When Victims Become Oppressors: Stella Goldschlag Revisited
Context
I’m writing this from Berlin, Germany, the city where this tragic story unfolded eighty years ago. Being in the place where this “stranger than fiction” history actually happened has been a jarring reminder that we cannot be complacent and accept the trajectory our society is currently on. And by “our society” I mean the United States and the western world in general where fascists and nazis are making a strong comeback. Too much is at stake for us to fail to stop them once again.
My interest in the Stella Goldschlag case is an outgrowth of my Victor Klemperer project, an antifascist, cross cultural and conceptual art meditation inspired by the brutal, on camera lynching of George Floyd. After reading the Klemperer diaries for the first time in 2016 while Trump was running for president, I returned to them in 2020 and felt a deep sense of unease at the vivid descriptions of the nazi secret police terrorizing Dresden’s Jewish population; I was especially struck by the descriptions of the murders of Jewish men in police custody. It all felt too familiar. Except Klemperer never records or makes note of anyone being murdered in public in broad daylight, something we now regularly see happening in the United States.
While considering the best rhetorical strategy for shining a light on the seriousness of our current day slide towards fascism, I decided to research other histories that might be a bit more compelling than Klemperer who, admittedly, can be a little niche for those not interested in philosophy and philology. Yet Klemperer remains extremely important to this work, part of the foundation upon which my understanding of fascism and German Jewry is built. Recognizing the immense power and educational potential contained within them, I’ve been especially interested in the histories, stories and experiences of German Jews, those people whose intimate familiarity with fascism and the pernicious effects of racial hierarchy somewhat mirrors the relationship between Blacks and European Americans in the United States. By “intimate familiarity” I mean living in close proximity with your oppressors for hundreds of years.
There are some major differences between the two histories of course. One major difference is that Black people in the United States have never faced an organized “final solution” — at least not yet. One of the Holocaust’s unique features is that it gives us a clear window into what can happen when fascism completely takes hold of a modern, technologically advanced society during a time of war when international institutions and protections have ceased to exist. That point aside, on some key points that will be explored here through the lens of the Stella Goldschlag story, the history of Jewish oppression during the nazi period has some interesting similarities and overlaps with both the historical and contemporary experiences of Black Americans. And this should not surprise us considering how the nazis studied Jim Crow and the American extermination of Indigenous people in preparation for their own attempts to oppress and exterminate European Jews.
Those of us who continue to be regularly subjected to institutional and interpersonal racial oppression and who are most endangered by fascism cannot be silent about these linkages. We should be able to explore these similarities in a respectful way without being accused of “relativism” or minimizing the Holocaust. And because it seems at times that we are screaming into the wind, we must find creative ways of getting the relevant points across. I realized some time ago that facts are not enough when confronting fascism which is inherently irrational and built on manipulating people’s emotions. Because of their ability to tug at our heart strings, stories hold immense power and are much more useful for changing minds than straightforward facts and logic. These stories connect us across time and space with others who have suffered oppression, and serve as a kind of mirror that we can see ourselves and our situations reflected in.
Later this year the first feature film based on the Stella Goldschlag story will debut in theaters here in Germany. I believe this is a golden opportunity to supplement this cultural event with a deeper dive into this story and do what most have failed to do — give voice to Stella’s many silenced and murdered victims while linking this story to broader social justice issues. I hope to explain here from my own Black, queer and activist perspective how this incredibly complex and multilayered story can give us insights into the nature of fascism, white supremacy, refugee crises, privilege, and other thorny issues our social movements are grappling with.
For those who are unfamiliar with this particular piece of history, here are the basics. Stella Goldschlag was born in Berlin in 1922 during the “roaring twenties” and was the doted upon only child of an assimilated, middle class German Jewish family in Berlin. Her childhood was an especially happy one.
