The 'blonde poison' Jew who betrayed her people to help the Nazis: The story of Stella Goldschlag who lured 3,000 Jews to their doom - even after her family were sent to Auschwitz

The 'blonde poison' Jew who betrayed her people to help the Nazis: The story of Stella Goldschlag who lured 3,000 Jews to their doom - even after her family were sent to Auschwitz

A Jewish woman, nicknamed 'blonde poison,' lured 3,000 to their doom as she collaborated with the Nazis, even after her family were killed at Auschwitz. 

Stella Goldschlag was a beautiful, blue-eyed girl, raised in a middle-class Jewish family, who turned traitor to help the gestapo capture Jews living in Berlin's underground.

The beauty showed a voracious appetite for her role, luring men to the bedroom, snaring widows at funerals and turning in her old classmates. 

Although she originally agreed to work for the Nazis to protect her family, she continued to do so even after they had been killed at Auschwitz. 

The shocking tale is revealed in a new novel, 'Stella', based on her life by Takis Wurger.

Born in 1922, Stella Goldschlag's family tried to flee Germany after the pogroms of Kristallnacht in 1938 but could not get visas.

Her father had sought a new life for them in the United States, and her musical talent could have made her a Jazz star, according to the Jerusalem Post. 

Her family were able to remain in hiding, helped by Stella's fair hair and blue eyes, until they were caught in 1943.

In a deal with the Nazis, which she always claimed was to protect her parents, she agreed to become a 'catcher.'

Together with her husband, a Jewish musician called Manfred Kubler, she betrayed hundreds of Jews - many of whom she had known since childhood through the Jewish school she attended - and earned the nickname 'blonde poison.'

She dressed in a black Gestapo coat while hunting fellow Jews and continued this role even after her family were executed in Auschwitz.

Ernst Gunter Fontheim was one of the lucky few to escape from Stella. He said: 'For those of us in Berlin who lived underground and were previously known to Stella, she was a source of constant terror.

'All of our activities were governed by the need to avoid her.

Having lived in hiding themselves, they knew exactly where to look for us. In fact, they were far more effective than any Gestapo official could have been.'

Estimates vary regarding how many Jews were betrayed by Stella.

Some sources list the number as several hundred while research journalist and writer Peter Wyden estimated that it was probably over 2,000 in a 1993 book called 'Stella'.

Takis Wurger has taken Stella's story and turned it into a novel – which is also published under the name 'Stella' and will soon be released in English.

Stella was said to be so enthusiastic with her role that she was promised 300 Reichsmark for every Jew she betrayed, and not even Gestapo officers could match her fervour.

Every time Stella handed a Jewish woman over to the Gestapo, she immediately searched her handbag for address books and other clues to help find other Jewish contacts.

She even turned up at funerals to arrest Jewish widows and hunted down her former Jewish classmates.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Nazis did not keep to their end of the bargain and Stella's parents, as well as her husband, were eventually rounded up and deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered.

However, it did not stop Stella from betraying more Jews. With her blonde hair and good looks, she was able to quickly disarm her targets and learn about their secrets.

She even married another Jew who collaborated with the Nazis called Rolf Isaaksohn.

After the war, Stella was captured by the Soviet Army and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

Following her release, she went to West Germany where she converted to Christianity and became a notorious anti-Semite despite her own Jewish past.

Stella remarried three more times before committing suicide in 1994 at the age of 72 by throwing herself from the balcony of her flat in Freiburg.

She had a daughter who became a nurse in Israel. Continue reading