Daniel Morgan

UWRT 1102
Wertz-Orbaugh
11/9/15
Research Review
The conditions and hard facts of the Holocaust are written down and stored in books as
well as in digital mediums. We have a great deal of knowledge on what happened in the camps
from recorded testimonies. While as non-survivors we can never fully understand what
happened in those camps, we can respect the survivors experiences and honor those who did not
survive. I wonder how we can best capture a more complete understanding of the experiences of
the people who were in the Nazi camps. More specifically I wonder how we can better
understand the experiences of women in the Nazi camps. Personally I think that the best
approach is to look at the experiences of the women in the Holocaust from their perspectives as
women and their perspectives as minorities in the Holocaust. A simpler term for this approach is
known as an intersectional approach. Intersectionality looks at the lived experiences of people
and seeks to understand them by looking at how various social factors combine to create unique
experiences and forms of discrimination. How can intersectionality help us to better understand
the experiences of women in the Holocaust? I think that intersectionality helps us as researchers
to see the combined factors that created the unique experiences of women in the Holocaust. It is
important for us to better understand these experiences so that we can better respect what the
victims went through.
The conditions in the Nazi camps were horrible for every victim who was there, yet the
women experienced many of the same conditions as men. While it is reasonable to argue that in
World War II women and men endorsed consciously or unconsciously a patriarchal ethos, it is
also a fact that women (and children) were not spared during the war. Women were sent to labor
camps and concentration camps along with the men, and women suffered the same humiliating

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treatment. (Fuchs 49). We know that women had the same horrendous conditions in the camps
that men had; they were expected to work and they were sent to their horrific deaths same as
men. This is significant because despite being recognized as the fairer sex at the time, women
were not afforded any mercy from the terrors of the camps. By this we can conclude that the
women in the Holocaust had suffered similar circumstances to men at the very least. As such
one would expect there to be equal representation of women in research and media surrounding
the Holocaust. My research shows otherwise, for example academic studies focusing on
womens experiences in the Holocaust by non-survivors did not surface until the mid 1970s
(Baumel-Schwartz 59, 61). And the portrayal of women in Holocaust related media has shown
women to be passive victims of the Holocaust rather than as the direct victims they were (Fuchs
50-54). I would argue that both of these grievances combined show that the women in the
Holocaust have not been accurately represented and that their experiences as victims have not
been honored.
The experiences of women in the Holocaust were not limited to the same things many
other victims went through themselves. We know that women in the camps were victims of
sexual violence and that they were forced into sexual slavery (Person 115). Many were accused
of having done so out of betrayal to their fellow sufferers, and the loss of their innocence was
seen as a crime they committed against themselves. This can be seen in the intentional erasure of
the experiences had by women forced into the brothels and sexual violence (Person 103) (Fuchs
50). During the interview Krall breaches the topic of ghetto prostitutes, asking Do you think it
would be proper to write that there were prostitutes in the ghetto? Edelman simply responds I
don't know. Probably it wouldn't be. In the ghetto there should only have been martyrs and Joans
of Arc, right?1 (Person 103). Here we can see that the women are not only blamed for being

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forced into prostitution, they are also being erased from history as well. These experiences along
with many others are unique to women in the Holocaust (Baumel-Schwartz 60,68). The problem
yet again is that these experiences are not depicted with the visibility and respect that they
deserve. I think that the erasure of these events speaks strongly to the problems we still face in
todays society. It shows us that even 70 years after the events of the Holocaust people are still
suffering however in this case it is because of their experiences. It seems fitting that we as a
society poise ourselves to say at least we arent as bad as the Nazis, yet when we are
intentionally hiding information about what happened in the Holocaust we put ourselves on the
level of the liberators who raped the women survivors (Person 115). Unfortunately, reality is
complex and it is full of things we would rather forget, so we must record and remember them
otherwise they will continue to be repeated. We must realize that the women of the Holocaust
were victims of sexual violence as well as victims of genocide, and that they along with their
liberators lead lives that fall in the grey areas of life.
Unfortunately, the women of the Holocaust are still very much victims and until we as a
society admit to our short comings by rectifying our wrong doing victims they will remain.
Their experiences both in light of their experiences shared among all victims and those unique to
them as women have not been given proper acknowledgement nor respect (Fuchs 50) (BaumelSchwartz 59, 61). We must recognize that these women suffered as racial victims and as
political opponents (Baumel-Schwartz 60). And as Joan Ringelheim notes that Jewish women
suffered both as Jews and as women from anti-Semitism and sexism in their genocidal forms
(Fuchs 49). With intersectionality we can see that these women were at the intersections of race,
gender, and politics thus they suffered consequences unique to themselves as women in the
Holocaust. To better respect their experiences more study and analysis of the women in the

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Holocaust needs to be done, and the current media portraying women in the Holocaust needs to
have its short-comings acknowledged. Any new media surrounding the Holocaust ought to strive
for historical accuracy and show all aspects of the Holocaust even if it means showing the worst
the Holocaust has to offer. I hope that one-day no one will have to have their narrative hidden
and written over as if it never happened.

Works Cited
Baumel-Schwartz, Judith Tydor. Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust. London:
Vallentine Mitchell, 1998. Print.

Fuchs, Esther. "Images of Women in Holocaust Films." Shofar Shofar: An Interdisciplinary

Journal of Jewish Studies Winter 17.2 (1999): 49-56. Project MUSE-. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Person, Katarzyna. "Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust." Shofar An
Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Winter 33.2 (2015): 103-21. Project MUSE.
Web. 9 Nov. 2015.