Her mother and father were both deeply involved in the city’s arts and culture scene which inspired Stella to join a jazz band where she was the lead singer; the band was also where she met her future husband. When the nazis came to power her father lost his job and Stella was forced to leave her public school and attend an overcrowded private Jewish school (where she became acquainted with some of her future victims). Because of her attractive appearance and personality she was one of the most popular girls in her new school, but she resented having to be there, segregated from her former “Aryan” friends.
After the nazi regime unleashed the Kristallnacht pogrom, the Goldschlag family attempted to emigrate to the United States with the help of Gerhard Goldschlag’s relatives in St. Louis but were unable to gain entry because of the increasingly restrictive refugee quota system. After the outbreak of WWII Jewish life in Germany soon became completely illegal. Once the genocidal intentions of the nazis towards Jewish people were made unambiguous, the Goldschlag family joined thousands of others in their decision to go underground and live “illegally” to avoid being deported to an uncertain fate. As we now know, deportation often led to great suffering and to an almost guaranteed gruesome death.
Living illegally as a Jewish person in nazi Germany was extremely difficult due to the fact that it was a literal police state crawling with Gestapo agents, spies and informants. The family managed to successfully avoid detection for only about four months before Stella was arrested in a café by a Jewish woman acquaintance named Inge Lustig who was working for the Gestapo as a “snatcher.” From Gestapo informants in Berlin to the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, the ways in which the nazis cynically mobilized Jewish people to be participants their own destruction is probably one of the most hideous and unforgiveable aspects of the Holocaust. Jewish “snatchers” were utilized by the Gestapo in large cities because they knew where to find those living in hiding, particularly the public places they frequented. This point is crucially important when considering what happened later. After being betrayed by someone she knew, Stella was held in police custody, interrogated, brutally tortured and threatened with death. For more details on her “origin story,” see this link. For now it’s enough to know that after being ensnared by the Gestapo, twenty-one year old Stella Goldschlag was coerced into making a deal with the devil, agreeing to work for them as a snatcher catching “illegal” Jews in exchange for safety for herself and her parents who had also been recently arrested.
The Police
One aspect of this case that is very relevant for us today is the role of the police and the ways oppressed people are coopted into participating in their own oppression and destruction. What we need to reckon with is the fact that the relatively short period of time during which Stella Goldschlag was causing the most damage and wrecking the most havoc took place while she was working as a police agent. One relatively overlooked aspect of the Holocaust is the instrumental role of the police in implementing the genocide. In terms of criminalization, surveillance, detention, and deportation, the Holocaust was in many ways a police action with the logistical details carried out by civilian and military police, aided by the recruitment of Jewish police in the ghettos and police collaborators like Stella Goldschlag (all of the Jewish collaborators operating under various degrees of coercion). The most enthusiastically antisemitic collaborators in countries occupied by the nazis were police, vigilantes working with the police, or other various police assets. A good example of this was the situation in the Netherlands, where the cooperation of the Dutch police forces contributed to the murder of over 75% of the country’s Jewish population.
After being coerced into working with the Gestapo, Stella Goldschlag was literally deputized; she was given a special ID and a firearm and other privileges. Written by Ernest Fontheim, a survivor familiar with the case, ‘More Effective Than The Gestapo’ reveals how she was turned into a potent weapon in the hands of the nazi secret police. Writing about Stella and her partner in crime Rolf Isaaksohn, Fontheim said:
Having lived in hiding themselves, they knew exactly where to look for underground Jews. In fact, they were much more effective than any Gestapo official would have been on the hunt. … She was by all accounts the most successful of the catchers operating in Berlin.
Stella did not grow up wanting to be a police agent. She wanted to be a fashion designer. But her plans and her dreams were shattered by the advent of Hiterlism, and then her talents were hijacked and used as a weapon towards fulfilling the nazis’ goal of ethnically cleansing the capital city of Berlin. Those of us advocating for police reform or abolition do so in part because we understand that in times of crisis the police are often mobilized to crack down on and terrorize the population, especially those who are most vulnerable. And the temptation for oppressed people to throw members of their own communities under the bus by joining with the oppressors will be ever-present until these institutions and society in general are radically reimagined.
