The Holocaust continues to exist as a black mark in the history of Germany; through the government supported torture and extermination of both men and women, more than 6 million lost their lives. As a consequence of the collective tragedy for both sexes, there has been much debate pertaining to the focus of gender specific suffering in Holocaust literature; for this reason, the Holocaust accounts of women writers were largely ignored prior to the 1970’s. Many historians still refute disparities existed between the male and female experience. However, it is worth noting that the social, familial, and cultural expectations of men and women, both prior to and during the war, varied greatly. Moreover, these diverging roles promoted distinctively different coping, processing, and accounting of the tragedies stemming from the Holocaust. By examining the unique experiences of women, both within and outside the concentration camps, one can logically conclude these remarkable accounts broaden the scope of Holocaust literature. Embedded gender roles helped the survival efforts of women, and these unique female perspectives are valuable in accurately portraying the Holocaust experience. To first define gender specific experiences, it is imperative to identify which attributes make an experience exclusively female. Although many Nazi persecuted women were mothers, it is important to view the female account in more than maternal terms. Undoubtedly, the forced separation of mother and child was deplorable, but there is much more to the female experience. Women were also wives, sisters, aunts, daughters, and friends; all of these relationships contribute to what constitutes the female specific account. As noted in The Holocaust: Theoretic... ... middle of paper ... ...locaust Girlhood Remembered. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2001. Print. Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print. Morrison, Jack G.. Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women's Concentration Camp, 1939-45. Princeton, NJ: Wiener, 2000. Print. Ofer, Dalia, and Lenore J. Weitzman. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 1. Print. Plank, Karl. Mother of the Wire Fence: Inside and Outside the Holocaust. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994. Print. Rittner, Carol, & Roth, John. Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust. New York: Paragon House, 1993. Print. "Voices from Ravensbruck Interview 242 - Manuscript Section, University Library, Lund University." Lund University Library, 18 June 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2011.
When in America, Helen found that it was hard not to talk about past and the stories of her imprisonment. “Some survivors found it impossible to talk about their pasts. By staying silent, they hoped to bury the horrible nightmares of the last few years. They wanted to spare their children and those who knew little about the holocaust from listening to their terrible stories.” In the efforts to save people from having to hear about the gruesome past, the survivors also lacked the resources to mentally recovery from the tragedy.
Many outsiders strive but fail to truly comprehend the haunting incident of World War II’s Holocaust. None but survivors and witnesses succeed to sense and live the timeless pain of the event which repossesses the core of human psyche. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom are two of these survivors who, through their personal accounts, allow the reader to glimpse empathy within the soul and the heart. Elie Wiesel (1928- ), a journalist and Professor of Humanities at Boston University, is an author of 21 books. The first of his collection, entitled Night, is a terrifying account of Wiesel’s boyhood experience as a WWII Jewish prisoner of Hitler’s dominant and secretive Nazi party.
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. London: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Imagine having to live behind the close fences of a concentration camp and endeavor for survival. From January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945, the Holocaust was the methodical, bureaucratic, state-supported mistreatment and homicide by the Nazi administration and its colleagues. Specified by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately six million Jews were butchered due to the Nazis blaming them for Germany’s failures. The Jew’s experiences range from the release of extreme propaganda, opening of concentration camps, Kristallnacht, their civil liberties dwindling away, and what the remaining prisoners had suffered through to survive the end of the war.
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...he So-Called Mischlinge.” The Holocaust and History. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 155-133.
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Thesis: Women being viewed as perpetrators in any type of violence in societies across the world is often overlooked, ignored, or their participation minimized (not only in their society, but also in judicial process especially when they are on trial for the same crimes as their male counterparts). In the book Hitler’s Furies by Wendy Lower, Lower attempts to address this double standard and shine light on the topic of German women’s participation in the marginalization and genocide of the European Jews alongside Hitler and his Nazi state. Lower’s purpose is to explore how in periods of war and extreme violence a majority of German women, not only female camp guards, became “conditioned to accept violence, to incite it, and to commit it...”
In the beginning of the Holocaust, Jewish men were the head of the household and provided for the family. As the Holocaust starts to move forward, the Nazi’s anti-Jewish laws forced most Jewish men out of employment. The Jewish women then stepped in to provide for their family. The women found work in a community that was Jewish. They slowly had to do everything for their family. The Jewish men found it difficult to be in public due to their loss of work and found it embarrassing. The Jewish men are also targeted for violence and stayed home from it. The women bought groceries, cleaned, sewed, stretched out food budgets, stretched out food, filed paperwork, and found sources of income. However, at first, men were the provider for their family. Gradually the women became the superior in the household (Cushman 3).
Weitzman, Lenore , and Dalia Ofer. Women in the Holocaust. Yale University Express, 1999. eBook.
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Wistrich, Robert S. Hitler and the Holocaust (Modern Library Chronicles). New York: Modern Library, 2003. Print.
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
In The Jewish Women of Ravenbrück Concentration Camp the author, Rochelle Saidel discusses how gender plays a large role in the identity of the camp survivors, along with how