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The Hardcore Women of World War II Knew How to Take Care of Business

Khalid Elhassan October 19, 2020 32 min

World War II - Night Witches — Night Witches in front of a Po-2. Flite Test

2. Stella Kubler Went Far Beyond Simply Delivering Other Jews to the Nazis

Auschwitz, where the Nazis sent Stella Kubler’s parents and husband. History

While the decision to become a Jew Catcher might not have been of her own free will, how Stella Kubler exercised what freedom of choice she had while working as a Catcher was entirely within her control. She pursued hidden Jews with tremendous zeal and inventiveness, and even after their arrest, when her job as a Catcher was presumably over, she enthusiastically participated in the beating, torture, and humiliation of the Jewish prisoners.

Despite her services, the Nazis broke their promises, and deported Stella’s parents to their death in a camp. Soon thereafter, in 1943, her husband and his family were also sent to Auschwitz. Stella then met and married her second husband, another Jew Catcher, and kept working enthusiastically for the Gestapo. Betting on a German victory, she obtained a promise from a high-ranking Gestapo official in 1944 that she would get declared an Aryan after the war.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.