Aesthetics & the Body
As I looked deeper into the Stella Goldschlag case I came across some familiar dynamics, in particular the self hatred that leads racialized people to identify with their oppressors. Much of this self hatred is rooted in aesthetics. The role of aesthetics in racial oppression is very familiar to Black Americans, especially when we consider the lingering effects of chattel slavery and Jim Crow where the darker ones skin, the more likely one was to suffer oppression. We’ve had to contend with the brown paper bag test, “good” hair versus “nappy” hair and the general policing of Black hair in professional spaces, comparisons of our features with animals, the use of skin lightening creams, sexual fetishizing, and so forth. For Black people in the Americas, our physical bodies have been the major focal point of oppression. Thanks to global white supremacy and the artificial elevation of European-centric aesthetics, there are now entire billion dollar industries committed to profiting off of colonized people’s insecurities and self-hatred.
Discovering the historian Gerald Horne’s book ‘The Color of Fascism’ was a revelation; this fascinating book focuses on Lawrence Dennis, a biracial Black man who decided to pass for white during the Jim Crow era. What lends more legitimacy to the focus on the role of aesthetics under white supremacy is that after Dennis rejected his Black roots he eventually became arguably the most prominent figure in the American fascist movement:
What does it mean that Lawrence Dennis — arguably the “brains” behind U.S. fascism — was born black but spent his entire adult life passing for white? Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis began life as a highly touted African American child preacher, touring nationally and arousing audiences with his dark-skinned mother as his escort. … Gerald Horne links passing and fascism, the two main poles of Dennis’s life, suggesting that Dennis’s anger with the U.S. as a result of his upbringing in Jim Crow Georgia led him to alliances with the antagonists of the U.S.
And from The Guardian:
Lawrence Dennis was, arguably, the brains behind American fascism. He attended the Nuremberg rallies, had a personal audience with Mussolini, and met Nazi leaders; throughout the 1930s he provided the intellectual ballast for America’s bourgeoning pro-fascist movement. But though his work was well known and well appreciated by the intelligentsia and political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, there was one crucial fact about him that has never emerged until now: he was black.
It’s worth noting that Stella Goldschlag was similarly beaten down by the racial hierarchy system imposed by the nazis. To her they must have appeared to be all-powerful. She was convinced the nazis would win the war and this is one reason why she aligned herself with them.
There are some interesting parallels between individuals who passed as white during the era of chattel slavery and Jim Crow and Jewish people like Stella who were able to pass as “Aryan” during the nazi period. Both situations reveal the toxic and destructive nature of racial hierarchy that led these individuals to reject aspects of themselves in order to fully align with the dominant culture. Stella Goldschlag was described by her biographer Peter Wyden as hating her Jewish roots, most likely because everything bad that was happening in her life was happening because of antisemitism. For her, Jewishness was a burden and a mark of shame. In a similar way, anti-Black oppression has contributed to self hatred among some Black folks. Some, like Lawrence Dennis, decided to escape from segregation and oppression by passing as white. In ‘The Color of Fascism’ Gerald Horne writes:
Who would resist seeking to escape the sad role of being the focus of a death machine?
European Jews living under nazi terror certainly learned what it was like to be the focus of “a death machine.” Peter Wyden, Stella’s biographer, writes that when the yellow star edict came into force, passersby would stop Stella and ask her why she was wearing the star since she obviously was not Jewish. This badge, brought into force in the fall of 1941, was the first major step towards outright genocide. Soon, Stella would only wear the yellow identifying badge while under supervision doing forced labor. She was desperate to escape “being the focus of a death machine” and used her “Ayran” appearance to her advantage. Essentially, she was able to “pass” as non-Jewish during a time when being perceived as Jewish was literally a death sentence.
