SS helper corps
The SS Helferinnenkorps was an organization for women within the National Socialist Waffen SS . Unlike the women in the SS entourage , who were only civilian employees of the SS , the SS helpers (also known as " SS Maiden ") were members of the Waffen SS and full, regular members of the SS kinship community .
The SS helper corps was founded in 1942 and was directly subordinate to the SS main office . It was made up exclusively of women who registered voluntarily and who had passed a strict selection process. The members were trained at the Reichsschule-SS, newly founded in 1942, in Oberehnheim in Alsace, and after having passed the basic course, they were accepted into the Waffen-SS. As members of the Waffen SS, they wore the SS runes on their uniforms as a visible sign of their affiliation . The hierarchy of rank within the helper corps did not, however, correspond directly to that of the SS. The highest office a woman could hold in the helper corps was that of the Reich Commissioner in the SS helper corps ; it has been occupied by the full-time BDM leader Ilse Staiger since it was set up in early 1943 . SS helpers served mainly as news and staff assistants throughout the German Reich and in the occupied territories, including in concentration camps and in the Reich Security Main Office , and operated radio, telephone and telex systems. A total of 2,765 women attended the Reichsschule SS in Oberehnheim, of which 2,375 became SS helpers of the Waffen SS.
After the Second World War , the SS helpers in denazification were often mistakenly viewed as members of the SS retinue or as military assistants and therefore largely not prosecuted as civilian employees and not as members of the SS.
literature
- Jutta Mühlenberg: The SS helper corps. Training, deployment and denazification of female members of the Waffen-SS 1942–1949 , Hamburger Edition, HIS, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86854-239-4 (also dissertation at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg ).
- Wendy Lower: Hitler's helpers: German women in the Holocaust (original title: Hitler's Furies translated by Andreas Wirthensohn), Hanser, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-446-24621-8 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Jutta Mühlenberg: The SS helper corps. Training, deployment and denazification of the female members of the Waffen-SS 1942–1949 , Hamburg 2011, p. 29.