Siemens

Siemens is the factory where Hanna worked after arriving in Berlin and where she later declined an offer of promotion to foreman. The choice figures in the account of her working life and in the trial over her service as an SS guard: her illiteracy helps explain why promotion threatened her, but it does not erase her agency or the crimes for which she is held responsible.

Hanna’s Employment and the Foreman Offer

Hanna tells Michael Berg that she came to Berlin at sixteen, took a job at Siemens, and later joined the army at twenty-one. She gives these facts in a detached way, as though recounting someone else’s past. At the trial, the question of her move from Siemens to the SS brings her employment history into the courtroom: she is asked whether she joined despite having been offered a foreman’s job. Her lawyer objects to the premise of the question, and the exchange leaves the impression that she acted of her own accord rather than under pressure.

Promotion, Concealment, and the SS

The later discovery that Hanna could neither read nor write changes the significance of the foreman offer. The work of a streetcar conductor allowed her to conceal her difficulty, whereas training to become a driver would have exposed it. Michael understands her refusal of promotion at Siemens in the same terms: she chose not to advance rather than risk being found out. The narrative describes this as a retreat disguised as a choice, part of a life in which apparent advances could conceal defeats.

That explanation concerns the circumstances of Hanna’s decision, not an exoneration. The evidence indicates that she applied for and was hired as a guard after Siemens and other factories recruited women for guard duties. The account rejects the claim that she deliberately chose criminality to avoid being exposed as illiterate; it presents her as avoiding a threatened exposure and then accepting the consequences of her conduct without openly disclosing the underlying disability.

The Company’s Place in the Trial Narrative

Siemens enters the trial through a pointed contrast: a civilian promotion on one side, recruitment into the SS on the other. Hanna’s lawyer’s objection interrupts the judge’s inquiry into why she joined, but the court still hears that she applied for guard work and was hired. The exchange therefore establishes both the availability of another occupational path and the limits of what the courtroom initially understands about her choice.

The factory is not portrayed as the subject of a separate institutional history. Its importance is specific to Hanna’s biography: it is where she worked, where promotion would have required her to risk exposure, and where the decision to leave for guard service can be discussed as both an act of personal choice and a choice shaped by shame. The narrative holds those facts together without treating her illiteracy as a substitute for moral accountability.