Today’s Humiliating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
With the jeering, pushing, and tackling of protesters at the Donald Trump rallies, I was thinking about the role that humiliation played in keeping the public “in line” during Nazi Germany. Before they were sent off to concentration camps, non-conformists were publicly shamed by being paraded through town with placards indicating their “crimes”. Here’s another type of humiliation that was frequently used against women who didn’t walk the Nazi line:
On the market square in Ulm, a 19-year-old woman from the Göppingen district has her head publicly shaved by a local barber because of her relationship with a French prisoner of war, late August 1940. The woman was subsequently sentenced to one year in prison and two years’ loss of civil rights. The photo of the amused crowd of spectators was published on September 28, 1940 in the newspaper “Ulmer Sturm/Ulmer Tagblatt” with the caption “Thousands of faces expressed mockery and disgust.” The picture and the accompanying article, “Idle Chatter about a Dishonorable Woman,” were obviously a response to some residents’ criticisms of this brutal form of public humiliation.
Culled from: Topography of Terror Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm-and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse
Fun In Der Sonne!
Also culled from Topography of Terror is this relaxing view of “the private sphere in times of dictatorship: German vacation fun with swastikas, ca. 1939”.
