Each supplement includes an introductory essay authored by an expert on a given topic and presents an assortment of ITS-original documents that support the theme. Descriptions, translations (as necessary), and questions for pedagogical work are included, as well as historical photographs from the USHMM and The Wiener Library’s collections and a list of suggested reading.
"Women under Nazi Persecution" comprises seven documents on various topics concerning the particular experience of women. Rebecca Boehling, former director of the ITS and professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, wrote the introductory essay for the supplement, in which she described a society dominated by the “Herrenrasse“ (superior race) and a so-called Aryan ideal to be the ultimate goal of National Socialism. The pseudoscientific ideological qualifications of “master race” doomed anyone determined to be “racially unworthy” to lead subordinate lives as “Untermenschen” (subhuman) or to die. Men deemed “of good racial stock” were to procreate; men of “inferior stock” were prevented from doing so by sterilization. Women of “good racial” quality were required to give birth to “racially valuable” children; the rest had to abort their “racially useless” offspring.
This concept simply reduced men and women to biological roles they were forced to take to contribute to the future biological success of National Socialist society, willing or not. It also stripped individuals of their right to decide whether to have children, as the state held the power to make the choice on their behalf. They became subjects of the state and their children, in turn, became its property.
Documents relating to the persecution of Barbara Koscielniak (presented in the supplement) serve as a good example. The Nazis deported Koscielniak to Würzburg, Germany, where she lived and worked in a camp as a Polish forced laborer. She became pregnant with the child of fellow Pole Zbigniec Konaki, a male forced laborer. Koscielniak was fully aware of her situation: she knew she would not have the time to care for a child because she had to continue to work for the state, and she did not want her child placed in the care of a German institution. decided to seek an abortion and placed a formal request with the appropriate authorities.