Making Love and Make-Belief: Male Sexual Barter in Dov Freiberg’s To Survive Sobibor
Making Love and Make-Belief: Male Sexual Barter in Dov Freiberg’s To Survive Sobibor
Author(s): Raphael UtzSubject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Jewish studies, Media studies, Communication studies, Recent History (1900 till today), Special Historiographies:, History of Judaism, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of the Holocaust
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
Keywords: Sobibór; Dov Freiberg; Semyon Rozenfeld; Dawid Serczuk; Józef Serczuk; sexuality and the Holocaust; Jews in hiding
Summary/Abstract: After escaping the German mass killing facility in Sobibór on 14 October 1943, Dov Freiberg and Semyon Rozenfeld survived in hiding near Chelm until the arrival of the Red Army in July 1944. In 1945, Freiberg testified before the Central Jewish Historical Commission, and in 1988, he published his much more extensive memoirs To Survive Sobibor. Both texts cover the period of hiding, during which Freiberg, Rozenfeld and the brothers Dawid and Józef Serczuk were taken in by two women. The two sources reveal an episode of male sexual barter, as the male group established rational relationships with the two women in order to stabilize a precarious situation. By comparing both of Freiberg’s texts, it becomes clear that so-called late testimonies are rich and unjustly underrated source-material.
Journal: Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media
- Issue Year: 14/2020
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 75-92
- Page Count: 18
- Language: English