In the Shadow of Silence: From Hitler Youth to Allied Internment-a Young Woman's Story of Truth and Denial

Danial Duda is an information services librarian in the Queen Elizabeth
II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

In telling the story of a teenage girl’s life in Nazi Germany from
1944–46, Baer wrestles with the difficult question of how much guilt
must be placed on the shoulders of “ordinary” Germans when it comes
to the Holocaust. At the end of each of her book’s seven chapters, she
delves into the historical debate started in 1996 with the publication
of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust. Goldhagen contended that ordinary Germans
could have done much more at the time. Baer considers his position in
light of her own experiences, from her years in the Hitler Youth, to her
work as a secretary for an SS officer, to her life in the bombed-out
city of Hamburg, to her internment at the end of the war. Her
thoughtfully argued book is highly recommended for all libraries.