A Space of Her Own: Women in the Holocaust
A Space of Her Own: Women in the Holocaust
Contributor(s): Dragana Stojanović (Editor), Lily Halpert Zamir (Editor), Batya Brutin (Editor)
Subject(s): History, Gender Studies, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: Holocaust; women; traumas; women’s studies
Summary/Abstract: The exploration of women’s gender-specific experiences, traumas, and memories from the Holocaust is not entirely new. However, it still seems that the research conducted thus far has only uncovered the surface of what has not yet been said. In other words, although this book stands upon the courageous shoulders of the already present academic legacy of women’s studies within Holocaust research, there is still a strong reason, a need, and an urge to discuss women’s lives, sufferings, and resistance activities during the time of the Holocaust, as well as to honor and understand the subsequent silences and struggles etched into their bodies. This becomes even more important as the harrowing experiences of the Holocaust, once alive and present through first-generation survivors, melt into post-memory, where the questions multiply but the answers are not easily obtained.
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-86-82324-95-9
- Page Count: 249
- Publication Year: 2025
- Language: English
Sex for Life: Conditions that Necessitated Sexual Barter in the Holocaust
Sex for Life: Conditions that Necessitated Sexual Barter in the Holocaust
(Sex for Life: Conditions that Necessitated Sexual Barter in the Holocaust)
- Author(s):Angela Ford
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Gender Studies, Gender history, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:25-39
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:Holocaust; Sexual barter; Stigma; Survival
- Summary/Abstract:Politics, religion, sex. Some topics are so difficult to discuss that they have been relegated to the category of taboo. One problem with taboo subjects is they are often used by perpetrators to simultaneously abuse and silence victims. Perpetrators count on society to, at best, frown at their mention and, at worst, revictimize those who dare to speak out. Two major topics that are notoriously difficult to discuss are the Holocaust and sexual abuse. What happens when they are combined and a third component – sexual economy – is introduced? To many, this inclusion justifies the opinion that since the sex was voluntary, the “victim” was complicit and is the one to blame for any harm incurred.
Implications of the Holocaust for a Woman: Was Life After Auschwitz Possible for Sophie Zawistowska?
Implications of the Holocaust for a Woman: Was Life After Auschwitz Possible for Sophie Zawistowska?
(Implications of the Holocaust for a Woman: Was Life After Auschwitz Possible for Sophie Zawistowska?)
- Author(s):Natalija D. Perišić
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:40-60
- No. of Pages:21
- Keywords:Holocaust ; Trauma ; Survival ; Identity ; Choice; Auschwitz; Holocaust survivor
- Summary/Abstract:William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice is a fictional story narrated by Stin- go, a young writer-to-be at that moment. After settling into a rooming house in Brooklyn in the summer of 1947, Stingo meets Sophie, a beau- tiful woman in her late twenties. The occasion of their first encounter is emotionally challenging for Stingo – he is immediately attracted to Sophie, he witnesses a horrible fight between her and her lover Na- than Landau, and he also learns that Sophie is a Holocaust survivor: “I saw for the first time the number tattooed on the suntanned, lightly freckled skin of her forearm – a purple number of at least five digits, too small to read in this light but graven, I could tell, with exactitude and craft.”1 The three (Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan) begin spending time together. The story reveals Nathan Landau, a wealthy New York- er with a Jewish background, as a promising scientist employed with Faiser, only for it to be discovered that Nathan is actually a doorman there, has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and abuses drugs. His occasionally extremely violent behaviors, first of all towards Sophie, can be now “explained.” Their relationship during the story is one of obsession and impulsiveness, with ups and downs, and one that finally ends in their joint suicide.
A “Beast, Merely Covered in Human Skin”: The Trial Against Erika Bergman in East Germany in 1955 for Her Maltreatment of Female Sinti and Roma Prisoners in Ravensbrück
A “Beast, Merely Covered in Human Skin”: The Trial Against Erika Bergman in East Germany in 1955 for Her Maltreatment of Female Sinti and Roma Prisoners in Ravensbrück
(A “Beast, Merely Covered in Human Skin”: The Trial Against Erika Bergman in East Germany in 1955 for Her Maltreatment of Female Sinti and Roma Prisoners in Ravensbrück)
- Author(s):Verena Meier
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:61-93
- No. of Pages:33
- Keywords:Ravensbrück; Aufseherin; Sinti and Roma; GDR (German Democratic Republic)
- Summary/Abstract:In 1955, the former Aufseherin of the Nazi concentration camp for women in Ravensbrück, Erika Bergmann, was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in a trial of the East-German socialist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR). At the time of the German reunification in 1990, when she was 75 years old, Bergmann was still imprisoned after more than 35 years, making her the longest-serving convict of the GDR because of Nazi crimes. Survivors of Ravensbrück described Bergmann as a “beast, merely covered in human skin.” This depiction is based on the horrors that former inmates had witnessed in the camp, particularly Bergmann’s maltreatment of female Sinti and Roma prisoners. The depiction, however, also reflects early postwar portrayals of perpetrators, which highlighted that “ordinary men” – and particularly “ordinary women,” who were supposed to be caring and motherly according to the dominant gender norms – were not capable of committing such atrocities.
