The Shame of Survival

“The Shame of Survival is a compelling memoir of a girl’s experiences growing up in Nazi Germany that analyzes the lifelong implications of Nazi indoctrination on a sensitive, thoughtful young woman. It shows how a reluctant, shy, frightened, and naïve BDM member becomes swept up in Nazi ideology and documents the lifelong psychic ramifications of living with that legacy: feelings of guilt and shame, a need to work through these experiences and to take responsibility for and mourn the past. Focusing on both class and gender, Mahlendorf’s memoir offers a unique and valuable perspective on a growing body of emergent belated narratives on Nazi Germany by German émigré academics.”

—Anna Kuhn, University of California, Davis

“Ursula Mahlendorf’s The Shame of Survival is a beautifully written autobiographical account of a former BDM (League of German Girls) leader who was a loyal supporter of the Nazi regime until its demise, when she suffered a major crisis in her entire belief system. Such eloquent, thoughtful accounts of a German girl’s experience during World War II have been rare, and Mahlendorf’s incisive gender analysis provides a firsthand look at how women and girls were cynically co-opted by the Nazis. Mahlendorf contextualizes her experiences within the larger frame of German military aggression and the Holocaust, focusing not only on the brutal consequences of unquestioningly following the Nazis, but also on how her traumatic postwar expulsion from the East caused her to reevaluate everything she had been taught during the Third Reich.”

—Erin McGlothlin, Washington University in St. Louis

“As a young teen, she was a bystander; if she had been old enough, would she have been a perpetrator? It is that dual perspective that gives this memoir its power: the immediacy of her memoirs; the shame, remorse, and uncertainty of remembering… . The personal experience is haunting about then and now: how you can develop a shell of toughness and numbness and not know what is happening at Bergen-Belsen, only fifty miles away from where you live.”

—Hazel Rochman Booklist

“This is a brave, honest account of a young girl’s experience in Nazi Germany, and especially of how women and girls were exploited. There are many layers of story and meaning in this courageous and painful memoir.”

—Jewish Book World

“[Ursula Mahlendorf’s] autobiography is a journey of emotional loss and recovery, a model of critical introspection, and a rich exploration of place and memory.”

—Jacqueline Vansant German Quarterly

“Mahlendorf’s book is an exacting self-examination, a sharply focused account of Nazi indoctrination and a scathing criticism of the failure of adults during the Third Reich to protect their children from the poison of this indoctrination. I can only recommend it.”

—Bill Niven European History Quarterly

“[Mahlendorf’s] is a straightforward, honest, intelligent, and at times painful recollection of how a young and impressionable girl of ten years could fall victim to the propaganda of the local National Socialist establishment; how a community of adults, from her own mother to neighbors, relatives, teachers, and youth leaders, not only looked on but reinforced a worldview based on deception and lies; and ultimately how the author struggled for decades to come to terms with the lies that defined her childhood.”

—Petra Goedde Journal of Modern History

Ursula Mahlendorf earned her PhD in German Literature from Brown University in 1958 and spent the rest of her professional life teaching in the German Department and Women’s Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.