Book Launch: Female Administrators of the Third Reich

The Library is pleased to partner with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to launch Dr Rachel Century’s new book.

The Library is pleased to partner with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to launch Dr Rachel Century’s new book, Female Administrators of the Third Reich, published by Palgrave Macmillan UK.

This book compares female administrators who specifically chose to serve the Nazi cause in voluntary roles with those who took on such work as a progression of established careers. Under the Nazi regime, secretaries, SS-Helferinnen (female auxiliaries for the SS) and Nachrichtenhelferinnen des Heeres (female auxiliaries for the army) held similar jobs: taking dictation, answering telephones, sending telegrams. Yet their backgrounds and degree of commitment to Nazi ideology differed markedly. Century explores their motivations and what they knew about the true nature of their work. These women had access to information about the administration of the Holocaust and are a relatively untapped resource. Their recollections shed light on the lives, love lives, and work of their superiors, and the tasks that contributed to the displacement, deportation and death of millions. The question of how gender intersected with Nazism, repression, atrocity and genocide forms the conceptual thread of this book.

Dr Rachel Century is the HMD Development Manager for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. She completed her doctorate in Holocaust Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, specifically focusing on the female administrative workers of the Third Reich. In addition, she has an MA in Holocaust Studies from UCL and is a Fellow of the Imperial War Museum in Holocaust Education.

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