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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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“Nazi War Criminal Erna Petri: The Housewife Who Became an Executioner”

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Transcript
00:00In September 1943, Anna was returning from a shopping trip in Lviv in her carriage when she
00:05came across six nearly naked boys, aged 6 to 12, crouching by the side of the road.
00:11The children had escaped from a railcar destined for Somibor extermination camp,
00:15and they were terrified and hungry. When Anna realized they were Jewish escapees,
00:21she calmed them, took them home, and gained their trust by bringing them food from her kitchen.
00:26She understood very well that all Jews who were roaming the countryside were supposed to be
00:30captured and shot. Horst was not at home at the time, so she waited, but because he did not return
00:37after several hours, she decided to shoot the six children herself.
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