The Jew and the “Jerrybag”: The Lives of Hedwig Bercu and Dorothea Weber (née Le Brocq)

Locals of the Channel Islands have long perceived women who had relationships with soldiers during the German occupation as the lowest form of collaborator. The author challenges this perception through the life stories of two women: a Romanian Jew in hiding and the woman who sheltered her for the last eighteen months of the occupation. Both were in relationships with German soldiers. The families of these two women met for the first time at a recent commemoration in Jersey. The following examines the long-term impact of their “illicit” relationships on the lives of these women, and how they complicate narrow representations of the alleged “Jerrybag.”