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Search - Stella : One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany

Stella One Woman's True Tale of Evil Betrayal and Survival in Hitler's Germany
Author: Peter Wyden

In all of Holocaust literature there has never been another book like this: Haunting, deeply personal, as exciting as a spy novel, it is a non-fiction Sophie's Choice. Stella Goldschlag was blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful, and seductive, but she was also Jewish, and in World War II Germany, that could be fatal. But somehow she was transformed into ... more »a tool of the Gestapo, a collaborator in Hitler's "Final Solution". Now one of her childhood friends finds out how, and why.

Stella exploited her looks and sex as a "catcher" for the Gestapo, hunting down hundreds of fellow Jews who were then sent to Nazi death camps. Wyden, who fled Hitler's Germany in 1937 at the age of 13, was Stella's classmate in Berlin in a "non-Aryan" school they were forced to attend.

A chilling exploration of the moral complexities of survival in an insane world distinguishes this unusual and deeply disturbing Holocaust tale. Far from the stereotypical Nazi collaborator, Wyden met Stella as a classmate (and pubescent fantasy figure) in 1930's Berlin. But while Wyden and his family managed to escape Germany in 1937, Stella remained trapped. After enduring forced factory labor, a precarious few months as a "U-boat" (an illegally subsisting Jew), and two rounds of Gestapo torture (punctuated by two escapes), she became a greifer (catcher), one of the desperate Jews who hoped--generally unsuccessfully--to save themselves and their families by helping to apprehend others. Relying on a wide-ranging mix of personal recollection, extensive interviews (including talks with Stella herself), psychological commentary, and published records, Wyden sketches a hypnotic portrait of his subject's world against its larger political context: the progressive loss of civil liberties; street violence; sudden deportations; suicides; concentration camps; daring escapes; refugee struggles; and disbelieving inaction by outside powers. At the ethically troubling center is Stella, responsible for as many as 2,300 deaths, stalking her prey at cafes, movies, the opera, resorts, and even funerals--and, after three trials and ten years in Soviet labor camps, remarkably unrepentant. Hiding neither his horror nor his sense of connection, Wyden goes beyond the dismal facts to probe the limits of culpability when faced with "the final choice: to die or join the devil." While this ultimately makes the book more intellectually than emotionally challenging, it heightens the universality of its theme--not nobility vs. evil, but the tragedy of ordinary people in a hopeless situation. A provocative and haunting work, worthy of the attention--and soul-searching--of a wide readership. 16 pages of photos.

ISBN-13: 9780671673611
ISBN-10: 0671673610
Publication Date: 1992
Pages: 381
Rating:

Currently 3/5 Stars.

3 stars, based on 3 ratings

Publisher: Simon Schuster
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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