“Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s 317 “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina Brett Sterling University of Arkansas Abstract: Despite the growing popularity of historical comics in German-speaking Europe, the Second World War and the Holocaust are as yet underrepresented among German-language works in the genre. Barbara Yelin’s Irmina (2014) is a key addition to the comics landscape that provides an important reflection on the period. Irmina presents a character study of a so-called “normale Deutsche” whose political indifference leads to an eventual embrace of the Nazi regime. This essay analyzes Yelin’s comic as an attempted reckoning with Germany’s National Socialist past for younger generations eager to understand their grandparents’ actions and motivations. The essay focuses particularly on the visual and narrative strategies Yelin employs to depict the titular character’s slide into complicity. The historical figure of the bystander is also discussed with attention to its formative psychological characteristics. Finally, the essay addresses the relative absence of Jewish figures in Yelin’s comic and explores the implications of this artistic choice. Keywords: bystander, complicity, Mitläufer, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, comics, graphic novels, race, National Socialism, erasure In recent years, the genre of the historical comic has become especially popular. In German-language comics, this has included a range of biographies from Martin Luther to Fidel Castro 1 ; the historical crime comics of Peer Meter and co. 2 ; and a great number of comics on the “Wende.” 3 With a few notable exceptions, 4 the Second World War and the Holocaust have received relatively little coverage in German comics. Given the central place these events occupy in German history, each new comic on the subject is a welcome addition. One such important addition is Barbara Yelin’s Irmina (2014), which focuses on a 318 Brett Sterling key aspect of Germany’s National Socialist past, namely the passive support of Hitler’s regime by so-called “ganz normale Deutsche” (Korb 275). Irmina is neither a war comic nor a Holocaust comic, but rather a piece of historical fiction about the everyday life of an average woman in National Socialist Germany, as she slides increasingly into silent complicity with the Hitler regime. Yelin’s comic presents an important exploration 5 of the motives that kept bystanders from speaking out or taking action against the discrimination, deportation, and extermination of Germany’s Jewish population. This essay provides an analysis of Irmina as a reckoning with Germany’s past, specifically the attempt by younger generations to better understand—but not excuse—the inaction of their grandparents’ generation. On the narrative level, this essay will examine the eponymous protagonist’s development into a follower of the regime with particular attention to aspects of her character, manifestations of anti-Semitism and National Socialist ideology in her thinking, and the role of chance and choice in determining her actions. For context, I will provide a brief summary of the comic’s plot. Based loosely on the life of the artist’s grandmother, Barbara Yelin’s Irmina explores the life and actions of a bystander to the genocidal project of the Hitler regime. Irmina von Behdinger is a young, middle-class German woman who moves to London in 1934 to study at a secretarial school. While there, she meets Howard Greene, a black Oxford student from Barbados, with whom she becomes romantically involved. The two are separated, though, when political and financial issues force Irmina to return home. Back in Germany, Irmina takes a job as a secretary in the Reichskriegsministerium with the ultimately futile hope that she will be transferred to the German Consulate in London and thus be able to reunite with Howard. But when Irmina loses contact with Howard, the crushing disappointment saps Irmina’s desire to escape, and she grudgingly accedes to the courtship of a zealous SS officer. She subsequently marries, has a son, and eases into an increasingly uncritical acceptance of National Socialist ideology and the promise of the Volksgemeinschaft —the concept of a prosperous society based upon the unifying element of German racial purity. After her husband’s death in the war, Irmina lives a quiet life until she unexpectedly reunites with Howard as an older woman and is forced to reflect on her own inaction during the Holocaust. Irmina von Behdinger was neither a victim nor a perpetrator of the Holocaust, but rather a bystander, someone who was, in Victoria J. Barnett’s words, “immediately present, an actual witness, someone for whom involvement was an option” (xv). Throughout Yelin’s comic, Irmina is marked by her failure to act; instead of becoming engaged on either side, Irmina insulates herself from personal responsibility in the conviction of her identity as a disinterested bystander to events seemingly beyond her control. In order to better understand Irmina’s “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 319 position, it is useful to look at the factors that contribute to the development of the bystander persona. In her study on the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust, Kristen Renwick Monroe identifies several aspects that can predict which of these roles an individual is likely to play in a genocide. The most applicable of these aspects, which will each be viewed in the context of Irmina’s character, are self-concept, worldview, and values. To begin, Monroe claims that an individual’s self-concept is the “central psychological variable” and most important predictor of behavior during a genocide (711). That behavior is, in turn, influenced by how an individual sees the world and what values he or she considers constitutive of a good life. Each of these aspects of Irmina’s character is established within the first chapter of the comic, when she is afforded opportunities for self-development and -actualization, and her trajectory toward Nazi complicity is not yet inevitable. At the outset, Irmina is depicted as an independent, inquisitive woman who values her freedom above all else. Against the expectations of the time, Irmina repeatedly rejects the notion that she needs a man’s permission or support to achieve her goals. All that Irmina really needs, she states repeatedly, is the freedom to shape her own life: “Ich möchte […] tun und lassen, was ich will” (Yelin, Irmina 89). Her stay in London is an expression of this desire, since her secretarial training is a means to attaining financial security without the aid of her family or a man. Irmina’s strong sense of independence fuels personal ambition—a desire, “jemand [zu] sein” (265)—and a taste for adventure: her childhood goal was to sail the world, discovering uncharted islands and lost treasures. However, this core of self-actualization and independence coexists uneasily in Irmina’s personality alongside a conviction that she is an unremarkable, average person. By conceiving of herself as just one individual among many, Irmina is able to absolve herself of the “special” responsibility of political action. A key aspect of Irmina’s self-concept and her worldview is the notion that politics occupies a sphere of existence separate from the everyday lives of average citizens, and that those same citizens are neither directly affected by, nor able to affect the political situation as it develops. For example, when confronted by her English host father about Hitler’s purge of the SA during the so-called “Night of the Long Knives,” Irmina insists that the state-sanctioned violence has nothing to do with the German people: “Aber … das ist doch Politik! Das betrifft die anderen doch nicht” (67). For Irmina, the government’s actions appear unrelated to her own experience, and are thus of little interest to her. As a self-described “normale Deutsche” (79), Irmina feels free to go about her business, pursuing personal goals without the need to take a position on the political issues of the time. Irmina’s political apathy is at the center of her worldview, alongside a belief in the essential rationality and justice of the political system. 