Nazi War Criminal Erna Petri: The Housewife Who Became an Executioner
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1 September 1939. As Nazi Germany invades Poland, propaganda and racial ideology fuel a climate in which ordinary civilians become participants in persecution and mass murder.
One of them was Erna Petri.
Living on SS estates in occupied Galicia with her husband, Horst Petri, she abused forced laborers and joined hunts for fugitive Jews. In September 1943, she encountered six Jewish boys who had escaped a transport to Sobibor. After gaining their trust, she led them into the woods and shot them one by one.
After the war, the Petris avoided justice for years. In 1962, a trial in East Germany exposed their crimes. Horst was executed. Erna was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Her story reveals how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated society — turning even civilians into perpetrators of the Holocaust.
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