“Ordinary women” or female perpetrators?

The lives and careers of German women in the German courts of the General Government (1939-1944)

Abstract

This article provides an initial overview of the German female staff who were employed in German courts across the General Government during the Nazi occupation of Poland, through the prism of twenty-four women and their personal files. At the onset of the occupation, the occupiers quickly established a dense network of legal institutions with the purpose, as this article argues, to establish a sense of “law and order” and normalcy within all spheres of society. With a focus on the Special Courts and German Courts across all five respective districts, this article traces the demographic, personal, and professional background of these German women. It inquires why they were transferred to the General Government and eventually returned to the Reich as late as in the summer of 1944, when the German legal institutions were evacuated. In a further step, their careers and lives throughout the
occupation are outlined, and through these networks among the German administrative staff become visible. This prism is especially insightful since the German legal sphere in the General Government was a male-dominated work field. However, these women played a decisive role in maintaining and operating the German prosecution of defendants of all ethnic backgrounds. In this way, this article explores the extent to which the female staff can be considered as perpetrators similar to their male counterparts, or what Hannah Arendt coined as “desk murderers”.