Trying to Please the Monsters
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I was watching a documentary last night called Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany.to see full history
The documentary contained footage taken by German civilians and soldiers. Some of the footage was truly horrendous, but some of the footage appeared at first glance quite pleasing. For example, it showed a young, attractive woman dancing topless for some German soldiers.
However, when I thought about it later and put it in context, those pleasing images suddenly became extremely disturbing. The film material was taken in the USSR during Operation Barbarossa, and the young woman dancing was a Roma. It occurred to me that she wasn’t dancing half-naked because she enjoyed it, she was dancing because she thought it would please the monsters that had invaded her village. In her culture as in many other cultures, women would not show themselves naked in front of men—unless it was their husband.
Initially, I didn’t want to post the pictures, but I thought it was important to show the forgotten side of the horrors of the Holocaust. Also to celebrate the beauty of this young woman, not only her external beauty but also her internal beauty and the courageous soul she was. She must have realized that this could also result in her being raped.