The Blonde

oison

Author Peter
Wyden.

angry, Mr. Wyden says.
She was disappointed the au-
thor had written "lies" about her.
And by the way, she added, "Don't
you think you should send me a lit-
tle money?"

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Peter Wyden says. She had no information about
Rogoffs whereabouts, but after authorities threat-
ened to send her parents to Auschwitz, she said she
had an idea where he might be found.
Stella never did catch up with Rogoff. But by then
the Nazis had other plans for her. Instead of beat-
ings, they offered her the chance to work as an "em-
ployee." With her friend, Rolf'Isaak,son (whom she
would later marry), Stella would help find other
Jews for the Nazis, to help achieve Hitler's goal of
making Berlin Judenrein. Her work would guar-
antee her parents' safety as well as her own, and
make life a little easier. She would get her own place
and a little money. Stella took them up on the of-
fer.
Stella was a cool, calm professional in her new
job, Mr. Wyden says. Having lived in hiding her-
self, she knew where and how to find other Jews
living underground. She would see old acquain-
tances and approach them in a friendly way. "Louise
Goldberg, it's you!" she might say. "Remember me,
from school?"
The SS was never far behind.
In the end, being a catcher did not save Stella's
parents, who died in death camps. But it proba-
bly accounts for the fact that Stella is still alive to-
day, residing under a new name in Germany. Her
apartment is filled with dolls.
Never happy as a Jew, she converted to Chris-
tianity after the war. She was tried for her war ac-
tivities and served time in a Soviet prison. She
married numerous times, though she now lives
alone, spending much of the day sleeping. Mr.
Wyden, who in his book recounts his recent meet-
ing with Stella (she insists she was innocent, and
shows no remorse for her actions during World War
II), describes her as "bored out of her wits, depressed
— the loneliness eats her up."
Soon after the book was published, the German
magazine Der Spiegel printed excerpts. Stella man-
aged to get a copy and wrote Mr. Wyden.
The tone of her letter was more sorrowful than

round the time Stella Gold-
schlag was readingAll Qui-
et on the Western Front
aloud to her classmates,
Ernest Fontheim was enrolled in a gymnasium,
German public school, that was quickly being tak-
en over by Nazis.
The school day began at 8 a.m. with students
lined "in military formation, with each class as-
sembled in a row," Mr. Fontheim recalls. "The prin-
cipal would come out like a general, standing in
front of each teacher who would bark out, 'Class all
assembled, 28 strong.' Then the principal would
open his bible — Hitler's Mein Kampf — and read the
motto for the day."
When Ernest was kicked out of the gymnasium
because he was Jewish, his father, though a secu-
larist, enrolled his son in a religious school.
But like Gerhard Goldschlag, Stella's father,
Georg Fontheim did not opt to leave Germany. He
was a lawyer who could not imagine suddenly trans-
ferring his skills to another country.
Georg Fontheim was later deported to Auschwitz
where he, his wife Charlotte, and daughter Eva
Irene perished.
Before going into hiding in 1942 — when even
slave Jewish labor was not welcome — Ernest found
work in the Siemens factory.
Though several hundred workers came in each
day to Siemens, Stella, Mr. Fontheim says, was a
standout. "She was very sporty and muscular,
blonde and blue-eyed. In fact, she looked exactly
like the girls in the Hitler Youth."
Stella and Ernest often rode the same train to
work. They spent time in the same neighborhood
where, Mr. Fontheim says, "she did her prowling
around."
Exactly why Stella opted to turn some Jews in
and not others remains a mystery. Her reputation
was not. Word had spread quickly that Stella was
a catcher, Mr. Fontheim says. And while fear of the
Gestapo was immeasurable, "the terror Stella
spread was worse. Obviously she was very effec-
tive, and she knew all our tricks."
Today Mr. Fontheim, a retired researcher with

the University of Michigan Space Physics Research
laboratory, has little patience for those expressing
sympathy with, if not complete absolution for, Stel-,
la's behavior. Don't judge Stella, they say, because
you never know how you would have behaved fil li
similar circumstances.
"Of course nobody knows what he would have
done in the same situation," Mr. Fontheim says. I
"That's not the question here. The question is
whether Stella's behavior is excusable.
"What she did she did just to save herself— it we -
a coldly calculated gamble for her to survive — andl
I think that in that case you don't deserve to see;
the light of day."
It is a hard line, not a fine one, that separates an I
anomaly like Stella from the men of the Juden-
rat, the Jewish councils responsible for enforcing
Nazi dictates in the ghettos, or the Jewish secre-1
tary who typed the names of the men, women and',
children being sent to Dachau, Mr. Fontheim says.
To suggest, as author Peter Wyden does, that per-
haps if one condemns Stella he also must condemn
Franklin Delano Roosevelt for not acting to save
the Jews is "ludicrous," he says. "It's diluting what
Stella did.
"There's nothing wrong with trying to save your
own life," he says. "The problem is that Stella did
so by having hundreds of others killed. She became
part of the murder machine. She delivered people
to the Gestapo who otherwise would have survived.
That's the crucial difference."
Another Jew who survived the Holocaust by hid-- 1
ing was Emanuel Tanay. Today a psychiatrist in
Detroit, Dr. Tanay does not believe Jewish behav-
ior during World War II can be judged.
"It's easy to pontificate about what Jews 'should
have done,' " he says. "Well, why didn't American
Jews jump from the Empire State Building to bring
attention to what was happening (in Europe)?"
In many ways, anyone who survived the Holo-
cau,st was a collaborator, Dr. Tanay believes. Jews
followed Nazi orders. They wore the yellow stars.,
They worked in Nazi-owned factories. But who
would not, he asks? "Only the suicidal."
All questions of right and wrong, good and
disappear in extraordinary situations, Dr. Tanay
says.
Take the case ofJacob Gens, chief of the Jewish
police in the Vilna Ghetto. liens himself turned in
Yitzhak Wittenberg, commander of the Vilna un-
derground, after the SS threatened to kill everyone
in the ghetto if he did not. Was what he did wrong?

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