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http://www.womensenews.org/story/our-history/110529/holocaust-womens-rape-breaks-decades-taboo
HOLOCAUST WOMEN'S RAPE RECORDS BREAK DECADES OF TABOO
The rape and sexual abuse of Jewish women during the Holocaust have been long overlooked. But when researchers probed, stories began to emerge as if they were old photographic film waiting for the right chemicals.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Gender
violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other conflict zones around
the world is a subject of continual research and education through witness
testimonials, podcasts and information presented by the Committee on Conscience
of the
But this year the museum took a look back, delving into a topic from history that, surprisingly, is entirely new–pivotal research about the rape of Jewish women during the Holocaust, described in a new book by two female scholars.
"Rape does not just happen," said Bridget Conley-Zilkic, director
of research and projects for the division that guides the museum's genocide
prevention programs, at a special event in
The rape and sexual abuse of Jewish women in the Holocaust has been a subject that is so taboo that it has taken 65 years for the first English language book on the subject to make its way to the public.
"One question we get a lot is: 'Why did it take so long?' And, for that you have to understand how it came about," said Rochelle G. Saidel, co-editor with Sonja M. Hedgepeth of "Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust," a multidisciplinary anthology released by Brandeis University Press in December 2010.
In 2006, during a rare seminar about women and the Holocaust at
Saidel said, "This very illustrious Holocaust scholar raised his hand and said, 'There were no Jewish women who were raped during the Holocaust. How can you say such a thing? Where are the documents? Where is the proof?'"
His voice was not alone. For decades, a myth held sway that the Nazis didn't rape Jewish women because it violated German rules on "race" mixing. Others asserted that Jewish women who were raped must have colluded with the Nazis for food and that women, especially attractive ones, who survived the death camps voluntarily engaged in sexual barter.
Saidel and Hedgepeth knew rape was not documented in the same way as the number of trains that traveled to a concentration camp, but they sought out scholars from seven countries and collected 16 essays, drawing upon oral histories, literature, psychoanalysis, eyewitness reports and diaries.
The stories of rape and sexual abuse began to emerge as if they were old photographic film waiting for the right chemicals, and long-erased pictures of Jewish women who had suffered sexual abuse began to emerge.
Jewish women were raped and sexually abused by Nazi guards, but also by
liberators, people who hid them, aid givers, partisans and even fellow
prisoners. Judy Weiszenberg Cohen, an Auschwitz survivor living in
"The exact number of women who experienced sexual molestation during
the Holocaust cannot be determined … and the rapists by and large did not leave
documents testifying to their actions," writes Nomi Levenkron, a human
rights attorney in
"This is about all of our humanity. After I read the manuscript, I
became kind of obsessed with it," said Gloria Steinem, the renowned
feminist writer and advocate, who sponsored two events in
Many sexually abused women were raped and then simply killed.
Author Moinka J. Faschka of Kent State University in Ohio, one of the contributors to the book, cites survivor Harry Koltun, who said in an interview: "[T]he Gestapo SS came in and took out a few Jewish girls, they took them into a forest and they never came back. They did what they had to do sexually, and they killed them. Nice, nice looking girls."
At a presentation at the Anne Frank Center USA in
In other cases, women feared they would be considered "impure" or be ostracized by their families.
"I have been interviewing Holocaust survivors in
For this book, Fogelman identified 1,040 testimonies of the 52,000 in the
Shoah Foundation collection at the
"What you have is women who were raped talk about it in bits or pieces. Or, 'I know a woman and this happened to her,' – a way of indicating this happened, but not implicating themselves," Fogelman said.
This book, said co-editor Hedgepeth, is only the beginning of the exploration of this sensitive topic.
"I'm starting to feel from conversations that there will be more that comes out of this," she said.