Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
9781584659051
9781584659044
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
Using testimonies, Nazi documents, memoirs, and artistic representations, this volume broadens and deepens comprehension of Jewish women’s experiences of rape and other forms of sexual violence during the Holocaust. The book goes beyond previous studies, and challenges claims that Jewish women were not sexually violated during the Holocaust. This anthology by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars addresses topics such as rape, forced prostitution, assaults on childbearing, artistic representations of sexual violence, and psychological insights into survivor trauma. These subjects have been relegated to the edges or completely left out of Holocaust history, and this book aims to shift perceptions and promote new discourse.
Table of Contents
Foreword – Shulamit Reinharz • Acknowledgments • Introduction – Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel • Aspects of Sexual Abuse • Death and the Maidens: “Prostitution,” Rape, and Sexual Slavery during World War II – Nomi Levenkron • Sexualized Violence against Women during Nazi “Racial” Persecution – Brigitte Halbmayr • Sexual Exploitation of Women in Nazi Concentration Camp Brothels – Robert Sommer • Schillinger and the Dancer: Representing Agency and Sexual Violence in Holocaust Testimonies – Kirsty Chatwood • Rape of Jewish Women • “Only Pretty Women Were Raped”: The Effect of Sexual Violence on Gender Identities in the Concentration Camps – Monika J. Flaschka • The Tragic Fate of Ukrainian Jewish Women under Nazi Occupation, 1941–1944 – Anatoly Podolsky • The Rape of Jewish Women during the Holocaust – Helene J. Sinnreich • Rape and Sexual Abuse in Hiding – Zoë Waxman • Assaults on Motherhood • Reproduction under the Swastika: The Other Side of the Glorification of Motherhood – Helga Amesberger • Forced Sterilization and Abortion as Sexual Abuse – Ellen Ben-Sefer • Sexual Violence in Literature and Cinema • Sexual Abuse in Holocaust Literature: Memoir and Fiction – S. Lillian Kremer • “Stoning the Messenger”: Yehiel Dinur’s House of Dolls and Piepel – Miryam Sivan • Nava Semel’s And the Rat Laughed: A Tale of Sexual Violation – Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel • “Public Property”: Sexual Abuse of Women and Girls in Cinematic Memory – Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan • The Violated Self • Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women during and after the Holocaust: A Psychological Perspective – Eva Fogelman • The Shame Is Always There – Esther Dror and Ruth Linn • Contributors • Index