Halina Olomucki: Art as Documentation
Halina Olomucki: Art as Documentation
(Halina Olomucki: Art as Documentation)
- Author(s):Batya Brutin
- Language:Serbian
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:97-115
- No. of Pages:19
- Keywords:Holocaust ; Halina Olomucki; Warsaw Ghetto; Survival ; atrocities
- Summary/Abstract:Holocaust art serves as a powerful form of documentary expression, capturing the historical and emotional realities of this horrific event. It is often regarded as documentary art, produced in order to document the ineffable for posterity. Artists often draw their personal experiences to convey the trauma associated with this tragic period. Some artworks serve as historical records, illustrating specific events, places, or experiences related to the Holocaust. These artworks can include depictions of concentration camps, ghettos, or acts of resistance. Artists, both male and female, depicted the unbearable conditions of overcrowding, the oppression of body and mind, and the distress of hunger and death. However, there is an essential distinction in the way that women describe the Holocaust events compared to men, particularly in the way they depict themselves in that era.
The Lily of Birkenau: The Writings of Lili Kasticher
The Lily of Birkenau: The Writings of Lili Kasticher
(The Lily of Birkenau: The Writings of Lili Kasticher)
- Author(s):Lily Halpert Zamir
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:116-133
- No. of Pages:18
- Keywords:Holocaust ; Auschwitz; Death Marches; Sonderkommando ; Nazi oppression
- Summary/Abstract:Auschwitz, the largest and best-known of the Nazi concentration camps, was built in 1940 when the Nazis realized that they had more prisoners than prison space. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Nine days earlier, as Soviet troops drew closer, all inmates capable of walking – 48,342 men and about 16,000 women, along with another 96 prisoners of war – were dispatched on foot via Austria to other locations in Nazi-occupied Europe. These evacuation campaigns would later be known as Death Marches. About 6,000 inmates who were too weak to march were left to die in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including some 4,000 women. The last of the Nazis left the camp on January 24, three days before its liberation.
L’écriture féminine of the Holocaust: Hilda Dajč and Diana Budisavljević
L’écriture féminine of the Holocaust: Hilda Dajč and Diana Budisavljević
(L’écriture féminine of the Holocaust: Hilda Dajč and Diana Budisavljević)
- Author(s):Nevena Daković
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:134-150
- No. of Pages:17
- Keywords:Holocaust ; Testimony ; Intimacy ; collective Holocaust memory; Gendered Perspective
- Summary/Abstract:“All philosophizing ends at the barbed-wire fence, and reality, which, far away on the other side you can’t even imagine or else you would howl with pain, faces one in its totality. That reality is unsurpassable, our immense misery; every phrase describing the strength of the soul is dispersed by tears of hunger and cold; all hope of leaving here soon disappears before the monotonous perspective of passive existence which, whatever you compare it with, bears no resemblance to life. It is not even life’s irony.” Two women, Hilda Dajč from Belgrade and Diana Budisavljević from Zagreb, one a Jewess and the other a non-Jewess, one victim and the other a savior, share similar traumatic, intimate, and emotional experiences of the camps, seen as “the profoundest tragedy” in the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).
Women’s Holocaust Narratives in the Yugoslav Jewish Almanac
Women’s Holocaust Narratives in the Yugoslav Jewish Almanac
(Women’s Holocaust Narratives in the Yugoslav Jewish Almanac)
- Author(s):Žarka Svirčev
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:151-170
- No. of Pages:20
- Keywords:Holocaust ; Jewish Almanac; Entangled Memory; Gendered Testimony; Cultural Memory
- Summary/Abstract:The Jewish Almanac [Jevrejski almanah] (1954–1971) was the most significant vehicle of self-representation for the Jewish community in socialist Yugoslavia. It was a multidisciplinary and secularly oriented publication that was aimed at the broader, transnational community. One of the Almanac’s distinctive roles was commemorating and memorializing World War II. The Almanac served as a hybrid memorialization platform, intersecting diverse memory formations. The concepts or strategies of memorialization are organized by genres. In articles and essays, memorialization is consistent with the state’s official narrative. The prevailing mnemonic narrative emphasizes the antifascist struggle, the heroic discourse of the partisans’ liberation movement, and the collective suffering. In the context of Yugoslav brotherhood and unity, the memory of the victims of fascism did not acknowledge their ethnic origin. The state’s politics of remembrance did not address the Holocaust. This tendency is also noted by the authors of the Bibliography of Jewish Almanac, Biljana Albahari and Vesna Trijić pointing out that “there are few articles about the Holocaust in Europe in The Jewish Almanac. Much more common were the texts about Jews who participated as fighters in the Second World War. Memories and written biographies of national heroes were recorded [...] Of particular documentary importance are the appendices designed in imitation of collective biographies, with names, brief biographical notes, and photographs of the dead”.
