'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

the heroine would have found herself had she interfered. It is her own fate that the
miller‟s daughter sees enacted on the Other bride (Morewedge 232). Thus it seems fair to
assume that both Lene and the miller‟s daughter harden themselves to the inhumanity
they witness out of fear and a sense of self-preservation. Such behaviour appears to have
been common for German bystanders during the Holocaust. As Oliner and Oliner
explain, the majority of bystanders
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were overcome by fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty. These feelings, which
encourage self-centeredness and emotional distancing from others, provide fertile
soil for passivity. Survival of the self assumes paramount importance. This was a
characteristic response of most bystanders. (146)
The passive reaction of Lene and the miller‟s daughter to the slaughter they witness is
representative of typical bystanders‟ responses to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Through the scene depicting Rahel‟s abduction, Sanders-Brahms the filmmaker
critiques Lene for her apolitical indifference. In this and other scenes, the filmmaker
criticizes both Lene and Hans (albeit Lene more than Hans) for their naïve misconception
that they could escape the forces of politics and history by retreating into the private
happiness of their personal romance. In the accompanying film script, Sanders-Brahms
wrote that her aim in Deutschland, bleiche Mutter was to tell the story not of the
“protagonists” of German fascism, but rather of those often-neglected ordinary citizens of
the “Third Reich” who made the Nazis‟ rise to power possible. She counts her actual
parents, Helene and Hermann Sanders, among those, “[d]ie Hitler wählten. Oder
vielleicht nicht einmal wählten, aber auch nicht protestierten, nicht in den Untergrund,
den Widerstand, die KZs, die Emigration gingen, sondern das einfache Leben wollten,