NOTES
1.
See "Diary of Johann Paul Kremer," KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS: Höss, Broad,
Kremer, ed.
Jadwiga Bezwinska and
Danuta Czech and trans.
Krystyna Michalik
( New York: Howard Fertig, 1984), 221. We are indebted to Walter Laqueur for
several references to Kremer and for other details about Auschwitz. See his foreword to Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945, trans.
Barbara Harshav, Martha Humphries, and
Stephen Shearier ( New York: Holt, 1990), xv-xxi.
2.
"Diary of Johann Paul Kremer," KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, 215. Kremer's first
direct involvement in Auschwitz gassings occurred on September 2, 1942. He was
in attendance to revive SS men who might be affected by the Zyklon B. In
comparison with what he witnessed, Kremer wrote, "Dante's Inferno seems to be
almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp!" (214).
3.
Ibid., 215. The Muselmänner to whom Kremer refers were walking skeletons who
were beyond recovery because of acute starvation and psychic exhaustion. At the
Ravensbrück women's camp, Sybil Milton notes, female inmates in this condition
were called Schmuckstücke (literally, pieces of jewelry). She doubts that this gender-
specific language was peculiar to Ravensbrück, although it probably originated
there. See Sybil Milton, "Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and
German-Jewish Women," When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and
Nazi Germany, ed.
Renate Bridenthal,
Atina Grossman, and
Marion Kaplan ( New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 308. Milton's essay is reprinted in this book.
See 224.
4.
See Secretaries of Death: Accounts by Former Prisoners Who Worked in the Gestapo of
Auschwitz, ed. and trans.
Lore Shelley ( New York: Shengold, 1986), and also Auschwitz--the Nazi Civilization: Twenty-three Women Prisoners' Accounts, ed. and
trans.
Lore Shelley (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992).
5.
"Diary of Johann Paul Kremer," KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, 226.
6.
Edith P., as she is identified by Lawrence L. Langer, is one of the many women who
has given her oral history to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies established at Yale University in 1982. The quotation is from Lawrence L.
Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory ( New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991), 55, 105.
7.
"Diary of Johann Paul Kremer", KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, 220.
-39-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Different Voices:Women and the Holocaust.
Contributors: Carol Rittner - Editor, John K. Roth - Editor.
Publisher: Paragon House.
Place of publication: St. Paul, MN.
Publication year: 1993.
Page number: 39.
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