3. Volunteering to Become a “Jew Catcher”
To evade the Nazi dragnet thrown to catch Jews, Stella Kubler went into hiding, using forged IDs listing her as Aryan. She was able to pull that off because of her blue-eyed and blond-haired Aryan appearance. However, she was denounced to the Gestapo four months later by a “Jew Catcher” – a Jew working for the Gestapo to find other Jews in hiding. Her boyfriend and later husband offered the Nazis his and Stella’s services, bragging that he could “assemble an entire train” of Jewish deportees. The Nazis accepted.
Soon, the couple were working together as Catchers, collecting 300 Reichsmarks for every Jew they turned in, and a promise to spare Stella’s parents. Having themselves lived in hiding, the couple had an instinct for where to look. Stella in particular, because she knew many of Berlin’s Jews from her years in a segregated Jewish school, was highly effective.