I believe that it’s irresponsible to focus on Stella Goldschlag’s appearance without digging deeper into what this fixation with blond hair in our society is really all about. Charlotte Beradt’s ‘The Third Reich of Dreams’ sheds light on this and has an interesting passage that almost precisely reflects the situation and mindset of Stella Goldschlag, giving us insights into her self-image, behavior and choices. In this groundbreaking book that analyzes the effects of fascism and nazism on people’s interior, subconscious worlds, Beradt devotes an entire chapter to the dreams of German Jews. Here, she relates the dream of a “very German-looking young Jewish woman”:
I was in Switzerland, strolling with two blond naval officers. A large and very ugly Jewish woman slumped to the ground in front of a shop window. Her husband rushed to her side… It wasn’t until they passed us, holding onto each other tightly, that one could see how very Jewish and ugly they were. I felt my companions cringe with disgust, but they didn’t say anything. I did, however, blurting out, ‘I think they’re absolutely awful, too — I just can’t stand the look in their eyes. But you’ve forced me, literally beat me into being one of them. I’m still not one of them, though. But what about you? What do I have in common with the likes of you? You who look like me, for I look like them; like you — what has that got to do with me? Except that I might go to bed with one of you…
At this point I awoke and wrote down every word of my outburst.
Stella Goldschlag is another example of one of these “very German-looking” assimilated Jewish people who felt resentment at being lumped together with the oppressed and reviled Jewish community. When the woman relating her dream to Charlotte Beradt refers to the Jewish couple as “ugly” she is showing us that she has internalized the aesthetic prejudices of the dominant society. Guaranteed that Stella held similar opinions. This is how Stella’s biographer, Peter Wyden, describes her as a teenager:
Stella, early aware of her effect on the opposite sex, hated being Jewish. Her “Aryan” appearance hadn’t stopped her old school from excluding her because of her religion. She felt this to be an unjust personal insult. She wanted to be something better than Jewish. Jews were losers. So she lied, hoping to shed her Jewish identity. But her friends knew that her mother sang in the synagogue choir, and they giggled behind Stella’s back when she claimed her mother was Christian.
Stella’s opinion of Jewish people as “losers” was a reflection of her own internalized oppression. A similar inferiority complex led Lawrence Dennis to disown his Black family and pass as a white man — a consequence of anti-Blackness and the color bar in pre-Civil Rights era America. Colorism and the marginalization of darker skinned people with African features mirrors the prejudice against Jewish people with eastern European features. This is especially apparent with the ongoing fetish for children with lighter skin and “good hair” within the Black community.
One major takeaway from the Stella Goldschlag story is that systems of racial hierarchy are deeply damaging, especially to our self image and sense of self worth. The aesthetic prejudices embedded within the nazis racial system contributed heavily to Jewish oppression; those whose features resembled the grotesque caricatures in antisemitic rags like ‘Der Stürmer’ were more likely to face public harassment and abuse; those who could not “pass” as Aryan were much less likely to receive support and survive in hiding; Jewish children were not given a spot on the Kindertransport refugee list if they looked “too Jewish.” Many stories from this time period describe women dyeing their hair blond or being grateful for the camouflage of their own blond hair or other “Aryan” features.
During the Holocaust, aesthetics were literally a matter of life and death. A recent study outlining how darker skinned people in the United States are more likely to be imprisoned underscores the ongoing pernicious role of aesthetics in racial hierarchies. If the way one looks does not conform to the aesthetic preferences of the dominant culture it means one will usually live a harder life, sad to say. We must do all we can to undermine and resist this harmful and capricious system of aesthetic tyranny rooted in white supremacy.
The “Unpeople”
In the early fall of 1943 Stella began her Gestapo collaboration after a period of training and researching possible targets. One of her first “snatcher” operations involved the Steiner and Katz families who were living in hiding together. The arrest of two women and six children, all of whom were deported to Auschwitz where they were brutally murdered, gave me serious pause. If you’re familiar with the diary of Anne Frank then you know how stressful life in hiding was for all involved. Now imagine eight people living in one apartment, most of them children under the age of twelve, and the logistics necessary to feed and keep them occupied while essentially on 24/7 lockdown. And yet there has been a near total erasure of the victims perspective from the Stella Goldschlag narratives. They were marginalized and disposed of in life, and then after being murdered they have been overshadowed by people’s fixation with Stella’s blond hair. In general, Stella’s victims are quintessential “unpeople.”
