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| SS-Frontschwester Elsa Stendal |
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| Scandinavian SS Front Sisters |
The Scandinavian SS Front Nurses were deployed in pairs, and those older than 21 years mostly served in Finland, the Baltic States and in the Soviet Union. As the war ended, the front nurses returned home to countries liberated from the German yoke. Many of them were arrested by the home-front. With the exception of Denmark, all other 'germanic' countries sentenced their front nurses to varying degrees of jail-time, fines and loss of civil rights. Left image: Norwegian SS Front Nurse Elsa Stendal; she survived World War II and moved to Paris. Right image: three of the around 350-400 Norwegian women who served as Waffen-SS Nurses. The nurse on the left wears a black leather belt with the standard SS-pattern buckle clasp featuring the motto Meine Ehre heißt Treue, and a machine-embroidered Edelweiss insignia of SS mountain units. Both photos were probably taken by Max Ehlert, a German press photographer who had matured in the Weimar-era movie industry and later joined the Nazi party just after the Nazi take-over. He exercised his well-honed talent as a cinema and fashion photographer, and was capable of producing hard party propaganda and the soft lowbrow kitsch that provided a pleasant distraction from the period's tumultuous events and increasing repression. Credit: Andres Mario Zervigon. Fair use.
In 2015 the President of the Norwegian Red Cross, Sven Mollekleiv, protested about the treatment of about 450 Eastern Front Sisters who had been sentenced as traitors after the Second World War. These were trained nurses and volunteers who worked on the Eastern Front. Nobody should be punished for giving medical help on either side of the front line in time of war. Because the Norwegian legal system regarded their service in the SS as assisting the enemy in time of war, they were tried and sentenced. They were deprived of their civil rights for ten years and had to pay back what they had earned in the service.
ReplyDeleteI am looking for information on a couple of original color slides of these women came to my collection.
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Is the patriotic French influencer Bahia-Carla Stendhal a grandchild of Norwegian Elsa Stendal?
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