320 Brett Sterling Like other bystanders in Monroe’s study, Irmina demonstrates the feeling that the world is “run by forces somehow beyond [her] control,” namely by an unknown class of politicians operating above and beyond the citizenry (Monroe 721). According to such a worldview, the individual need not feel compelled to intervene in political situations, since such intervention is believed to be ineffectual: in response to the SA purge, Irmina asks in exasperation, “Was kann ich dafür? ” (Yelin, Irmina 67). Irmina’s political inaction is further supported by “just world thinking,” the belief that there are justifiable reasons for the existence of suffering and violence in the world (Staub 67). Rather than expressing dismay at politically-motivated extrajudicial killing, Irmina rationalizes Hitler’s murder of SA officers as the result of some wrongdoing on the part of the latter: “Wer anständig ist, hat nichts zu befürchten” (Yelin, Irmina 67). Additionally, Irmina indicates a faith in the ability of existing political structures to correct the influence of extremism on the status quo. Even as the entire world watched Hitler’s power grow in the early 1930s, Irmina is convinced that it is a momentary phase not to be taken that seriously: “Ich kann’s nicht mehr hören. Hitler … Hitler … Hitler! Der hält sich doch nicht. Das ist eine Phase! Davon bin ich fest überzeugt” (54). If the political system is inherently just and self-correcting, then anything that occurs within it, no matter how violent or odious, must have been done for good reason or it will be righted by a swing back to the center. Taken in combination, the belief in a just world—in the form of Germany’s political system—and in the lack of political efficacy of the individual round out a worldview that makes it extremely difficult for Irmina to resist the machinations of the Hitler regime. At the core of Irmina’s self-concept and worldview there is one main value: the freedom and independence of the individual. The value of independence has both positive and negative effects on Irmina’s personality. On the one hand, it is Irmina’s great strength: her independence makes her resourceful, perseverant, and self-reliant. On the other hand, it fuels self-absorption, a concern for personal comfort, and a disinterest in the welfare of anyone not immediately connected to Irmina. Beyond the internal conflict created by these opposing aspects of Irmina’s independent nature, there is the external threat posed by National Socialist ideology, which works to tamp down the liberating side of independence while simultaneously instrumentalizing self-concern against empathy for others. For example, in spite of her desire to make something of herself and to experience a world beyond the confines of established gender roles, Irmina has internalized the Nazi state’s stigma against women’s self-determination. In her adolescence, Irmina was passed over for higher education after the family’s money went to educating her brothers. Yet on top of expressing bitterness at her missed opportunities, Irmina recites state propaganda as a half-believed “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 321 justification: “Aber bei uns sagen sie jetzt, Studieren sei nichts für die deutsche Frau. Ist etwas für Blaustrümpfe. […] Frauen, die studieren, folgen nicht ihrer … Bestimmung. Ihrem Land dienen sie durch andere Tätigkeiten, verstehen Sie? ” (44—45). Within the National Socialist mythos, the Aryan woman was expected to serve the German people first and foremost as a mother, not as an educated member of the workforce. Irmina’s stay in London is intended specifically to liberate her from such a domestic life, but the ideology of maternal duty erodes Irmina’s confidence in her path of self-actualization. Whereas Nazi gender policy undermines the liberating aspect of Irmina’s independence, the ideology of racial superiority emerges in combination with Irmina’s heightened degree of self-concern. Within the comic, Irmina’s greatest chance for avoiding the snare of National Socialist ideology is Howard. In her relationship to Howard, Irmina finds a person who believes in her and supports her efforts to make something of herself beyond the constraints of social expectations, while challenging her to think critically about politics. The fact that Howard is black also exposes Irmina to the otherwise abstract phenomenon of racial prejudice, which she has never experienced personally. On the night that Irmina meets Howard at a London society party, a drunken young man who had been hitting on Irmina insults the pair by invoking stereotypes of black men as physically and sexually threatening: “Mit ihm reden Sie also, ja? Keine Angst vor dem schwarzen Mann? […] Jetzt wird’s mir klar, Miss … Sie befolgen nur die Befehle Ihres Führrrrerrs … Germans, wählt Brrrraun! ” (27). After Irmina leaves with Howard, she is completely shocked at the young man’s actions, but more so at the fact that no one stepped up to silence him: “Wieso sagt denn keiner was? ” (30). Irmina has never been talked to this way, but for Howard, verbal assaults are a part of everyday life. When the couple goes to the movies together, a white patron refuses to sit next to a “Darkie,” prompting Irmina to speak out vociferously in Howard’s defense: “Dieser Mann ist Bürger des British Empire … und Oxford Stipendiat! Ha! Und SIE ? ! Ein PROLET sind Sie! Ein widerlicher, ungebildeter Engländer! ” (98). In light of her previous experience, Irmina refuses to let prejudicial statements go unchallenged, but she does so from a position of privilege. Irmina is frequently unable to recognize the precariousness of Howard’s situation: as a black man in England, Howard must work twice as hard as white students and accept verbal abuse without complaint, lest he lose his scholarship and be forced to return to Barbados. As a German in England, the consequences of Irmina questioning the social status quo are negligible. Irmina’s willingness to defend Howard against discrimination is the closest she ever comes to overcoming the politics of racial division. Yet in spite of Irmina’s genuine love for Howard, it only takes a moment of perceived person- 322 Brett Sterling al injury to activate latent racial animosity against him. In one scene, Irmina expresses resentment at Howard for his seemingly posh position as an Oxford fellow, while she perceives her own situation to be much more tenuous: “ DU hast leicht reden! DU mit deinem Stipendium! […] In Deutschland würde einer wie DU überhaupt nichts bekommen” (86—87). Although Irmina immediately apologizes for her statement, it is evident that she is vulnerable to the influence of racial prejudice when she feels her own status threatened. While Irmina’s relationship with Howard brings her into personal contact with the concrete expression of racial prejudice, her experience working within London’s