Who are the “unpeople”? They are those for whom no sympathy, care or protection is forthcoming, usually for political reasons. They are easily discarded, easily forgotten. The unpeople are those we are not meant to have sympathy or empathy for. In his essay, ‘Recognizing the Unpeople,’ Noam Chomsky writes:
The strange breed of unpeople can be found everywhere, including the U.S.: in the prisons that are an international scandal, the food kitchens, the decaying slums.
The Stella Goldschlag story is in fact a story about unpeople; it has the potential to be a powerful meditation on the almost unimaginable netherworlds unpeople are often banished to. To my knowledge, no person of color has offered their interpretation of this story and this helps explain why Stella’s victims are pushed into the background with the focus placed almost entirely on Stella as a complex and tragic individual, on her sexuality, her blond hair, and so forth. The Ernest Fontheim essay mentioned above ends with a reminder that we must listen to the voices of those who have been silenced and forgotten:
But Mr. Wyden neglected to listen to the voices of those who can no longer be heard, like Edith Ziegler, arrested by Stella at the Uhlandstrasse subway station; Frau Steiner and her four children and Frau Katz with her two children, all arrested by Stella in their hide-out apartment on Lothringer Strasse; and hundreds of others who were murdered because of Stella.
This was actually the first time I saw some of her victims mentioned by name. Using the ‘Memorial Book’ online archive I was able to find more information about Edith Ziegler (one of Stella’s former schoolmates) and the Steiner and Katz familes. What I discovered was absolutely shocking. One of the people arrested in the hide-out apartment on Lothringer street was Rachel Steiner, a nearly thirteen year old girl. According to the archive, she was born on November the 8th and was deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on her birthday, November 8th, along with her mother Frandla and her younger sister Golda and brothers Abraham and Jacob. The children’s names indicate that the family was most likely observant. These were the sort of “very Jewish” people that Stella viewed as disposable and worth sacrificing to save herself..
Imagine being deported to certain doom on your birthday and being old enough to realize what is happening. And then when the story is retold years later, the focus is entirely on the woman who betrayed you and delivered you to the nazis. Rachel Steiner is an example of one of the voices that have been permanently silenced, of one of the stories that have been flattened and lumped together with millions of others. Her story and experience encapsulates what it means to be one of the unpeople: marginalized, oppressed, demonized, driven into a life of precarity, and then ultimately removed from the world altogether before being forgotten.
Rejecting Holocaust Kitsch
“Kitsch is a parody of catharsis,” said the philosopher Theodor Adorno. Occasionally I have wondered if people with an interest in exploring the Holocaust in an artistic or cultural context lean into kitsch as a way of seeking catharsis after confronting such a dark and emotionally fraught subject. The popular novel ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is a clear example of the worst kind of Holocaust kitsch. It’s a fictional novel written by a non-Jewish Irish man from the perspective of an ethnic German boy. This boy from a nazi family travels with his family to Auschwitz when his father takes up a position at the camp. He is somehow blissfully unaware of nazism and anti-Jewish hatred and inexplicably manages to form a relationship with a Jewish boy inmate on the other side of the concentration camp fence; it’s entirely unrealistic and almost comically so. Setting aside the ridiculousness of kids nonchalantly chatting and playing next to a constantly guarded, electrified fence at the world’s most notorious prison/death camp/slave labor complex, the novel makes the shocking choice to center nazis at Auschwitz. When the ethnic German boy is accidentally caught up in a mass murder operation, it is the grief of his nazi parents that takes center stage. No one cries for the Jewish victims.
