The Chameleon of Trawniki: Jack Reimer, Soviet Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust

The crimes and transformations of Jack Reimer, a heavily-implicated ethnic German Holocaust perpetrator, are examined in the following article. Within little more than a generation, Reimer refashioned himself from repressed farmer to Red Army lieutenant; from Soviet POW in German captivity to senior non-commissioned officer at the SS Training Camp in Trawniki, Poland; and finally from wanted war criminal to upstanding American citizen. This article argues that for one ethnic German perpetrator, participation in the Holocaust served as a vehicle for negotiating Eastern Europe's dangerous wartime multiethnic milieu.