activist circles presents her the opportunity of evolving beyond her stated apolitical neutrality. Through Howard, Irmina secures work as a social companion to a duchess and former suffragette who uses her wealth to fund philanthropic and political projects. In a preliminary interview, the duchess attempts to assess Irmina’s political position: “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 323 GRÄFIN . Und aus Deutschland sind Sie emigriert? Jüdin? IRMINA . N… Nein - weder noch. Ich … Ich bin einfach eine normale Deutsche. GRÄFIN . NORMALE Deutsche? Kind, Sie wissen ja nicht, was Sie reden! Ihre normalen Deutschen richten gerade großes Unheil an. Und wie es aussieht, wird es noch mehr. Lesen Sie keine Zeitungen? IRMINA . Ach, die Zeitungen. GRÄFIN . Kind! Sie haben noch viel zu lernen. […] Sie sind noch viel zu jung, Kind, um zu wissen, ob sie zu den Emigranten … oder Ihren normalen Deutschen gehören wollen. (78—81) Upon questioning, Irmina again articulates her self-concept as an unremarkable, apolitical German citizen; she sees herself as disconnected from the actions of her fellow Germans, and shows no desire to inform herself about those actions (“Ach, die Zeitungen.”). The duchess generally takes in Jewish and communist émigrés from Germany to provide them with work and shelter, but she makes an exception with Irmina in the hope that Irmina might evolve out of her political detachment and learn to see the world differently (84). In a double-page montage, Yelin shows the variety of situations and activities to which Irmina’s job with the duchess exposes her: rallies for women’s rights and against fascism, working the line at a soup kitchen, distributing bread to impoverished urban families, and attending dinners with the political and social elite (82). In the individual panels, Irmina is shown on the margins, listening to, but not engaging with the activists and politicians around her. Irmina expresses admiration for the duchess and her daily fight for social justice, but the political ideals never take hold. Rather than becoming inspired to action, Irmina becomes more convinced that the duchess’s life must be painfully lonely, and thus undesirable. Ultimately, Irmina refuses to choose a political side, insisting instead on an individuality that defies being pigeonholed into a single category, as she explains to Howard: HOWARD . Ach, Irmina. Ich frag mich manchmal, wer du eigentlich bist? IRMINA . Ich? Na … das weißt du doch. Blaustrumpf! Tippse! Kommunistin! Nazifräulein! Emigrantin! Suffragette! Ich bin ich. Das muss reichen. (88) Irmina is reluctant to allow herself to be defined by others, to be limited by the constraints of labels. This suggests a fluidity in her identity that could hold open a variety of avenues of positive or negative development. Simultaneously, Irmina’s insistence on independence serves as an excuse not to accept the consequences of taking a position and acting according to principles larger than self-actualization. On the day of her return to Germany, it remains unclear where her path will take her. 324 Brett Sterling The first chapter of Yelin’s comic presents Irmina as a headstrong, independent woman who wants to make something of herself beyond the societal expectations placed on her as a woman. Inquisitive, adventurous, and vital, Irmina displays an openness to the world and new experiences. In her relationship with Howard, she is her most progressive self, willing to speak out against discrimination. Simultaneously, though, Irmina’s behavior and statements are often informed by self-interest and indicate a substratum of latent National Socialist ideology at work, including a tacit acceptance of women’s domestic and maternal roles in German society, and the belief in German racial superiority. These aspects of Irmina’s character come to the fore in the comic’s second chapter, when Irmina returns to Germany and is surrounded by the full apparatus of National Socialist propaganda. Irmina’s eventual slide into complicity with the actions of the Nazi state is determined, I argue, by chance—unforeseen developments in world politics and in Irmina’s personal life—as well as by choice, a series of conscious decisions made by Irmina without compulsion that are somewhat obscured by the comic’s focus on the role of external forces in determining Irmina’s actions. In the early stages of Irmina’s reentry into German society, she is motivated ostensibly by a desire to earn money in order to return to London and reunite with Howard as quickly as possible. In the austere economic climate of the early 1930s, Irmina experiences real privation living in a communal apartment with several others, unable to afford heating and only barely able to feed herself. She does, however, secure stable work: as a secretary in the Reichskriegsministerium . Irmina hopes that her English language skills will net her a transfer back to England and a position at the German Consulate in London. Initially, Irmina shows no outward sign of party affiliation or loyalty, indeed she is openly critical of the disparity between the regime’s utopian promises and her own lived experience of poverty. As she tells her future husband, an SS officer and true believer in the National Socialist cause: “Hier kann ich nicht mal meine eigenen bescheidenen Kosten hereinarbeiten! Ich wohne in einer unbeheizten Kammer, ernähre mich von Graupensuppe! Ihre Gedankengebäude mögen Großes verheißen, aber davon kann ich mir keine Bulette kaufen” (138). Irmina’s rejection of the Volksgemeinschaft project is rooted in a pragmatic skepticism that causes her to mistrust idealism without evidence of results that will directly improve her own life. Throughout the comic, Irmina’s focus on personal prosperity makes her resistant to ideological influence, at least in the form of grand visions; Irmina is more interested in having her needs met than in crafting a golden future for Germany. Irmina’s cynical view of the regime even overrides her sense of caution, as in a scene where she publicly derides a propaganda poster encouraging “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 325 Germans to follow Hitler’s lead and abstain from a lavish meal one Sunday per month ( Eintopfsonntag ): “Glaubst du im Ernst, der Führer löffelt am Sonntag Wassersuppe? ” (143). In spite of her friend’s frantic reminder that such talk would constitute sedition under German law, Irmina continues to criticize the state on a personal, but not on a systemic level. In the comic’s second chapter, a number of factors combine to push Irmina ever deeper into acquiescence to, if not outright acceptance of the National Socialist regime and the notion of the Volksgemeinschaft . The first major setback to Irmina’s plans of a return to London comes when she is notified that the political situation has worsened, and that there is no chance that she will be transferred to the German Consulate. In a panic, Irmina resolves to borrow money from a friend to finance a return to England that very night. When she arrives home to pack, though, her plan proves futile: Irmina’s most recent letter to Howard has been returned, with a note that the addressee’s whereabouts are unknown. In this moment, Irmina’s hopes collapse, and she begins to resign herself to a fate in Germany. With Howard gone, Irmina begins a relationship with her suitor, Gregor Meinrich, which quickly develops into marriage and the creation of a family. On a first reading, this situation appears to be a blow dealt to Irmina by fate, altering the path of her life beyond her