In The Collaborators, Buruma examines three highly conflicted personalities. Some of them still polarise historians.
Felix Kersten, a Baltic German, was born in Estonia under Russian domination and became a prominent masseur in interwar Germany. He had several illustrious clients and eventually became the personal masseur of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler, along with several other high officials in Nazi-controlled Europe.
While Himmler and his SS companions were committing genocide against the Jews, Roma and Slavs across Europe, Kersten “made his life easier”, soothing his muscles, and relieving the “architect of the genocide” from the stomach cramps that troubled him.
Buruma’s second sublect, Friedrich Weinreb, was born to Jewish parents in Lemberg (Lviv) in the Habsburg Empire, now part of Ukraine. He personally experienced the persecution of the Jews, first by Russian soldiers during World War I, and later by the genocidal Nazi regime.
Eager to survive at all costs, Weinreb “decided to play God”. He began to cooperate with the SS and Gestapo in the German-occupied Netherlands, denouncing his fellow Jews and resistance fighters.
He pretended to have the ability to rescue Jews, collecting money from them and compiling seemingly protective lists for rescue trains that never left. Almost none of those who had trusted him, and paid him money, were rescued. There were also alleged cases of Weinreb sexually exploiting the women who had trusted him to protect them against deportation to the death camps.
Read the article by Jan Lanicek at UNSW Newsroom.