Close

The
BLONDE
P OI$

Why would this woman turn
in hundreds of her fellow Jews
to the Nazis?

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

ASSISTANT EDITOR

U)

w

w

w

w

24

rnest Fontheim was in a
Siemens factory in Nazi Ger-
many when he first saw Stel-
la.
Both were working at the
munitions plant, which em-
ployed Jews as virtually slave
labor, and then only because
so many "Aryans" were serv-
ing in the army.
Stella was tall and blonde,
with full lips and a heart-
shaped face. Her complexion
was smooth and clean and
pure. She looked, Mr. Fontheim says, "like
a doll."
He approached her because of a name.
Goldschlag. Ernest knew a Klaus Gold-
schlag — it wasn't exactly common and since
it also was Stella's family name he won-
dered, could they be related?
"He's my first cousin," Stella replied po-
litely.
Today, Mr. Fontheim lives in Ann Arbor.
Stella lives in Germany. They haven't seen
each other since the war. Yet Stella con-
tinues to haunt Mr. Fontheim like some in-
exorable night terror.
"It could easily have been me that she
caught," he says. "Once she saw somebody
she knew at a subway station, and Stella
turned her over to the Gestapo. I often came
up those same stairs. Fifty years later, it
still gives me the shivers."
Charming, beautiful, personable Stella
was "a catcher." During the Holocaust, she
actively hunted other Jews for the Nazis.

Journalist Peter Wyden, who recently wrote a boa
about Stella, estimates she gave the names of at
least several hundred Jews to the Gestapo.
Though he has no doubt as to Stella's guilt, Mn
Wyden, of Ridgefield, Conn., does not condemn the
woman who came to be known as "the Blonde Poi •
son." Most Holocaust scholars agree. "We cannot
judge, because we weren't there," says Universit)
of Michigan-Dearborn history Professor Sidnei
Bolkosky.
Ernest Fontheim tells a different story. All hi
family perished in the death camps, and he sur
vived World War II by going underground. Earl
on, he threw away the obligatory yellow star bear
ing the word Jude. He lived off his father's savings
then by wheeling and dealing, and with a little luck
Ask him today about his life during the war year4
and Mr. Fontheim is restrained and modest. There'
no self-pity when he talks about the day-to-day fear
he was forced to endure, the anticipated SS knoc]
on the door, the knowledge that all your friends anc
neighbors were dying, the constant search for fool
shelter and a safe place to stay for the night.
Just one subject makes this otherwise soft-spd-
ken man fierce:
Stella.

S

he was born in 1922 in Berlin, the only daugh
ter of Gerhard Goldschlag, a would-be con*
poser, and his bossy wife, Toni. She way
coddled, treated, friends would later say, lik(
a princess. Her mother often spent hours combing
Stella's blonde locks.
The result was a vain, immature young woman
says Mr. Wyden, who attended Berlin's Goldschmid
School with Stella. The school was established b
Dr. Leonore Goldschmidt after the Nazis no longe r