Inside the Gestapo: A Jewish Woman's Secret War

Greg Turko is a policy analyst at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

For most people, the term Gestapo gives rise to visions of wanton brutality, senseless killing, and an unquestioning devotion to a perverted ideology. We do not, for the most part, think of the individuals who populated it and how they interacted with those around them. The organization and what it stood for has dwarfed those of whom it was made up. This book offers us a small insight into the organization by describing one woman’s contact with the Gestapo and its operatives. The story is made more poignant because this woman is Jewish.

Helene Moszkiewicz was a young woman living in Belgium during the Nazi occupation. Through a series of contacts and chance encounters, along with her own keen sense of adventure, she found herself infiltrating and working in a Gestapo command building on behalf of the Resistance. Throughout her account, the reader is very aware of her substantial nerve and poise in continuing her task amid extreme adversity. She was, of course, in constant personal danger should she have been found out.

We are also given character sketches of various members of the Gestapo with whom she had contact. We are almost surprised to learn that they often drank too much, were homesick, missed their families, and were on active lookout for female company. These were not markedly different or unquestionably unique people embarked on a destructive mission but, rather, everyday people embarked on a destructive mission. This account brings us no closer to understanding how these seemingly normal people could have undertaken such a horrific mission.

The book does not provide us with new insights into the Gestapo or Nazism, nor does it set out to do this, instead, it is a readable account written by a woman who has a personal story to tell.