Scene still from the film “Women in Bondage” (1944)

Scene still for the American feature film, “Women in Bondage,” released by Monogram Pictures in January 1944. Scene stills are photographs taken on or off the set of a motion picture and are then used as marketing and advertising tools. The film depicts the degradation in status that women experienced in Nazi-controlled Germany. The protagonist, Margot Bracken, returns to Germany after years away, and has difficulties conforming to her new role in the Third Reich. To create their new Aryan Germany, throughout the 1930s, the Nazi government glorified Aryan German women who focused on the domestic sphere and raising children. From the age of 10, girls were compelled to join the Nazi League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel; BDM) and attended summer labor camps, where they were indoctrinated with gender appropriate Nazi ideology. The Nazis encouraged “racially pure” women to have multiple children, but banned those with handicaps or certain diseases from marrying. The government offered public support for families, and awarded the Cross of Honor of the German Mother to women who bore four or more children. Both the director and producer of “Women in Bondage” observed this culture first hand, as German Jews who fled Berlin after Hitler came to power in 1933. The writer of the original story also left Germany after his production company was seized and nationalized to make Nazi propaganda. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.