GRGR(5): note on Katje

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

Nicole wrote:
> I think Katje has been judged overly harshly on the whole. Why
> would 
> she have risked her life joining the Resistance in the first place
> if not for some idealistic motive?
> 
rj wrote:
> But the bottom line as far as I'm concerned is that she, personally,
> in
> the 'real' life of the historical narrative, consigns "three
> crypto-Jewish" families to the concentration camps in the full
> knowledge
> that this will result in their deaths. The fact that she "smelled
> out"
> (like a cat? or a snuffling pig?) the families suggests to me that
> she
> had to get to know them first in order to discover their "crypto-",
> or
> hidden, Jewishness.

Peit, Wim and the rest of Katje's resistance cell are aware of and
complicit in the 'three Jewish families sent east' to establish Katje's
credibility with the SS; she didn't have to hunt them up herself.  It
is Weissman/Blicero who thinks Katje has 'smelled them out'.  That she
fails to call the bombers down on Blicero himself may be ascribed to
her fear for her own personal safety and is understood even by her
masters in the British SOE, else Pirate needn't have made the effort to
bring her out.  I think it is a misunderstanding of the nature of
reality to think that anyone could join the anti-Nazi resistance out of
concern for personal safety.  Katje could have gotten along quite well
on her own, anywhere. 

To quote Bogart/Hammett in Maltese Falcon: "You won't need much of
anybody's help -- you're good."

Mark
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