Abstract
Is it possible for us to understand Auschwitz? Can we use our own language to delve into the history of the camp and, in particular, into the sexual exploitation of Jewish women in the camp? Is it appropriate for a historian to try and decipher the reality she wishes to describe? Are the well-established rules and methodologies of historical inquiry sufficient? Can the experiences of these women be recounted by scholars who did not stumble out of their shattered realities, who did not experience the extreme loss, all the more incomprehensible as it involved loss of a sense of self? Is it not preferable to leave the camp behind, to let the wounds heal and the screams be cried out, and to allow death to perish?
For the love of my father Zeev and my mother Hava, Who went through this hell and remain human beings
I have returned
From a world beyond knowledge
And now must unlearn
For otherwise I clearly see
I can no longer live.
Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After1
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Notes
C. Delbo, Auschwitz and After (New York and London, 1995), p. 230.
S. Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews. The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997), p. 5.
R. Hilberg quoted in C. Lanzmann, Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust. The Complete Text of the Film (New York, 1985), p. 70.
I. Leitner, Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz (New York, 1978), p. 46.
For an interesting discussion about the ‘Muselmann’ see: G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz (New York, 1999), pp. 41–86.
In my opinion it is possible to map four ‘waves’: 1945–1950; 1950–1962; 1962 to the late 1980s; and the last wave which continues on today. For the first wave publications, see P. S. Goldwasser, Four Black Notebooks (Jerusalem, 2005) (Originally 1945) [Polish and Hebrew];
M. Nagel-Goss, Three Years in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Israel, 2003) (Originally 1945) [Hungarian and Hebrew];
G. Tedeschi, Questo povero corpo (Milano, 1946);
O. Lengyel, Five Chimneys (Chicago, 1947);
L. Millu, Il fumo di Birkenau (Milano, 1947);
R. Kagan, Hell’s Office Women (Oswiencm Chronicle) (Palestine, 1947) [Hebrew];
and G. Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York, 1948). We also need to note here the following books that were written immediately after the war but were published only a few decades later: Leitner, Fragments of Isabella, 1978; Delbo, Auschwitz and After, 1995. To these we have to add about 80–100 testimonies that were submitted between the years 1945 and 1947.
See, for example, Heinemann, Gender and Destiny, 1986, pp. 27–33;
M. Goldenberg, ‘Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women’s Holocaust Narratives’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548 (November 1996), pp. 81–86.
D. Ofer and L. J. Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust (New Haven and London, 1998), pp. 7–8.
Heinemann, Gender and Destiny, 1986, p. 16.
S. Milton, ‘Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women’, in C. Rittner and J. K. Roth, eds, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (Minnesota, 1993), pp. 230–231.
V. Laska, ‘Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women’, in C. Rittner and J. K. Roth, eds, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (Minnesota, 1993), p. 265.
J. C. Friedman, Speaking the Unspeakable. Essays on Sexuality, Gender, and Holocaust Survivor Memory (Maryland, 2002), p. 54.
R. G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (Wisconsin, 2004), p. 23.
D. L. Bergen, ‘Sexual Violence in the Holocaust: Unique and Typical?’, in Lessons and Legacies: The Holocaust in International Perspective, Volume VII, Dagmar Herzog, Ed. (Evanston, IL, 2006), p. 180.
There is certainly a thoughtful analysis of the popular fascination with sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, during the Holocaust. See, for example, the classic work on the subject: S. Friedlander, Reflections on Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death (Bloomington, IN, 1982).
See also the article of R. Scherr, ‘The Uses of Memory and Abuses of Fiction: Sexuality in Holocaust Film, Fiction, and Memoir’, in E. R. Baer and M. Goldenberg, eds, Experience and Expression. Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust (Michigan, 2003), pp. 278–297. J. L. Jacobs, ‘Women, Genocide, and Memory. The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research’, in Gender & Society, 18 (2004), 223–238. See also notes 5–6 above. The crucial point is that in the last few years we also find this ‘Kitsch and Death’ approach, one which is not based on historical facts, appearing not just in popular culture but also within historical research.
Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, 1948, p. 43.
See, for example, Primo Levi’s description of the Sauna: Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgment of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term ‘extermination camp’, and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: ‘to lie on the bottom’. P. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York, 1971), p. 23.
E. Schloss, Eva’s Story (New York, 1988).
H. Birenbaum, Hope Is the Last to Die: A Coming of Age Under Nazi Terror (New York, London, 1971), pp. 90–92.
Lengyel, Five Chimneys, 1947, pp. 103–104.
Leitner, Fragments of Isabella, 1978, pp. 50–54.
Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, 1948, pp. 61–62.
R. Kagan, Hell’s Office Women (Oswiencm Chronicle) (Palestine, 1947), p. 51 [Hebrew].
See D. Czech, ‘The Auschwitz Prisoners Administration’, in Y. Gutman and M. Berenbaum, eds, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 363–378.
In 1940 the SS team in Auschwitz contained only 500 people. In 1941 the number grew to 700, and in 1942 it contained about 2000. In April 1944 it was 2950, and in August it grew again to 3342 people. On 15 January 1945 it contained about 4480 people, among them 71 women. Over the years of the camp existence, between 7000 and 7200 SS served in it. A. Lasik, ‘Historical-Sociological Profile of the Aushcwitz SS’, in Gutman and Berenbaum, eds, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, pp. 271–287.
O. Kraus and E. Kulka, The Mills of Death Auschwitz (Jerusalem, 1960), p. 105 [Hebrew].
T. Geva, Guns & Barbed Wire. A Child Survives the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 2003), p. 85 [Hebrew].
See in this context also: Jozefina Szepper-Mazowiecka testimony. Yad Vashem Archives (taken from the Tenenbaum-Marzic Archives, The Underground Archives in Bialystok Ghetto), M.11/180, 9 January 1946, no page was mentioned [Polish-Hebrew]; Review of the sexual aspects of life in the Blizin and Auschwitz camps, Yad Vashem Archives (taken from the ZIH collection), M.49.E-ZIH/1456, 4 November 1946, no page was mentioned, [Yiddish]. In her book, Values and Violence in Auschwitz – Sociological Analysis, Anna Pawelczynska, does refer to the subject, but without any references: ‘… paid prostitution existed in the camp and the choice of erotic partners was dictated by one’s ability to pay – either in the form of help in gaining a better place in the camp structure or, at each visit in the form of food or better clothes’. A. Pawelczynska, Values and Violence in Auschwitz – Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, 1979) (Originally Warsaw, 1973), p. 99.
In her article ‘The Unethical and the Unspeakable’, Joan Ringelheim cites Auschwitz survivor Ilona Karmel: ‘In Poland, both in ghettos and camps, sexuality was a means of buying protection from the Jewish policemen and others who had means and power’. See M. J. Ringelheim, ‘The Unethical and the Unspeakable: Women and the Holocaust’, Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 7 (September 1983), p. 6.
Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, 1948, pp. 78–79.
Nagel-Gross, Three Years, 2003 (Originally 1945), p. 28.
Lengyel, Five Chimneys, 1947, p. 60.
T. Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (U.S.A., 1967) (Original 1947), pp. 86–93.
R. Bondy, Whole Fracture (Tel Aviv, 1997), p. 44 [Hebrew].
See, for example, Heinemann, Gender and Destiny, 1986, pp. 1–12.
P. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York, 1971), p. 79.
Pawelczynska, Values and Violence in Auschwitz – Sociological Analysis, 1979, p. 127.
J. Améry, At the Mind’s Limits. Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (Bloomington, 1988), p. 52.
Tedeschi, Questo povero corpo, 2000 (Originally 1946), p. 36.
Delbo, Auschwitz and After, 1995, pp. 11–12.
Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, 1948, p. 56.
Delbo, Auschwitz and After, 1995, p. 12.
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© 2009 Na’ama Shik
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Shik, N. (2009). Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In: Herzog, D. (eds) Brutality and Desire. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234291_9
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