control. The rejection of her transfer request, but even more so Howard’s disappearance, seems to explain her downtrodden acceptance of a second path that she would not have chosen otherwise. I argue, though, that this presents a much too passive picture of Irmina as a character who has no control over her own destiny and whose fate is determined by the unpredictability of chance. Upon closer reading, Yelin’s narrative reveals a much more problematic character, one for whom other avenues existed, but were not chosen. The importance of choice in determining Irmina’s personal trajectory begins before her return to Germany. When Irmina’s parents are forced to cut off her financial support, she chooses to return to Germany-a country viewed from England as devolving into a political and humanitarian nightmare-against Howard’s advice and entreaties. Irmina is a fiercely independent woman, protective of her freedom, who places great value on her personal dignity. When Howard suggests that she could find other employment in London to remain with him, or even take a loan from him, Irmina refuses: working as a domestic servant would be beneath her, and having a debt held over her would be too great a constraint on her freedom. She chooses instead to return to Germany, rather than to stay on someone else’s terms. Irmina’s willingness to return is also informed by her apolitical stance: in her mind, Hitler is a passing fad and a component of the political sphere that does not really affect her life. 326 Brett Sterling Once in Germany, Irmina makes a massive political statement that is presented in the comic (and by Irmina herself) as another twist of fate: through a well-connected uncle, Irmina receives a position as a foreign language secretary in the Reichskriegsministerium . On the one hand, it is Irmina’s stated objective to use this position to return to London, and thus her employment there would seem to be no more than a means to an end. On the other hand, though, it is difficult to claim that one is separate from politics while working directly for a central part of the state apparatus, specifically the organ responsible for planning and carrying out military actions. Irmina’s willingness to work for the government in this capacity can be explained as a pragmatic choice to achieve her objectives in whatever way possible, while also being indicative of her established political disinterest and ignorance. However, this same choice also makes clear that, while she may not vocally espouse the regime’s ideology, she benefits from it and more than tacitly supports it by becoming a part of the government. It is stated in the comic that work is scarce, but if Irmina had any kind of political conviction against the National Socialist regime, she could have chosen to work elsewhere. The same can be said of her choice in life companion, Gregor Meinrich. From their first meeting, Meinrich repeatedly attempts to convince a skeptical Irmina that a brave new world awaits Germany, provided all are prepared to make personal sacrifices for the prosperity of the nation as a whole. In Meinrich’s view, women like Irmina are of immense importance to the creation of Germany’s grand vision, so much so that for her to leave the country would be a betrayal: “Ich halte es für UNverantwortlich […] dass Sie wegfahren, Irmina! […] Deutschland braucht Sie jetzt! Es gibt so viel hier zu tun. Frauen wie Sie werden gebraucht. Verlassen Sie uns nicht. Gehen Sie nicht weg! ” (149—50). In the absence of clearly defined character traits that would set Irmina apart from other women, it becomes clear that Irmina’s value to the state is first and foremost as a woman, that is as a potential wife and mother. Meinrich’s appeal to Irmina’s sense of duty and responsibility attempts to invest a traditional domestic role with gravity and honor, but Irmina rejects the advance as a threat to her personal autonomy. After the revelation of Howard’s disappearance, though, Irmina is presented as demoralized and resigned to a life of stagnation. In the vacuum left behind, Meinrich’s dogged pursuit begins to win Irmina over, as the social mobility and material gains promised by the Volksgemeinschaft become more accessible through their acquaintanceship. In a key extended scene, Yelin uses color and double-page spreads to depict the effectiveness of National Socialist pomp and opulence in wearing down Irmina’s practical objections to the regime. The scene begins with the image of a crowd gathered at Potsdamer Platz, arms raised in salute to Hitler’s mo- “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 327 torcade, which has passed unseen off of the right page. In the background, a two-story portrait of Hitler is flanked by two enormous red banners, bearing the swastika. The image occupies two full pages and creates a sense of foreboding under the heavy grays and blacks of Yelin’s pencil drawings, with the strong accent of red breaking through the darkness. On the next page, Irmina pushes her way through throngs of onlookers to meet Meinrich after her plans to leave Germany have fallen through. At the door of a packed hotel, Meinrich runs into an influential SS officer who gets the couple access to a ball for the party elite being held inside. Along the right side of the final panel, the doorway to the hotel glows red, echoing the banners of the previous scene. On the following page, red dominates, combining the opulence of the ballroom’s decor with the color of National Socialism to represent the infernal appeal of party affiliation for Irmina. After some initial surprise upon learning of Meinrich’s SS membership, Irmina begins to be taken in by the romance and glamor of the evening, which Yelin emphasizes in a one-panel close-up of Irmina gazing into Meinrich’s eyes. Irmina’s openness not only to Meinrich’s romantic advances, but to the attraction of the NSDAP and the comforts it promises, is made clear in the final double-page spread that ends the scene. From a series of close-up panels, Yelin pans out and shows the cavernous ballroom, filled with well-dressed party members smoking around a crowded dance floor. Surrounded by red, Irmina and Meinrich are shown in the middle of the dance floor as Irmina utters the only text on the page: “Nicht so schlimm” (164—65). 328 Brett Sterling In the context of the previous scene, Irmina is ostensibly reacting to Meinrich having stepped on her foot, but the statement reads as a commentary on the kind of luxurious life that being in the party’s inner circle promises. The hope for financial gain and material comfort proves to be a central motivator for Irmina’s ultimate decision to align herself with the regime through a relationship with Meinrich, and the couple is married within three pages of their first dance. Irmina soon learns, though, that the Volksgemeinschaft does indeed demand sacrifices from the community. Shortly after her marriage to Meinrich, Irmina abandons the workplace for a life of domesticity, which is in direct contradiction to her independent character and personal ambitions. In Mothers in the Fatherland , Claudia Koonz argues: “Women who decided to support Nazism accepted their inferior status in exchange for rewards” (3). Irmina confirms Koonz’s claim by tying her satisfaction with domestic life to her husband’s successes and the resulting financial gains. While Irmina expresses dissatisfaction at being tied down and caught in a static life of waiting for her husband, she indicates that a certain amount of luxury could counteract her malaise: “Ich hab es satt. Ich bin nicht gut im Warten. Was ist denn nun mit deinen großen Erfolgen? Den illustren Gesellschaften? Der geräumigen Wohnung? Meinen Namen habe ich weggegeben für dich” (Yelin, Irmina 173). Irmina makes it clear that she has sacrificed for the Volksgemeinschaft , namely her independence and identity, but the rewards have not been forthcoming. It is important to note, again, that Irmina’s criticisms of the regime are apolitical, driven by personal desires and completely indifferent to the effect of National Socialism on Jews and other groups targeted for persecution. 