Sexual violence during the Holocaust
During
There were more than 44,000 camps and sites for incarceration which were under the control of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.[3] The origins of the sexual abuse and segregation of Jewish men and women was primarily due to their race.[4] The Nazis used these sites for a variety of reasons such as forced physical and sexual labor from their prisoners. There are many accounts from both men and women survivors, but often times there is erasure due to the topic's nature, and stereotypes and stigmas around the experiences.[5] Gender-based violence, sexual violence, and antisemitic viewpoints contributed to the maltreatment and violence against Jewish men and women during the Holocaust.[1]
Origins
Most Jewish men and women were targeted by the Nazi regime during World War II due to the regime's belief that the Jewish race was inferior in comparison to the so-called,
The origins of the sexual violence perpetuated against Jewish people during the Holocaust are multifaceted, and when multiple factors are combined it has the potential to create sexually violent behaviors, specifically in men (and women but men were the primary perpetrators).
The motivations for sexual abuse include but are not limited to potential political and ideological factors against the Jewish body, the wartime factor, which accustomed people to violence and killing, the culture of the military, which put physical strength and hegemonic masculinity on a pedestal, misogynistic views, which was part of the Nazi beliefs, and personal motives such as a need for power.[1] These factors in combination with one another could have perpetuated a culture of abuse and maltreatment during the Holocaust.[1]
Stereotypes and stigmas
There were lots of assumed stereotypes surrounding Jewish people and their sexuality that still persists across the globe today. Some of these stereotypes have been brought to light post-war around the women who engaged in acts of sexual service or
Jewish men also experienced, and continue to experience stigma around sexual abuse, rape, and, other acts that they also faced during the Nazi regime. The modern Jewish man is often portrayed as kind, gentle, sensitive, and delicate.[5] These traits are often associated with femininity rather than masculinity. This gives off the message that Jewish men are inferior to the traditional Western stereotypical man. This belief was reinforced in the Holocaust by the Nazis by the shame and humiliation inflicted on the Jews.[9]
Withheld and erased histories
It is often difficult to collect research on the sexual violence in the Holocaust due to its sensitive and taboo topic. There are many difficulties in collecting testimonies such as a number of the victims of sexual violence that did not survive.[2] This along with difficulties in collecting survivors' experiences due to the subject matter has caused some historians to stray away from touching on sexual violence during wartime.[2][10] This has caused some framing of the Holocaust to be incorrect as the narrative has been changed and watered down to not include the sexual violence faced by the Jews.[11]
After World War II, a large number of Jewish survivors fled Europe. More than 150,000 of these Jewish people ended up coming to America.[11] Despite this large number of Jewish immigrants to the United States, most of the survivors did not initially tell their stories. In interviews that took place in the 1990s, often holocaust survivors would say that they rarely spoke about their wartime experiences and the violence that they faced for decades after the war.[11] This is due to plenty of reasons such as placing traumatic burdens on survivors to tell their stories. It is often a struggle for survivors to recount their experiences and memories of sexual violence against Jewish people during World War II.[11] Some survivors proclaim difficulty in discussing and remembering due to the heightened emotions associated with their experiences.[11] Several survivors thought their accounts were too much for most people to listen to and believe so they stayed silent.[11] Often times survivors did not tell their stories due to the shame and stigma of the events that happened during the war.[2] These reasons and more have caused several survivors to water down their stories or not share them at all.[11]
Most media that came from America from the time was centered along the liberation of the Jews and was dramatized and meant to be inspiring media.[11] This media did not reflect the true hardships and sexual violence that occurred. This gave off an improper framing of the Holocaust to its American audience consuming media around the Holocaust. Because of the framing of the media, along with the racial purity laws prohibiting intercourse between Aryans and Jews at the time, among other reasons, some believed these sexual violations did not occur.[10][11]
Eugenics and sterilization
In 1935 a law that prohibited
Sexual violence against women
It was not uncommon for Jewish women in Europe to face heightened sexual violence during wartime efforts.[1] This sexual violence and dehumanization of Jewish people happened due to an abundance of reasons such as the culture of wartime, and misogyny.[1]
Documented histories of women in concentration camps
In
Ava Dorfman is a survivor of the Holocaust who recounted her time at the Janowska camp, in Ukraine. She recounted the trauma she witnessed:
One time in the roll-call order there were young people, and the older people were sitting, and the Ukrainian took — her name was Bosha — took her out, and we thought maybe he was going to save her, but when she came back, she said he raped me, and then he came and shot her. I had all her blood, you could [imagine] everything from her brain. He shot her right here in the head. How can you have a very normal life when you think of that.[1]
Bodily functions
While in the concentration camps, many women did not have hygienic living conditions. The Nazis controlled their bodily functions, taking away some women's agencies. Often women did not have privacy and were forced to urinate in front of the guards and their fellow inmates.
Brothels
Some Jewish women were taken from the concentration camps and put into Nazi
Sexual violence against men
Men in concentration camps were exposed to similar forms of violence and humiliation as women, but their experiences are under-researched and sometimes concealed due to social, cultural and religious expectations.
Documented histories of men in concentration camps
Sexual violence against men during the Holocaust was common, and occurred more often than recorded, according to Holocaust survivor Sam Lubat in an oral history interview in 1998.[17] Lubat described the sexual violence by men towards men as ‘shameful’.[17] Literature and discourse surrounding camp survivors reinforced homophobic stereotypes and stigma around survivors. [17]
A memoir that was published in 2015, written by Nate Leipciger, a Holocaust survivor in Poland, described his experiences of encounters with a room elder named Janek. His experiences were hidden from his father who was also imprisoned in the same camp as him. The encounters included visits during the night, forcible penetration, exploitative sexual bartering, and more.[17]
Sidney Klein, a Holocaust survivor from Slovakia recounts his experience with sexual assault in the camp hospital by someone he referred to as a 'lab technician':
He took me to the office, and he was offering me all kinds of things, and he raped me, he raped me and then he wanted me to come and see him like every week … I was trying to get away from him, and a few times I was able to do it, but then he was threatening me that if I am not going to come, I will lose my job.[17]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Sexual Violence in the Holocaust: Perspectives from Ghettos and Camps in Ukraine | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Kyiv - Ukraine". Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Retrieved 2023-03-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Silence Surrounding Sexual Violence During Holocaust". Haaretz. Retrieved 2023-03-26.
- )
- ^ a b c "Eugenics". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ a b "The 'nice Jewish boy' trope is stereotypical and damaging". The Journal. 25 January 2019. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ a b c Williams, Jessie (2021). "Sexual Violence Against Women during the Holocaust: Inside and Outside of Extermination Camps".
- ^ "Understanding the Origins of Antisemitism | AJC". www.ajc.org. 2022-03-22. Retrieved 2023-03-22.
- ^ a b c "Anti-Semitic Stereotypes of the Jewish Body". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ "Public Humiliation". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-03-29.
- ^ a b c d e "Silence lifted: The untold stories of rape during the Holocaust". www.cnn.com. Retrieved 2023-03-26.
- ^ ISSN 0195-6086.
- ^ S2CID 251754858.
- PMID 17368259.
- ^ "Nuremberg Laws". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ "The body of a Jewish woman who was gassed in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and sent to the Strasbourg University Anatomical Institute for use by Dr. August Hirt in completing a collection of prisoners' skeletons and skulls. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-58465-904-4.
- ^ .
- ^ a b "Public Humiliation". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ "Stories Survive: Nate Leipciger". Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Retrieved 2023-03-30.