Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Frauen





In my quest for research about Berlin in the early 1940s, I came across Allison Owings' Frauen [Women].  It's a series of interviews with women who lived through the "Hitler times" in Germany, and it's fascinating.  Owings doesn't judge her subjects, she lets the reader judge for herself.  Some of the subjects are remarkably unguarded in their stories.   One interviewee is Freya von Moltke, whose husband was executed for his resistance work; but most of these women are not aristocrats nor famous.  They hold a wide range of political opinions; some of them had the greatest admiration for Hitler and his policies.  The interviews are full of surprising insights into the daily lives of women during difficult times.  I can't recommend it highly enough.