6 As previously mentioned, Yelin’s comic is primarily a depiction of the life and political entanglement of an average German under National Socialism, not a comic about the Holocaust. In discussing the life of a bystander, though, the analysis cannot lose sight of the implications of inaction and indifference to suffering inherent in even the most minimal acceptance of the National Socialist regime. Aside from the overt employment of anti-Semitism in state propaganda, to which all German citizens were exposed, there is a growing consensus among historians that contrary to the oft-repeated refrain among postwar Germans, “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst,” 7 most Germans were aware to some extent of the Nazi’s genocide against the Jews (Dean 81). After granting that most Germans knew what was happening to Jews and other persecuted groups, many historians like Carolyn Dean argue that “bystanders were never merely indifferent but often ambivalent, sometimes complicit, occasionally heroic and mostly not” (82). The question then becomes, within the context of Yelin’s comic, what does Irmina know, and how does she respond to anti-Semitism: with indifference, ambivalence, or complicity? “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 329 Anti-Semitism is present in Irmina in many ways, most conspicuously in the statements of Gregor Meinrich, Irmina’s suitor turned husband. On several occasions, Meinrich uses Jewishness to devalue or discredit people and institutions: the architecture of Walter Gropius is described as “seelenlos … technisch, berechnend. Jüdisch” (135), the foreign press is lumped together as “Jüdische Zeitungen” (167), and Ernst vom Rath’s assassin, Herschel Grynszpan, is referred to as a “Judenbengel” (171). Initially, Irmina does not signal agreement with, nor repeat Meinrich’s anti-Semitism, but neither does she reject or refute it. Irmina does, however, indicate an openness to anti-Semitism born out of a sense of personal injury done to her while in London. When Irmina’s financial support evaporates, she appeals to her benefactor, the duchess, to loan her money on a short-term basis. The duchess not only denies Irmina’s request for money, but also asks her to move out of her lodgings to make room for a homeless Jewish refugee. In a moment of vulnerability, Irmina feels betrayed and supplanted by an interloper who becomes a scapegoat for Irmina’s personal misfortune. According to Monroe, personal losses and traumas like Irmina’s often led bystanders “to retreat into themselves and adopt a defensive posture” (700). In Irmina’s case, her defensiveness of her own well-being is expressed as a bitter conviction that Jews and other refugees receive better treatment than ethnic Germans. Shortly after returning to Berlin, Irmina disparages emigrants while discussing the departure of an elderly Jewish woman from a friend’s apartment complex: “Auswanderer. Weißt du, dass die bei den Engländern beliebter sind als normale Deutsche? ” (118). Although Irmina never addresses the woman’s Jewishness, the woman is subsumed under “Auswanderer,” who are perceived to have abandoned their country and are denied the status of “normale Deutsche.” Irmina’s employment of the phrase “normale Deutsche” in this context reveals the insidious secondary implication of her previous insistence on being an ordinary, politically insignificant and unimplicated German citizen: she “counts” as German, as a member of a nation defined not by citizenship, but by racial identity. 8 This is confirmed a few pages later when Irmina acquires her “Kleiner Arier-Nachweis,” documentation of her racial purity necessary for working within the National Socialist party apparatus. The express focus on Irmina as a “normale Deutsche” also serves to obscure the existence of Jews within the context of the comic. The world in which we find Irmina is one largely devoid of a Jewish presence. In the Berlin Yelin depicts, Jews are not shown, but rather alluded to by the ubiquitous signs forbidding their entry into restaurants and businesses. And yet Yelin incorporates these images subtly into her compositions, making them as inconspicuous to the reader as they seem to be to Irmina. In several panels, 330 Brett Sterling Yelin depicts storefronts announcing “Juden unerwünscht” (126) and “Juden sind unser Unglück! ” (199), but the signs usually occupy a less central position at the panel’s edge such that they appear a normal part of the city scenery. These placards go unnoticed by Irmina: she demonstrates neither surprise at, nor condemnation of the messages they convey. In one full-page panel, Irmina is shown coming through the door of a café, unaware of or uninterested in a sign displayed prominently to her left—equal in size to the figure’s torso—that declares: “Juden: Zutritt verboten! ” (152). The banishment of Jews from public places is fully unremarkable in Irmina’s world, where the existence of Jews is signaled first and foremost by their absence. By removing Jewish figures from all but a few scenes, Yelin’s comic visualizes the violence of bystander indifference. Dean describes indifference to the suf- “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 331 fering of victims as a “symbolic erasure whose brutality is palpable to those who disappear whether or not bystanders feel good or guilty, whether they are ignorant or knowledgeable, or concerned to help but regret that they cannot” (104). Irmina’s lack of attention to the plight of Jews and her failure to even register their presence is more than just complacency or passive ignorance: it amounts to the active negation of an entire people. It is fitting that Yelin’s narrative, which follows and is driven by the character and actions of Irmina, should reflect her indifference. On the visual level, the comic uses a filmic style of presentation that flows smoothly from one panel to the next, reinforcing the supposed normality of experience being depicted: as Irmina fails to see the extraordinary nature of events and her place within them, the comic avoids experimentation. Yelin creates a formal representation of the psychological profile of the bystander as inherently unremarkable through her use of a realistic, if sketchy drawing style with a subdued color palette, geometric panel grids, and a stable narrative progression. These visual and narrative elements, combined with the absence of depicted violence and victims in Irmina’s immediate environment, reflect the distance that Irmina creates between herself and the world. Irmina’s comfortable separation from reality persists until she is unavoidably confronted with the presence and open persecution of Jews during the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht on November 9—10, 1938. In the night of November 9, Irmina is awakened by lights and the sound of an approaching vehicle. She watches from her darkened window as Nazi foot soldiers ransack a Jewish shop across the street, drag a man out of the building, and drive