The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood [Hardcover]

Ursula Mahlendorf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2009

While we now have a great number of testimonials to the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors of that dark episode of twentieth-century history, rare are the accounts of what growing up in Nazi Germany was like for people who were reared to think of Adolf Hitler as the savior of his country, and rarer still are accounts written from a female perspective. Ursula Mahlendorf, born at the height of the Great Depression in 1929 to a middle-class family, was for a long while during her childhood a true believer in Nazism, the daughter of a man who was a member of the SS at the time of his early death in 1935--and a leader in the Hitler Youth herself. This is her vivid and unflinchingly honest account of her indoctrination into Nazism and of her gradual awakening to all the damage that Nazism had done to her country. It reveals why Nazism initially appealed to people from her station in life and how Nazi ideology was inculcated into young people. The book recounts the increasing hardships of life under Nazism as the war progressed and the chaos and turmoil that followed Germany's defeat. In the first part of this absorbing narrative, we see the young Ursula as she becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and then goes on to a Nazi teacher training school at age 15. In the second part, which traces her growing disillusionment with and anger at the Nazi leadership, we follow her story as she flees from the Russian army's advance in the spring of 1945, works for a time in a hospital caring for the wounded, returns to Silesia when it is under Polish administration, and finally is evacuated to the West, where she begins a new life and pursues her dream of becoming a teacher. In a moving Epilogue, Mahlendorf discloses how she learned to accept and cope emotionally with the shame that haunted her from her childhood allegiance to Nazism and the self-doubts it generated.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A former German and women's studies professor at UC–Santa Barbara, Mahlendorf grew up in a small town in Silesia and was a squad leader in the Hitler Youth who embraced Hitler as a father substitute after the death of her own father, a former SS member, in 1935 and also in rebellion against her mother who disapproved of the Nazis. Her escape from a group suicide pact in the wake of Hitler's suicide was a first step in her denazification and eventual acceptance of her culpability in the Holocaust, an open-ended process that gained a feminist twist as she realized how politics were personal under Nazism. An eye-opening, honest and absorbing account of how evil takes root and flourishes among ordinary people. Illus. (Mar. 28)
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From Booklist

Inducted into the Hitler Youth at age 10, Ursula Mahlendorf witnesses the pogrom of Krystallnacht in her small German town and becomes an ardent follower, exhilarated by news of German victories. Now a retired professor of German literature and women’s studies at the University of California, she is still torn with guilt, “mortified that I felt edified by such trash.” As a young teen, she was a bystander; if she had been old enough, would she have been a perpetrator? It is that dual perspective that gives this memoir its power: the immediacy of her memories; the shame, remorse, and uncertainty of remembering. There is sometimes too much personal detail, especially about her academic career that led to a Fulbright scholarship to the U.S. But the personal experience is haunting about then and now: how you can develop a shell of toughness and numbness and not know what is happening at Bergen-Belsen, only 50 miles away from where you live. --Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Trd) (March 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271034475
• ISBN-13: 978-0271034478
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ursula Mahlendorf should join Anne Frank on your WWII bookshelf, May 7, 2009

By 

S. A. Fugate (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood (Hardcover)

Ms. Mahlendorf has given us a brutally honest story of a survivor. Although it reads like a historical novel, it is a true account of her young life as a German in Silesia during the years before, during, and after WWII. Her insights into her own behavior and feelings during those years are remarkable as are her vivid memories which detail the life she lived, the horrors and atrocities she witnessed, and the cultural, political, and economic conditions in Germany during those pre and postwar years. Her honesty and introspection about the permanent psychological consequences of an early life focused on survival is commendable. She helps us to understand a little better what happened and how Germans let it happen.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling memoir., May 6, 2009

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J. B. Paley "Engineer" (Santa Barbara, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood (Hardcover)

This book was impossible for me to put down. It was a compelling, beautifully written, and gut-wrenchingly honest, heart-pounding memoir. Reading it, one can't help putting him/her self into the scene and wondering what they would have done and felt had it been them born into and growing up in Nazi Germany. Growing up in America and being raised Jewish during the `40's I had bought totally into the notion that there was a uniqueness about the psyche and collective consciousness of Germans that made allegiance to Hitler if not inevitable, almost irresistable. ("They are militaristic, easily led, don't question authority, etc., etc."). While reading Dr. Mahlendorf's memoir and reflecting on our own very recent history, I realized that the ability to be seduced by a charismatic, articulate, demagogue with a messianic complex is not unique to any one people. That insight was, for me, a valuable albeit frightening revelation. Should be recommended if not required reading for high school and college students.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The shock of the new in a familiar context, April 17, 2009

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Hamida Becker (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood (Hardcover)

Mahlendorf's autobiography/memoir is among the three or four accounts written by former Hitler Youths. It is a rare and authentic insight into the daily life of Nazi Germany as experienced by a young girl until she is 16 years of age. The many years that passed since 1945 enables the author to deepen the personal narrative in the political and historical context. Experiencing the time with the author, the reader, knowledgeable about the period, also learns shockingly new things. For instance, what happened at the end of the war to the babies and their mothers designated to be Nazi "breeders." Exceptionally well written, the author connects the problematics of family deprivations with her historical entanglement in the Federation of German Girls. Against great odds, the author is able to transcend and yet remain always caught up in her past.There are few accounts like this one! Superb! There is no shame in this survival!