Narratives of Resistance, Moral Compromise, and Perpetration: The Testimonies of Julia Brichta, Survivor of Ravensbrück

ABSTRACT Julia Brichta, a Jewish–Hungarian refugee, came to the Channel Island of Guernsey in 1939, a year before the arrival of the German occupying forces. The story of what happened to her during the war in Ravensbrück was told in her own words on several occasions between 1945 and 1965, yet the specifics of her path to Ravensbrück and her role as a camp policewoman there, have hitherto been unclear. Based on surviving archival documents, this paper attempts to untangle the evidence to establish some of the facts behind this ‘grey zone’ survivor of the Holocaust. It examines Julia’s path towards Ravensbrück and the ways in which her pre-camp and camp experiences impacted the ways in which she narrated her story between 1945 and 1965. Whether she was a non-Jewish resistance heroine or a Jewish perpetrator who lied about her wartime activities, this paper argues that in the end, such judgments are simplistic and mask the complexity of survivor stories. Instead, seeking to understand changes in testimony over time based on the audience as well as pre-camp and camp experiences offers a more fruitful path of analysis.