away. Irmina is shown in a sequence of panels watching silently from above, framed in her window, as the scene plays out below. When the silence is broken by a disembodied voice—a single word balloon against a black background exclaiming, “LOUIS! ! ! Er hat doch nichts getan! ”—Irmina’s eyes widen in surprise at the noise as she backs into the shadows. In the next panel, the small figure of a woman is shown standing in the darkened street as she shouts for help: “Ist denn niemand wach? Warum hilft denn keiner? ” (180). The woman’s entreaty is reminiscent of Irmina’s own protest against the prejudicial treatment of Howard: “Wieso sagt denn keiner was? ” (30). And yet Irmina does not speak, nor does she intervene: she retreats instead further into the darkness of her room, unseen by the woman on the street and thus exempted from a response. The distance between Irmina and the woman on the street is expressed in the visual structure of Yelin’s panels as well. Throughout the scene, the reader views the action from the same kind of secure remove that Irmina does, as an observer rather than a participant. Irmina is shown in relative close-up, while the woman is depicted in miniature, conveying her diminished importance in the eyes of the main character, Irmina. The Jewish shopkeeper’s plight is not without 332 Brett Sterling effect on Irmina, though. In the panels that follow, Irmina moves—physically— from a place of observation to one of contemplation: she leaves the window and returns to bed, finds her husband gone, and lies awake in thought, presumably contemplating her own (in)action and the implications of her husband’s absence. The next morning, Irmina goes out into the city—against Gregor’s explicit warning—and encounters the full scope of the destruction she witnessed in her own neighborhood the night before. Over several pages, Yelin moves Irmina past shattered shopfronts, where the Jewish owners are forced to sweep up glass with their bare hands. The faces of the shopkeepers are not clearly visible, and Irmina looks away from them with a hat pulled down nearly over her eyes. In silence, Irmina passes through crowds, casting furtive glances at the wreckage. In each successive panel, Irmina is increasingly incorporated into the surroundings: Yelin pushes her to the margins of panels or puts her far into the background, leaving her hat as a barely recognizable marker of her presence. As Irmina vanishes into the throng, those around her present a cross-section of public responses to the November pogrom. Some voice support for the action, blaming the Jews for their own persecution (“Na, haben sich die Juden doch selbst eingebrockt.”), while others lament the loss of material goods (“Aber die Sachen …”, “Die hätte man doch noch benutzen können.”) or balk at the impropriety of open violence and disorder (“Ein wenig … vulgär, nicht? ”). 9 Only one bystander voices shame for his government’s actions (“Eine Schande. Schämen sollten wir uns.”) and acknowledges the collective responsibility of German citizens for the violent and discriminatory treatment of German Jews (187—88). The majority of those assembled, like Irmina, stand in stunned silence, intervening neither for nor against the Jewish citizenry. In a stark double-page spread, Yelin portrays a crowd of onlookers watching as the Fasanenstraße synagogue burns with ghostly white and gray flames. “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 333 334 Brett Sterling Strikingly, the color red is absent from the fire and reserved for the Nazi flags that flank the scene. The pallid fire engulfing the synagogue corresponds to the matte, passionless attitude of the onlookers, for whom even wanton destruction is not a motivator to action. Irmina is not exempt from the numbness experienced by the crowd: rather than even address what she is seeing, Irmina leaves the scene almost in a trance to complete her grocery shopping. In the aftermath of Reichskristallnacht , Irmina questions her husband about his involvement in the pogrom, but she cannot bring herself to formulate direct questions: “Was ist da draußen? Was ist … mit dir? ” (194). Gregor responds with the party line that a generalized public wrath (“der Volkszorn”) was responsible for the violence against Jews, which is discredited by the stunned passivity Irmina herself witnessed in the streets of Berlin. When questioned yet again about his personal role, Gregor merely screams “ WAS , Irmina? ! ” bringing an end to all further questioning. At the end of the scene, Irmina draws the curtains and symbolically closes herself off from the external world and the plight of others. As Yelin describes it, “sie blendet das aus und stellt eben keine Fragen mehr” (Yelin, “Interview” n. pag.). Any hope of possible resistance dies with Irmina’s decision not to see, and not to question the actions of the regime. The remainder of the comic’s second chapter takes Irmina through the course of the war in quick succession, as she becomes increasingly bitter and jaded by the constant sacrifices and disappointments of life in the Third Reich. During this time, Irmina gives birth to a son, Gregor’s illustrious architectural career flounders as Germany’s war effort intensifies, and he eventually joins the military to take part in an expected German victory. As Germany’s expulsion and genocide of European Jews intensifies, information about deportation and extermination begins to trickle back to Irmina. On a rare visit home, Gregor begins to reveal what he has seen firsthand (“Nun kommen immer Güterzüge nach Osten durchgefahren, vollgepfercht mit …”) before being abruptly cut off by Irmina: “Gregor! ! Nicht vor dem Jungen! ” (201). Her response reveals that she knows enough of what is occurring to want to shield her child from that knowledge, even if the details remain unclear. As time progresses, though, Irmina becomes increasingly beleaguered and bitter, allowing the ubiquitous anti-Semitism to take root where there was once only willful ignorance. The increasing austerity and severity of life during wartime have a hardening effect on Irmina, causing her already characteristic self-interest to ossify into a hostile defensive posture. As Irmina is forced to scrape by, struggling to feed herself and her son while Gregor is at the front, she begins to echo the regime’s propaganda about the Jews as the source of all social ills and hardships faced by the German people. In one scene, while out for a walk with her son, Irmina is unmoved by the sight of Jewish deportees’ belongings being auctioned on the “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 335 street. When her son asks innocently what Jews are, Irmina responds in exasperation: “Unser Unglück! Die Juden sind unser Unglück! ” (203). From her initial political indifference and seeming concern, at least for the violence and destruction inflicted on the Jews in her environment, Irmina has become a mouthpiece for National Socialist ideology. In Irmina’s case, as for many bystanders, her anti-Semitism is combined with a retreat into the private realm and a general lack of compassion for anyone but herself and her immediate family. Irmina even coldly turns out a friend whose house was destroyed by Allied bombing. When the friend tries to share her personal experience of witnessing the deportation of Jews firsthand, Irmina refuses to hear the truth, and dismisses the genocide as less important than her personal suffering: “Kein Wort mehr, Gerda. Ich will nichts weiter hören. […] Wir haben hier genug Leid und Sorgen. Was gehen uns die Juden