The Catcher
Stella Goldschlag was a German Jewish woman who collaborated with the Gestapo during World War II, exposing and denouncing Berlin's underground Jews.
She was the only child in a middle-class, assimilated family and like other Jewish children, was forbidden to go to a state school by Nazi racial policies, so she attended the Goldschmidt School, set up by the local Jewish community. In 1942, with the deportation programs in effect, she disappeared underground with forged papers, passing as a non-Jew with her blonde-haired, blue-eyed 'Aryan' appearance. She was captured and tortured before, in order to avoid the deportation of herself and her parents she agreed to become a "catcher" (Greiferin) for the Gestapo, hunting down the "submerged" (Untergetauchter). Besides her parent's protection, she was promised a reward of 300 Reichsmark for each Jew that she betrayed. Posing as a hidden Jew herself, Stella offered food and accommodation to her former classmates before handing over information about their friends and family to the Gestapo. She is said to have helped capture over 600 hidden Jews. Despite her parents eventually being murdered in Auschwitz, she continued to collaborate to insure her own safety.
After the war, the one known as 'Blonde Poison' again went into hiding. She was found and arrested by the Soviets in October 1945 and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. She committed suicide in 1994.
A film - Stella. A Life - starring Paula Beer and directed by Kilian Reidhof will be released this hear.
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