nothing but propaganda, thought the film is well-made.”

2. Confirmation:

We were amazed that his (the instructor) confirmation instruction contained a lot of Nazi lingo. This was a pastor? We had heard some of this language, though not the content, in the Hitler Youth where it belonged, but here, in the Church-environment, those patriotic words and slogans sounded ridiculous. We didn’t study the Old Testament at all, for our pastor called it Jewish history.”

He often repeated that his church, the Deutsche Christen (‘German Christians’) ascertained that “Providence” had sent Hitler to free the German people from oppression, from greedy Capitalism, from Bolshevism, and the Jews.