an! ” (212). Irmina’s striking lack of empathy is underscored by Yelin’s visuals, which show Irmina displaying greater concern over the destruction of a jar of jam in the same scene: while the large-scale murder of Jews is of no consequence to Irmina, the loss of the jam (a final connection to Gregor) is a great misfortune. As Irmina kneels to clean up the jam, the red of the berries resembles blood amid the shards of glass, invoking both the earlier Kristallnacht scene and the unseen deaths of millions of people outside of Irmina’s immediate environment. When death and destruction finally enter her world during the Allied bombing campaign, Irmina clearly articulates the importance of looking away as a means of shielding herself from the implications of her own inaction. Surrounded by bodies in the rubble on their way to safety in the Bavarian countryside, Irmina advises her son: “Mach es wie ich, Frieder. Nicht hinsehen” (213). Irmina’s strategy of looking away, of refusing to hear, and of actively repressing un- 336 Brett Sterling comfortable knowledge is intended to guarantee a distance from culpability, an innocence by virtue of ignorance that is belied by the second chapter’s closing scene. Prior to the arrival of American forces in the village where Irmina and her son found refuge, Irmina burns all of the documents tying her to the Nazi regime, and along with them the evidence of her culpability. In one panel, the white glow of flames obscures Irmina’s face, except for the eyes: she is washed out, erased by the same passionless fire that consumed the Fasanenstraße synagogue earlier in the comic, while her wide-open view indicates a full awareness of the nature of her complicity. The pale fire of destruction thus clears Irmina’s personal record, allowing her to live a quiet life without having to answer for her own inaction, at least not yet. The final chapter of Yelin’s comic finds Irmina in her old age, working as a school secretary in Stuttgart. She lives an unremarkable life with few, if any, substantial social connections. It is made clear that Irmina’s past, her life in London as well as her close connection to the National Socialist state are unknown to those around her. Irmina’s mundane existence is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a letter from Howard, now Governor General of Barbados, with an invitation to visit him on the Caribbean island. After Irmina’s arrival, the two struggle to navigate a relationship that ended so abruptly fifty years prior. Howard is married with children, which precludes any renewed romantic involvement, but Irmina is perplexed to learn that his entire family seems to know her: the “mutige Irmina” is something of a family legend. After days of waiting, sightseeing, and minor state events, Irmina learns why when she is presented as the guest of honor at the birthday party of Howard’s daughter, also named Irmina. During the years they were apart, Howard nurtured an image of Irmina as the young woman who defended him from insult, a courageous and fiercely independent person who wanted to explore the world. He named his daughter after this woman in the hope that it would help her, “wagemutig [ihren] Weg zu gehen” (261). When Howard’s daughter asks about Irmina’s past—what became of her after she left London, what adventurous life she created for herself, and how she experienced the war—Irmina begins to collapse under the weight of accumulated guilt and disappointment. In a faltering response, Irmina censors herself in an effort to efface her role at the center of the Nazi political machine: “Ja … ich - wissen Sie - ich wollte zurück nach London! Ich hatte in Berlin schon eine Stelle am Kr… an einem Ministerium …” (262). When Howard’s daughter mentions “die schrecklichen Nazis,” Irmina becomes lightheaded and recedes into the darkness over a series of panels. The exchange forces Irmina to confront her past and consider that, for all of her insistence on political neutrality, she could be considered among those same “schreckliche Nazis.” “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 337 In a final conversation with Howard, Irmina tries to understand the processes that changed the trajectory of her life so radically. In several panels, Yelin focuses on Irmina’s face in the darkness, while her downcast eyes express guilt and the weight of a half-century of unspoken regrets. With her back to Howard, she attempts to explain herself to him: Damals, als mein Brief an dich zurückkam … Ich … Ich hatte sogar schon ein Ticket. Ich hätte einfach fahren können … Nur - ich wollte doch etwas werden. Jemand SEIN . Und dann … Ich … Ich war nicht … Vorhin, als deine Tochter … was soll ich ihr sagen? … Howard, ich war nicht … ich WAR nicht die mutige Irmina … Kannst du mir das … (266; ellipses in original) As Irmina’s confession ends before it is ever really uttered, she turns to see Howard, whose figure is obscured in the darkness. There is no response, only an ellipsis of silence, as Howard blends into the background and Irmina is left alone with the knowledge of her past. Confronted by the gravity of her complicity, Irmina is unable to speak directly about her experience under Nazi rule. Through her broken statements, though, there is a clear recognition of the fact that in the face of injustice and genocide, she was unwilling or unable to demonstrate courage against the regime. Irmina’s realization is delivered with a combination of shame and bewilderment at her own actions, but stops short of acknowledging specific transgressions. Not only is the knowledge of Irmina’s personal failure too painful to articulate, even her plea for forgiveness fades into silence: to ask for absolution would require answering the question, “For what? ” Irmina’s silence about her past is representative of an entire generation of Germans, in whom the Nazi past was repressed and shut away, never to be talked about or even acknowledged. With the complicated past of German bystanders, as Alexander Korb notes in the afterword to Irmina , it is less a matter of a topic that one could speak of if one so chose, but rather a period so thoroughly repressed that all that remained was “eine Sprachlosigkeit, die kaum zu überwinden war” (283). Such is the case for Irmina, who offers neither excuse nor explanation for her behavior, overcome by silence in the face of the unspeakable history in which she participated. In Irmina , Barbara Yelin presents a character similar to the large number of Germans whose support of the regime did not extend to an active role in its campaigns of terror and genocide, but whose inaction enabled their perpetration. Irmina is a complex and flawed human being, neither a devil, nor an angel. Looking at her hopes and ideals at the beginning of the comic, the reader sees a range of alternatives that might have enabled Irmina to live a life of exploration and freedom, a life away from Germany. External constraints and historical developments made the achievement of such a life more difficult, but 338 Brett Sterling Irmina ultimately opted for the security and stability of life within the regime over passion and ambition. The analysis of Irmina’s character performed in this essay helps to explain how her insistence on the value of independence led her from a path of liberating openness to one of callous self-interest, and further how Irmina’s self-image and worldview as a “normale Deutsche” predicted her complicity. Irmina’s insistence on her own apolitical normalcy and intense focus “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 