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Visitors to a former Nazi concentration camp outside of Berlin will now have access to a new part of the tour, the living quarters of SS officers. Correspondent Daniel Estrin reports that it has long been taboo in Germany to take an interest in the lives of Nazi perpetrators, though now that’s changing.

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LISA MULLINS: Former concentration camp sites in Germany offer a chance to learn about the horrors of life there from the prisoners’ point of view. Well now, some curators are creating exhibits that show the camps from the perspective of the Nazi SS officers. It’s been taboo in Germany to take an interest in the lives of the perpetrators. But that’s changing, as Daniel Estrin reports from the Ravensbruck concentration camp memorial, outside of Berlin.

DANIEL ESTRIN:  It’s an eerie feeling to walk around the two-story villa where SS officers lived with their wives and children.

CHRISTINE HOLDEN:  This is obviously original bathroom fittings here. The tile, the bathtub. Look at the bathtub, it’s huge.

ESTRIN: Christine Holden is a history professor from the University of Southern Maine, doing research on the Ravensbruck concentration camp. So, the SS vice commanders, the SS officers would be taking baths here?

HOLDEN: Yes, while the prisoners had maybe no chance for shower after the first one when they came.

BETTINA FELZMANN: The whole energy is strange for me in this area.

ESTRIN: That’s Bettina Felzmann, visiting from Austria. We spoke in the kitchen, where an SS officer’s wife would prepare dinner. Not too far from the prisoner barracks. For decades, visitors have been coming to Ravensbruck to see where the prisoners lived and died. But this SS officer’s house was off limits to the public until a few months ago. Showing a glimpse into the perpetrators’ everyday lives is a relatively new concept at concentration camp memorials in Germany. Ravensbruck opened the first exhibit in 2004 about female camp guards. Memorial director Insa Eschebach says some of her colleagues were apprehensive.

INSA ESCHEBACH: The first discussions I remember, they were really very full of doubt. Oh, you will have right wing people here, to come and they will honor the SS, once you show pictures of them, and once you tell their stories, and huge fears.

ESTRIN: But a year later, another concentration camp memorial, near Hamburg, followed suit with a similar exhibit. Eschebach says curators are responding to a rising interest in the stories of the Nazi perpetrators, especially from family members.

ESCHEBACH: More and more grandchildren of SS men come here. I mean I had a woman sitting here, bursting into tears because her uncle had been an SS man here in Ravensbruck.

ESTRIN:  Eschebach says that it’s only been in the past ten years that descendants have contacted her. One man who did some family research is Berthold Schneiderheinze.

BERTHOLD SCHNEIDERHEINZE: I was born in 1950 in Furstenberg. And everybody in Furstenberg knew that there were a concentration camp.

ESTRIN: During the war, Schneiderheinze’s grandfather took tourists boating on the lake in front of the concentration camp. And his aunt delivered mail to the camp. Finding out that his relatives were bystanders filled him with guilt. So he started attending a weekly support group with other children and grandchildren of bystanders and perpetrators. In recent years, an increasing number of this second and third generation have been openly discussing their family history and even publishing books about it. But social researcher Stephan Marks says Germans still need to hear more from the so-called first generation involved Nazis.

STEPHAN MARKS: Those people who had been active as members of the Nazi party, SA, SS or Wermacht, they went into retirement during the last 10 or 20 years. There are still many around. There are still several million. Senior citizens who have conscious memories of national socialism.

SPEAKING GERMAN

ESTRIN: Here’s an example. Marks tape-recorded this interview with an elderly man who was active in the Hitler Youth movement. Marks often plays this recording when he lectures to groups on the psychology of the Nazis.

MARKS: This interview, the very first sentence goes, “When I was young we the young people went through life with open eyes, really open eyes. I remember Adolf Hitler’s visit in Freiburg. And we Hitler Youth went there and he went by us and he looked each one in the eyes.”

ESTRIN: Marks thinks it’s important to hear testimonies like this. He says it can teach Germany’s newer generations to stand guard against other fascist movements in the future.

MARKS: It’s not fun to listen to these stories, but that should not be a reason to keep too much of a distance. So, it’s like, going into the shoes of a perpetrator for 2 minutes. And then getting out again, and talking, how it is, how did it feel? This is learning from history.

ESTRIN:  But Eschebach, director of the Ravensbruck memorial, believes in keeping a certain distance.

ESCHEBACH: I think it’s an illusion to stand inside the shoes of anyone who has been here in Ravensbruck. Be it as an inmate, and also be it the SS. Because I think it is unimaginable. We cannot stand inside their shoes. We can only try to approach them and try to understand parts of what was going on.

ESTRIN: The horrors of World War Two are still fresh in the minds of many Germans. They’re interested to learn more about who committed the crimes, but for many, it’s not easy. The way Eschebach sees it, walking through a house, where SS officers used to eat breakfast and take baths, can be a first step. For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Ravensbruck concentration camp memorial.

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