Memoirs written by women survivors of the Holocaust share certain characteristics with those written by men, such as a narrative structure that begins with belonging and then moves to humiliation, isolation, deprivation, and finally annihilation. Men and women survivors both describe gratuitous and deliberate violence by Kapos and SS. However, women's memoirs also share strikingly similar characteristics with each other that differ from men's memoirs and that stem from their experiences as women and as Jews— thus as double victims—in a misogynistic, racist totalitarian society. Women's memoirs yield anecdotes that demonstrate women's resourcefulness in the hells of the ghettos and camps. Thus women's narratives are rich sources of the characteristics of an alternative social structure based on traditional feminine values. The experience of women during the Holocaust shows that traditionally feminist values of cooperating and caring are important conditions for the perpetuation of civilization, irrespective of religious, ethnic, or nationalist identification.
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References
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1. Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella (New York: Dell, 1978), p. 44.
2.
Kaplan explains that “there has been an unfortunate tendency among historians to view a history of Jewish men as Jewish history but a history of Jewish women as women's history, thereby marginalizing women's lives and history.” See also Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the JFB, 1904-1938 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
3.
3. It is the custom among European Jews to name their children after an admired deceased relative.
4.
4. For an excellent discussion of German Jewish women during the Nazi era, see Sybil Milton, “Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women,”Monthly Review Press, pp. 297-333 (1984).
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5. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), p. 126.
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6. Myrna Goldenberg, “Different Horrors, Same Hell: Women Remembering the Holocaust,” in Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust, ed. Roger Gottlieb (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 150-166.
7.
idem , “Testimony, Narrative, and Nightmare: The Experiences of Jewish Women in the Holocaust,” in Women and Jewish Culture, ed. Maurie Sacks (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 94-106.
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8. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), p. 56.
9.
in Inside Hitler's Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich, ed. Benjamin C. Sax and Dieter Kunz (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1992).
10.
See also Elaine Martin, Gender, Patriarchy, and Fascism in the Third Reich: The Response of Women Writers (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993), for a superb collection of essays on the interconnections of patriarchy and fascism in twentieth-century Germany.
11.
11. Yaffa Eliach, “Women and the Holocaust: Historical Background,”Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters, 6(4):8 (Spring 1990).
12.
Eliach also says that “while the status of the Aryan woman in Nazi Germany was distinctly second class, Jewish women were not just inferior to men, but to the entire Aryan race.” Ibid., p. 8.
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13. Ringelheim, “Thoughts About Women and the Holocaust,” p. 147.
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14. Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders, pp. 126-130.
15.
One of Shelley's narrators, who worked in the Political Section as secretary to Pery Broad, explained that when the Russians approached Auschwitz, the “SS tried to destory as much incriminating evidence as possible. For many weeks we had to burn documents.” Ibid., p. 10.
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16. Goldenberg, “Testimony, Narrative, and Nightmare.”
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idem , “Testimony, Narrative, and Nightmare.”
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19. Gerda Klein, All But My Life (New York: Hill & Wang, 1957), pp. 155-156.
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20. Leitner, Fragments of Isabella, p. 14.
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21. Judith Isaacson, Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 108.
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22. Ibid., pp. 144-45.
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23. Eliach, “Women and the Holocaust: Historical Background,” p. 8.
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24. Rittner and Roth, Different Voices, p. 23.
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idem , Indecent Dreams (Evanston: Northwestern Illinois Press, 1988).
26.
26. An interesting and ironic side note is the eyewitness accounts of Nazi use of blood from Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz for donations to the Germany army. See Gisela Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz (1948; Salem, NH: Ayer, 1984), pp. 74-75.
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27. Elie A. Cohen, Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp (1954; London: Association Books, 1988), p. 135.
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28. Ibid., p. 141.
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29. Lucille Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1994), pp. 48-49.
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30. Ibid., pp. 105-7.
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31. Felicia Berland Hyatt, Close Calls: The Autobiography of a Survivor (New York: Holocaust Library, 1991), pp. 76-77.
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32. Leib Langfuss, “The Horrors of Murder,” in The Scrolls of Auschwitz, ed. Ber Mark (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1985), p. 209.
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33. J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 2:1178-1180.
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34. Oral history from interview by Bonnie Gurewitsch, 28 Oct. 1985, in Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters, 6(4):38-41 (Spring 1990).
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35. Sarah Nomberg-Przytyk, True Tales from a Grotesque Land (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 14.
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36. Livia E. Bitton Jackson, Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust (New York: Times Books, 1980), pp. 59-61.
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37. Cecilie Klein, Sentenced to Live (New York: Holocaust Library, 1988), pp. 73, 77.
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38. Shelley, ed., Auschwitz, pp. 50, 66.
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39. Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys (1947; New York: Granada, 1972), p. 193.
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40. Goldenberg, “Different Horrors,” p. 161.
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41. Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p. 80.
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42. Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p. 111.
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43. Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, pp. 80-86.
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44. Owings, Frauen, p. 169.
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45. Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life, p. 121.
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46. Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, p. 382.
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47. “Musselmen” is a term of unknown and debatable origin but widely used to denote “emaciated walking corpses.”Milton, “Women and the Holocaust,” pp. 297-333. Musselmen were those prisoners who were physically and psychologically worn out, those who surrendered their will to live.
48.
48. Esther Katz and Joan Miriam Ringelheim, Women Surviving the Holocaust: Proceedings of the Conference (New York: Institute for Research in History, 1983), pp. 172-176.
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49. Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life, p. 53.
50.
50. Shelley, Auschwitz, p. 63.
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51. Pelagia Lewinska, “Twenty Months at Auschwitz,” in Different Voices, ed. Rittner and Roth, pp. 84-93.
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54. Gerda Haas, These I Do Remember: Fragments from the Holocaust (Freeport, ME: Cumberland Press, 1982), pp. 43-44.
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55. Shelley, Auschiwtz, p. 36.
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56. Ibid., p. 76.
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57. Quoted in Inside Hitler's Germany, ed. Sax and Kuntz, p. 445.
58.
58. Mark, ed., Scrolls of Auschwitz, p. 208.
59.
59. Shelley, Auschwitz, p. 94.
60.
60. Ibid., p. 121.
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61. Mark, ed., Scrolls of Auschwitz, pp. 75-77.
62.
see ibid., pp. 94-96.
63.
63. Cohen, Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp, pp. 182-183.
64.
64. Shelley, Auschwitz, p. 14.
65.
65. Mark, ed., Scrolls of Auschwitz, pp. 147-154.
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66. Ibid., pp. 116-23.
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67. Owings, Frauen, p. 76.
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68. Ibid., pp. 181-83.
69.
69. Michael Phayer, Protestant and Catholic Women in Nazi Germany (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1990), p. 100.
