The Mare

Before the Second World War broke out, Hermine Braunsteiner was an ordinary young woman, a teenage housemaid from Vienna. By the time the war ended, she had transformed into one of the most notoriously cruel and violent guards in the Nazi concentration camps, the ‘Stamping Mare’ known for kicking prisoners to death.

In the aftermath of WWII, she disappeared back into civilian life, her crimes largely unknown and unpunished. Then she met a US war veteran, a bachelor holidaying alone in Austria. Ignorant of her past, he fell in love with her, married her and brought her back to America, where she lived for years as a well-liked suburban housewife. Until one day a tip-off from a Holocaust survivor sent a New York Times journalist to the couple's door…

The Mare offers a gripping portrait of the descent of ordinary people into absolute inhumanity. Unflinching and charged with urgent relevance, it asks how we attempt to justify the unjustifiable – and forgive the unforgivable.