I believe that the Stella Goldschlag story, if told properly, can offer a powerful antidote to lazy and harmful narratives like ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’. First of all, it’s a real story, not a fake, made up one, and secondly, it reveals important facts about the fate of children in the Holocaust — real children, not made up ones. Unfortunately, the kitschy presentation of the Goldschlag story so far has converted these compelling victims into two dimensional plot devices; they are not people worth naming or knowing. A theater production directed by Texas native Brian Bell underscores this. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post he says:
“I think it’s okay to have sympathy for her; I think it’s not good to have empathy for her.” At the same time, Bell included a number considered too risqué for the Berlin production, entitled (from German) “Jews Have Fun During Sex,” around Stella’s sexual encounters with Rolf Isaacson, her husband-in-crime in turning in Jews.
“It’s a perfect musical number,” Bell said. “It’s intentionally provocative, but the whole point of it is: L’chaim.”
L’chaim is a popular Jewish toast which means, “to life.” Considering the context of what Stella was doing at the time, creating a sex scene meant to celebrate life was an interesting artistic choice. This is a good example of why this story can benefit from fresh eyes and new perspectives, because yikes. I can’t help but juxtapose this dramatization of Stella Goldschlag’s sex life with the fate of thirteen year old Rachel Steiner, arrested in October of 1943 and deported to Auschwitz on her birthday. Children under the age of 15 were, with very few exceptions, always murdered on arrival at the camp. While Stella was undressing for sex, her victims were undressing in preparation for their imminent murder in a gas chamber.
This is the reality that is overshadowed by kitsch. In my opinion, the Stella Goldschlag story is the opposite of kitsch and is in reality a horror-drama about an oppressed person who becomes a huntress delivering her own people to the death machine. We should definitely not talk about Stella Goldschlag and her blond hair and sexual exploits without also mentioning in detail what happened to her victims. It is my opinion that Stella’s story works best not as kitsch but as a vehicle for understanding fascism and shining a light on those who have been forgotten.
Conclusion
As someone who knows what it feels like to be disposable, marginalized and forgotten as a child who went through the foster care system I could not help but to be deeply affected when I learned about Rachel Steiner. We must confront the fact that Stella’s story has been revisited over and over again precisely because of her aesthetic and cultural alignment with mainstream society. Her biographer is the father of U.S. senator Ron Wyden. Her aesthetic appearance titillates and stirs the imagination of those who appreciate this particular “look.” Her assimilated background and family life are familiar to many and relatable. I believe that her personal story is important, but it feels inappropriate to completely center a collaborator while relegating her victims to background props and plot devices. Her personal story and the fate of her victims must be given equal consideration. To give so much attention to Stella while ignoring or placing her victims in the background is very much like marginalizing and silencing them all over again. Rachel Steiner’s story deserves to be heard as much as Stella’s, and this is why I’m working on a short story that dramatizes her life in hiding and the effect Stella’s betrayal had on this young girl and her family.
The Stella Goldschlag story is especially useful during these tumultuous times because it allows us to have a conversation about the complexity of Jewish life beyond viewing people solely through a paternalistic lens of victimhood. Most reading this will be aware of what is happening in Israel right now with the proposed judicial system overhaul and the growing split between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews on the issue of Palestinian civil rights. An Israeli historian has compared the current situation in Israel to Germany in 1933, warning that the government now has “neo-nazi” members. We cannot turn a blind eye to the danger this right wing, fascist-adjacent government poses to the Palestinians. There’s something extremely grotesque about shedding tears for Anne Frank while simultaneously making excuses for why Palestinian children deserve to suffer and die. And we can say the same thing for Iraqi children, Afghan children, Syrian children, Yemeni children, Haitian children, Central American children, and the children rotting away in American ghettos.
I’m going to return again to Rachel Steiner, because this girl who suffered and died under antisemitic oppression is an example of the kind of stories we don’t often hear about; her tragic story shows us the true horror of fascism fully realized. According to nazi propaganda she was a dangerous enemy of the state and the carrier of “bad blood” that needed to be eradicated. The failure of the Evian conference and the refusal of countries to open their doors to more Jewish refugees sealed her fate. And the fate she was forced to endure was very terrible indeed and almost unimaginable. I’ve asked myself what Rachel Steiner and Stella’s other victims might say if we could speak with them somehow. If we were somehow able to summon these people during a séance, what would they have to say to us? Would they feel that the narratives concerning their fates have done justice to them and their experiences? Or would they be angry that their lives and struggles have been overshadowed by Stella’s blond hair and jazz band ambitions?