Fabrics of Resistance: The Contributions of Female Jewish Couriers in the Second World War
Fabrics of Resistance: The Contributions of Female Jewish Couriers in the Second World War
(Fabrics of Resistance: The Contributions of Female Jewish Couriers in the Second World War)
- Author(s):Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:173-189
- No. of Pages:17
- Keywords:Holocaust; female Jewish couriers; Jewish resistance against Nazi; kesher; Underground resistance movement
- Summary/Abstract:In her book The Days of Destruction and Revolt, author Zivia Lubetkin, co-founder of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acknowledges the contributions of female couriers in organizing Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. She asserts that without their efforts, the resistance groups would have been unable to perform all of their activities across the German-occupied zone: “Lonka Kozibrodska, Tema Schneiderman, Havka Folman, Rysia, and Frania Beatus from Dror, Tosia Altman from Hashomer Hatzair, Soyka Ehrlichman from Gordonia, Hela Schipper from Akiva, and others, served as liaisons between the ghettos and the various provinces. They risked their lives scores of times as they traveled from place to place. After each mission, they rested for a few days and then set out once more. One cannot possibly describe this work of organizing Jewish resistance, or the uprising itself, without mentioning the role of these valiant women.”
The Diverging Fates of Golda Perla and Mindla Diament: Two Polish Jewish Sisters in the French Resistance
The Diverging Fates of Golda Perla and Mindla Diament: Two Polish Jewish Sisters in the French Resistance
(The Diverging Fates of Golda Perla and Mindla Diament: Two Polish Jewish Sisters in the French Resistance)
- Author(s):Bruna Lo Biundo, Caroline François
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:190-212
- No. of Pages:23
- Keywords:civilian opposition to Nazi occupation; Golda Perla; Mindla Diament; French Resistance
- Summary/Abstract:The year 2024 marks two very important anniversaries in French history: the 80th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation in August 1944, and the granting of the right to vote to women on 21 April 1944. To celebrate the liberation and the immigrants’ contribution to the French Resistance, on February 21, the French Republic honored Mélinée and Missak Manouchian by inducting them into the Pantheon. These resistance fighters of Armenian origin led the renowned Parisian movement known as L’affiche rouge, one of the best-known networks of foreign resistance fighters in France. This event, planned over several years, is part of a historiographical and governmental effort to acknowledge the role of foreigners in the Resistance, a process initiated by the induction of Josephine Baker into the Pantheon in 2021.
Reflections on Teaching Projects: Researching Local Women’s History During National Socialism with Students
Reflections on Teaching Projects: Researching Local Women’s History During National Socialism with Students
(Reflections on Teaching Projects: Researching Local Women’s History During National Socialism with Students)
- Author(s):Randi Becker
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
- Page Range:213-236
- No. of Pages:24
- Keywords:Political Education; Women's History; National Socialism; Women in National Socialism
- Summary/Abstract:In the summer semester of 2020, having recently completed my master’s degree, I began teaching as a visiting lecturer at the University of Giessen. One of my initial seminar concepts was part of the module, “Introduction to Political Education” in the summer semester of 2020, which was designed for prospective teachers of all subjects. I delivered a seminar on “Women in National Socialism,” where there were at least three key takeaways that have remained with me: 1) The students reported that they had never encountered the topic throughout their schooling. For them, focusing on women in the national socialism era was a novel approach, and they consequently lacked any prior knowledge, aside from what they had observed in films. 2) The participants demonstrated a noteworthy interest and dedication to the topic. The focus on women appeared to challenge the common perception among German students that they already possessed comprehensive knowledge about national socialism and were thus disinclined to engage with the topic further. The emphasis on women seemed to offer new avenues for exploring the history of national socialism in general. The participants subsequently produced excellent term papers, which, however, did not reach any further readership after being read for grading. 3) Furthermore, the students expressed interest in learning about local women during the Nazi era. During the seminar, we addressed the topic of women during national socialism in a general manner. We covered the gendered images of Nazi anti-Semitism and antigypsyism, the concept of an “Aryan” woman, and the actions of women as perpetrators. This was an insightful topic, but in retrospect, it would have been beneficial to include local references. However, upon conducting further research, it became evident that there was a dearth of introductory literature pertaining to the subject of women in national socialism within the context of the city of Giessen. A number of articles have been published on individual women or individual places that have some relevance to women, but there are no texts that focus specifically on women in Giessen during the Nazi era. I then posed the following question to myself: How might I address the experiences of local women during the Nazi era in my seminars, thereby contributing to the ongoing process of contextualization within the city and the region?
