Esettanulmány Irma Grese-ről: a „gonosz” és a „hétköznapi” artikulálódása a Holokauszt túlélők digitális szóbeli visszaemlékezései és írásbeli tanúvallomásai elemzése tükrében = A case study of Irma Grese: Constructing the ‘evil’ and the ‘ordinary’ through digital oral testimonies and written trial testimonies of the Holocaust survivors

Vida, Bianka (2016) Esettanulmány Irma Grese-ről: a „gonosz” és a „hétköznapi” artikulálódása a Holokauszt túlélők digitális szóbeli visszaemlékezései és írásbeli tanúvallomásai elemzése tükrében = A case study of Irma Grese: Constructing the ‘evil’ and the ‘ordinary’ through digital oral testimonies and written trial testimonies of the Holocaust survivors. Kaleidoscope history, 7 (13). pp. 529-541. ISSN 20622597

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Abstract

In the paper, I discuss the case study of Irma Grese, labelled as the ‘beauty beast’ who was one of the cruelest and most infamous Nazi female perpetrator working in Auschwitz- Birkenau as a camp guard in the Holocaust history. I look into how Grese’s figure is constituted through analyzing the trial testimonies of the Holocaust survivors from 1945 and the oral testimonies of the survivors, recorded between 1994 and 1999, available at the VHA collection of Shoah. In the article, I demonstrate that with the use of the combination of the different testimonies, it can be mapped how not only the ‘evilness’, but also the ‘ordinariness’ of Grese is constructed. As a result, I provide new insights on the general images of Nazi female perpetrators in both the public and the perpetrator scholarship in terms of two main aspects. One of them is the fact that ‘recorded cases of female killers had been suppressed, overlooked and under-researched’ and the female perpetrators in Third Reich ‘were not marginal sociopaths’ (Lower 2013: 4). Instead, I agree that the violent acts of female perpetrators were part of serving the Nazi party, thus, fulfilling the Nazi racist ideology (Lower 2013: 4). The other part of my contribution with the analysis is analyzing the ‘ordinariness’ of Grese. Despite her popular sexualized images in the public and even the scholarship, I aim to contribute to ‘the new research directions that map out female perpetrators as ‘ordinary’ women which might be the first step towards getting a more individualized picture’ about Grese (Pető 2009: 149).

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