View No. 12 (2016)

No. 12 (2016)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Publication date:
2016-11-30

Section: From research workshops

Frankenstein in the Warsaw Ghetto. The History and Legend

Jan H. Issinger

redakcja@holocaustresearch.pl

PhD student in modern and contemporary history at the University of Freiburg. In 2006–2012 he studied history and social sciences in Münster and Vienna. He obtained a master's degree in modern history from the University of Münster. In 2010, he co-created the exhibition "Hitler und die Deutschen. Volksgemeinschaft und Verbrechenat" in the German Historical Museum in Berlin. In 2012–2015 worked in the research group 1288 "Friends, Patrons, Clients" (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft organization). Since 2012, a lecturer in modern history and history of Eastern Europe at the universities of Münster and Freiburg. From 2013, spokesman of the interdisciplinary working group dealing with social and cultural issues in Eastern Europe in historical and literary terms ("Social and Cultural Regimes in Eastern Europe in Historical and Literary Perspective"), which operates at the School of Humanities in Freiburg. In 2016, he received a scholarship from the International Institute for Research program on the Extermination of Jews and the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. He published, amongst others, Hitler und die Deutschen. Volksgemeinschaft und Verbrechen. Bausteine ​​für Unterricht und außerschulische historisch-politische Bildung (2010); Männlichkeit, Vertrauen und Gewalt. Deutsche Ordnungspolizisten als Besatzungsmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg (in the volume Zwischen Geschlecht und Nation. Interdependenzen und Interaktionen in der multiethnischen Gesellschaft Polens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (2016); soon to be published Options, constraints and concealments. Group culture in an ordinary SS-Police Battalion („Global War Studies”).

Freiburg University

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 12 (2016), pages: 187-208

Publication date: 2016-11-30

https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.414

Abstract

The article deals with one exceptionally violent German perpetrator who was part of the occupation force in Warsaw during the Second World War. Inside the Ghetto he maltreated and killed a large number of women, children and men for his own personal pleasure. He did this to such an extensive degree that the population perceived him as monstrous being that was given the nickname „Frankenstein”. The article is mainly based on statements in juridical investigations, from the victim as well as from the perpetrator perspective, supplemented with some selected additional sources. Firstly the source corpus will be evaluated, to work out how these historical sources can be used to shed light on „Frankenstein”. This will be followed by an analysis of the actual identity of this perpetrator. It will be shown that he was, contrary to common belief, not necessarily the SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche but more likely a member of the German Police Battalion 61. In the end the question will be also raised of how it was possible – despite all rules and regulations – that ghetto guards like him behaved like a marauding soldiery.

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Copyright (c) 2016 Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały

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Issinger, J. H. (2016). Frankenstein in the Warsaw Ghetto. The History and Legend. Zagłada Żydów. Studia I Materiały, (12), 187-208. https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.414

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                            View No. 12 (2016)

No. 12 (2016)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Data publikacji:
2016-11-30

Dział: From research workshops