Stories from the shade. Dutch women in the Nazi East.

Abstract

This study undermines the stereotypical and gender specific view that just a few occasional women - following their husbands - went to the Nazi-East in the framework of the Nederlandse Oost Compagnie NOC. This organisation was founded in 1942 in order to implement the Dutch contribution to Hitlers quest for Lebensraum. By scrutinizing ego-documents and postwar judicial files it has been established that the number of women involved was higher than has been suggested so far, that the women were not just following their husbands, but that they had their own agenda and moreover that they were actively influencing the men in their lives. On the basis of this specific temporal and spacial setting it has been demonstrated that looking at the past from a gender perspective results in the adjustment of the postwar view in historiography about the roles and responsibilities of men and women alike.