 | Himmler's Angora
A WPR Feature
Produced by Brian Bull
2/20/07 |
During World War II, the Nazis ran a network of concentration camps across Europe. An estimated 6,000,000 Jews were systematically exterminated in these camps. Among the chief architects of the Holocaust was SS-Commander Heinrich Himmler, who founded many pet projects at the same sites where Hitler's "Final Solution" was carried out. One of them is documented in Angora, a hand-crafted book by Himmler which outlines the raising of Angora rabbits for their fur. The Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison has made many images of the Third Reich's Angora Project available online. As Brian Bull reports, the volume demonstrates the Nazi's twisted standards of humanity...
Running time is 3:15
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WEB EXTRA: See more images from Himmler's book:
Click here to see young Angora rabbits
Click here to see Angoras raised at Auschwitz
Click here to see Angora facilities at Dachau
Click here to see Angora being sheared
Click here to see how Angora rabbit fur was used by German forces
By the time Allied forces liberated the Third Reich's death factories in 1945, millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political dissidents had been murdered. Bodies of victims were strewn across many camps, while others were stacked up like cordwood in boxcars and crematoriums.
At camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, and Ravensbruck, rabbit hutches were found. Unlike the filth-ridden and crowded barracks for prisoners, many of these pens were clean, heated, and spacious. Angora rabbits -- a white, long-haired species -- were raised in these hutches, pampered and groomed so that their fur would provide luxurious, warm clothing for Luftwaffe pilots and U-Boat crews.
This disparity was not lost on Himmler, but like many other Third Reich officials, he regarded Jews, Slavs, and related people as inferior, subhuman races. He regarded the Angora rabbit project as a model exercise that benefited the Nazi Party's elite group, the Stutzstaffel, or S-S, one of the most brutal arms of the party which Himmler commanded. His devotion to the project can be seen in the handwritten captions, drawings, and pasted photos that comprise Angora. It's believed that as the Russian and American forces drew nearer, that Himmler hid his book in order to keep it away from "barbaric" forces.
After Germany officially surrendered, Himmler committed suicide by taking poison. His unusual book fell into the possession of Sigrid Schultz, a war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune based in Germany, and acquainted with many of the Nazi leaders. Her collection of correspondence and articles was eventually handed over to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Archival staff have scanned in all the pages from Angora, which can be seen here.
| It's not know how many other books may exist documenting the Nazi's Angora project. Some World War II veterans, including Jack DeWitt of Madison, do recall seeing rabbit-fur lined garments at Dachau, and DeWitt even took a jacket as a practical souvenir during the site's liberation. But what impresses people most about the Third Reich's ventures -- which also included horse-breeding and racing -- is the cruel double-standard they held between humans and animals....with people faring worst if they were deemed "inferior" to the Aryan ideal. |  U-S soldiers examine a boxcar of corpses at Dachau |
