"Sidelights"

Elizabeth R. Baer has edited several books about women living through war. Her first two edited works, Shadows on My Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia, and The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women by Nanda Herbermann, are firsthand accounts of women surviving the crises of history. More recently, Baer collaborated with Myrna Goldenberg to collect essays about the women from both sides of World War II. Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust includes essays about Holocaust survivors, as well as the little-discussed topic of women who actually collaborated with the Nazis, such as nurses who helped commit murder at Hitler's concentration camps. This is why the essay by Susan Benedict about concentration camp nurses drew considerable attention by critics, for it explores the psychology behind these women who had been persuaded into believing that killing Jews and other social outcasts was actually a merciful act. Biography contributor Karin...