Hopefully this essay has helped make clear that European history does not exist in a vacuum or stand on a special pedestal above all other histories. Systems of oppression have borrowed from one another and reinforced each other globally over the past five hundred years of European colonization. This brutal history is the wretched soil from which the nazi terror emerged. A deep dive into personal, intimate stories is a method of helping us to understand these complex issues and how historical forces impact regular people. The Stella Goldschlag story contains in microcosm a multitude of relevant considerations for everyone interested in understanding and combating the growing fascist movement. It’s a stark warning of what can happen to individuals and communities when fascists gain total control. Let’s remember that Stella Goldschlag desperately wanted to be a fashion designer and a jazz singer. If she had been given refuge in the United States her dreams probably would have materialized. Instead…
Addendum
I would be remiss if I did not return to this photo of Stella’s 14th birthday party. This photograph contains the core of the absolutely vital context we must have before engaging with this story or passing (well deserved) judgement on Stella’s actions. In 2019, Stella Goldschlag’s estate took legal action against several people who were presenting her story without this crucial context:
“My behavior as a gripper must never be presented without the previous history”
In the lawyer’s letter to Hanser Verlag, which according to “Zeit” is from January 21 of this year, it says that Goldschlag was always concerned “that her biography was presented in a responsible way”: “She didn’t want to under any circumstances that individual sections of her tragic life are torn from the overall context and thus presented in a distorted way. Stella’s legacy was: My behavior as a grasper must never be presented without the backstory.”
Normally I’m ambivalent about lawsuits, but in this case I absolutely agree it was necessary. The novel and the play in question do not present the story as the tragedy it truly is, and instead turn a horrific and frightening situation into a fanciful and ridiculous narrative that obfuscates the many layers of complexity. The Stella Goldschlag story is not a love story and it’s not a kitschy drama; the desire to present this story in such distorted ways comes from a lack of understanding of the context and what really happened. Here’s what really happened.
Stella is shown in the above picture with her parents and her aunts about three years before the outbreak of WWII. One of her aunts, the one embracing her, years later paid her tuition to attend a prestigious art school. This was necessary because her father was suffering from chronic unemployment due to the nazi persecution and the family had fallen on hard times. Both of Stella’s aunts were among the first Jewish people to be deported from Berlin in the fall of 1941. Rose Lermer, the one holding the little dog, was deported to the Lodz ghetto in Poland where she languished for months before being sent further on to the Chelmno death camp. Maria Lermer was deported to Estonia where she was murdered in one of several large mass shooting operations carried out by Estonian auxiliary police. The deportation of Stella’s aunts was surely very traumatizing for this close knit family. And although no one knew exactly what their fates were at the time, as we know from Victor Klemperer’s diaries, rumors about Jewish deportees being shot en mass were swirling as early as January of 1942. By the time Stella and her parents decided to go into hiding in March of 1943 it was well known in Germany that Jewish people were being deported to their deaths.
Stella Goldschlag’s parents were imprisoned and held ransom in early summer of 1943 to guarantee Stella’s cooperation with the Gestapo. After her parents were deported to Theresienstadt in early 1944 Stella kept in contact with them and sent them food parcels. There’s a mistaken belief that she carried on with her work as a collaborator despite her parents being deported to their certain deaths, however, she was operating under the false assumption that Theresienstadt was a “privileged” ghetto. The purpose of the camp was to disguise its true nature as a transit camp to the death camps. In October of 1944, Toni and Gerhard Goldschlag were among over 18,000 people sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz where they were brutally murdered. Stella was the sole survivor of her immediate family. To my knowledge, not much of this family history is focused upon in the above mentioned narratives.
It bears repeating that the Stella Goldschlag story is not kitsch. In fact it’s the complete and total opposite of kitsch.
