14. Going After Fellow Jews With a Will
Stella Kubler had not chosen to become a Jew Catcher of her own free will. However, how she exercised what freedom of choice she had while working as a Catcher was entirely within her control. She exercised that freedom of choice by pursuing hidden Jews with remarkable zeal. Even after the Jews she turned in were arrested, and her task was over, Stella enthusiastically took part in beating, torturing, and humiliating the arrestees.
Notwithstanding her zeal, the Nazis reneged on their promises to Stella, and deported her parents to their death in an extermination camp. Her husband and his family were sent to Auschwitz in 1943. Despite that, Stella’s enthusiasm for seeking out hidden Jews and denouncing them to the Gestapo did not wane. Betting on a German victory, she secured a promise from a high-ranking Gestapo official in 1944, that she would be declared an Aryan after the war.