339 on herself—on her own social status, financial well-being, and physical safety— more than on others led to an absence of the empathy for humanity necessary to resist the regime and its genocidal policies. Yelin’s contribution to German historical comics is a narrative about the entanglement of unremarkable people in the machinery of totalitarianism. Irmina offers a glimpse into everyday life under Hitler’s regime and forces the reader to ask whether they would have acted differently in Irmina’s position. There is, however, an inherent danger involved in projecting oneself into the role of the bystander. As Carolyn Dean warns: This retrospective identification with those who were not Nazis, opportunists, and thugs but “normal” people who watched indifferently or helplessly and therefore numbly or guiltily, is apologetic even though it is accompanied by sincere hand-wringing, and unwittingly repeats the self-protective numbness into which some have argued onlookers must have retreated. But most important, this identification with bystanders once again “forgets” the victims except as those “we” could not help or against whose pain we would naturally protect ourselves. In so doing, it unwittingly performs a similar symbolic erasure of the victim—albeit with far less dire consequences—whose own experience of bystanders’ grace or cruelty is hardly discussed at all. (104) Irmina engages in the same foregrounding of the bystander experience, inviting readers to view the protagonist’s experience as a cautionary tale. Indeed, Yelin has stated explicitly that she intended the comic to be “ein Buch, wo sich jeder fragt: ‘Was hätte ich gemacht? ’” (Yelin, “Interview” n. pag.). In Irmina , Yelin attempts to understand on behalf of younger Germans how their grandparents’ generation became complicit in the genocide of European Jews. Viewed as such, Yelin’s choice to focus on a bystander is a logical one, but even as her comic deftly and convincingly represents the moral ambivalence and indifference of an average person to the suffering of others, the absence of victims within the narrative is palpable. In its avoidance of a direct depiction of the Holocaust and its victims, Irmina reenacts the silence of its protagonist, unable to speak of the true horrors contained within the space of a single ellipsis. Irmina is nonetheless an exceptional piece of art, with which Barbara Yelin has taken an important step toward German comics’ engagement with the National Socialist past. One can hope that Yelin’s comic will open a space for other German-language artists to approach the history of the Holocaust not just from the perspective of bystanders, but of victims as well. 340 Brett Sterling Notes 1 Moritz Stetter, Luther (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013); Reinhard Kleist, Castro (Hamburg: Carlsen, 2010). 2 Peer Meter and Barbara Yelin, Gift (Berlin: Reprodukt, 2010), see Marina Rauchenbacher’s essay in this issue; Peer Meter and Isabel Kreitz, Haarmann (Hamburg: Carlsen, 2010); Peer Meter and David von Bassewitz, Vasmers Bruder (Hamburg: Carlsen, 2014). 3 See Susanne Buddenberg and Thomas Henseler, Grenzfall (Berlin: avant-verlag, 2011), Berlin: Geteilte Stadt (Berlin: avant-verlag, 2012), Tunnel 57 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2013); Mawil, Kinderland (Berlin: Reprodukt, 2014); PM Hoffmann and Bernd Lindner, Herbst der Entscheidung (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2014); Max Mönch, Alexander Lahl, and Kitty Kahane, Treibsand (Berlin: Metrolit, 2014); Jörg Ulbert and Jörg Mailliet, Gleisdreieck. Berlin 1981 (Berlin: Berlin Story Verlag, 2014) and Westend. Berlin 1983 (Berlin: Berlin Story Verlag, 2016). See also Elizabeth Bridges’s essay in this issue. 4 Notable examples include Reinhard Kleist’s Der Boxer (Hamburg: Carlsen, 2012), Ulli Lust’s adaptation of Marcel Beyer’s Flughunde (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2013), and Caroline Gille and Niels Schröder’s I Got Rhythm (Berlin: be.bra, 2014). 5 On the strength of the comic’s depiction of complicity in wartime Germany, Irmina was republished by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in 2015 as part of its series on the history of National Socialism. 6 In this essay, I discuss Irmina’s position toward Jews, and not toward homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, the disabled, criminals, Communists, Jehova’s Witnesses, or other political and religious dissidents. This is intended to reflect the absence of these groups within the comic itself, which I address later in the essay as part of Yelin’s narrative focus on bystanders over victims. 7 See Longerich 7 and Kempowski. 8 Bajohr describes the widely-held opinion in contemporary Germany, “dass es sich bei Juden nicht um ‘Deutsche’ jüdischen Glaubens handelte, sondern um ‘Fremde’, ja ‘Andersartige’, die nicht wirklich dazugehörten” (Bajohr and Pohl 23). 9 This aligns with existing studies on public opinion surrounding the November pogrom by scholars including Frank Bajohr, who notes: “Kritisiert wurde vor allem die Zerstörung und Plünderung” (Bajohr and Pohl 37). See also Longerich 130, Bankier 85, and Allen 402 ff. “Ganz normale Deutsche”: Confronting the National Socialist Past in Barbara Yelin’s Irmina 341 Works Cited Allen, William Sheridan. “Die deutsche Öffentlichkeit und die ‘Reichskristallnacht’.” Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus . Ed. Detlev Peukert et al. Wuppertal: Hammer, 1981. 397—411. Bajohr, Frank, and Dieter Pohl. Massenmord und schlechtes Gewissen . Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2008. Bankier, David. The Germans and the Final Solution. Public Opinion under Nazism . Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Barnett, Victoria J. Bystanders. Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust . Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, 1999. Dean, Carolyn J. The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust . Ithaca: Cornell UP , 2004. Kempowski, Walter. Haben Sie davon gewußt? Deutsche Antworten. Munich: Btb-Verlag, 1999. Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland. Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics . New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Korb, Alexander. “Irmina. Leben in der Zeitgeschichte. Ein Nachwort.” Irmina . Barbara Yelin. Berlin: Reprodukt, 2015. 275—83. Longerich, Peter. “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst! ” Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933-1945 . Munich: Pantheon, 2007. Monroe, Kristen Renwick. “Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust.” Political Psychology 29.5 (2008): 699—736. Staub, Ervin. “The Evolution of Bystanders, German Psychoanalysts, and Lessons for Today.” Political Psychology 10.1 (1989): 39—52. Yelin, Barbara. Interview by Norbert Joa. Bayerischer Rundfunk/ Bayern 2 11 Jan. 2017. Web. 11 Jan. 2017. -. Irmina . Berlin: Reprodukt, 2015. Images Fig. 1. Yelin, Irmina 30. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 2. Yelin, Irmina 164—65. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 3. Yelin, Irmina 152. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 4. Yelin, Irmina 180. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 5. Yelin, Irmina 185. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 6. Yelin, Irmina 192—93. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 7. Yelin, Irmina 212. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 8. Yelin, Irmina 266. © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt.