![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article traces the development of the Israeli narrative of sexual violence during the Holocaust and seeks to account for the period of silence on this issue from the 1960s to the late 1980s. In contrast to testimonies recorded in the immediate postwar period and after the 1980s, testimonies given during this time were affected by misconceptions about sexual violence during the Holocaust, resulting in decades of suppression for Holocaust survivors who had experienced sexual violence. Their silence was amplified by the anxiety of those who were witnesses to their survival and their testimony.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Devora Levin, editor at the Azrieli Foundation's Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, for her assistance with this article. For the deep and important thoughts, professionalism, and her significant contribution.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Translation by Alex Cigale, reproduced with permission. Accessed online: https://hopkinsreview.jhu.edu/archive/requiem/.
2 Tenenbaum, Ehad Me’ir Shnei’im M’mishpacha, 8.
3 Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing.
4 I first wrote about this subject in ‘Infinite Loneliness.’ I want to thank Doris Bergen (editor of the volume) for her brilliant thoughts, her encouragement, and her friendship.
5 Shik, “Infinite Loneliness”; Krystal, Massive Psychic Trauma; Krystal, “Trauma and Affects”; and Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors.
6 I first presented on the developments, narratives and influence of the Israeli case at a conference in Ben-Gurion University in January 2008, organized by Professor Hanna Yablonka. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first conference in Israel to deal with narratives, culture, testimonies and representations of sexual exploitation in Israeli culture. The conference explored Ka-Tzetnik’s work and its social influence; Stalag fiction, pornography and the Holocaust in Israel; and the testimony and research of Ruth Bondy. My own lecture was about the sexual exploitation of Jewish women in the Holocaust and the myth and reality that binds those issues together in the historical narrative.
7 MacKinnon, “Rape, Genocide,” 11–2.
8 See, for example, Goldenberg, “Sex, Rape, and Survival”; Bergen, “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust,” 180; Herzog, Brutality and Desire; Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen; Hedgepeth and Saidel, Sexual Violence against Jewish Women; Fogelman, “Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women”; Waxman, “Rape and Sexual Abuse in Hiding”; Goldenberg, Different Horrors, Same Hell; Waxman, Women in the Holocaust; and Baumel-Schwartz, Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust.
9 Podolsky, “The Tragic Fate.”
10 Flaschka, “Only Pretty Women Were Raped”; and Sinnreich, “The Rape of Jewish Women.”
11 Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen.
12 Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell.
13 The poem and its effects on Israeli society is also discussed in Bartov, “Kitsch and Sadism”; Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood; Geva, El Ha-ahot Ha-lo Yedoa; and Dror and Linn, Eich Kara She-saradet, 20.
14 Sadeh, “Ahoti Al-Hachof,” 50–1. In their introduction to Eich Kara She-saradet, Dror and Linn also discuss Sadeh's poem and the narrative framework in which female survivors are perceived. They conclude that there are two narratives: the first is an official narrative, according to which certain things never happened, i.e. Jewish women and girls were not raped or taken into prostitution due to the Nuremberg Laws. […]. In order to strethen this assertion they strangely quote Professor Gideon Greif describing the historical truth about the fact the Jewish women were not forced to be in the German brothels, in a way that casts doubt on its determination and as part of this ‘official narrative.’ See Dror and Linn, Eich Kara She-saradet, 26–7.
15 Anita Shapira, Herev Hayona: Haziyonut Vehakoach: 1881-1948, Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1992, pp. 451-452.
16 B. Marshek, Al HaMishmar, March 1, 1953: 2.
17 S. Shegev, Ma’ariv, September 19, 1962: 5.
18 Steir-Livny, Remaking Holocaust Memory; Steir-Livny, Shtei Panim B’Mar’eh, 40–55; and Steir-Livny, “Hagalot Hameshulesht.”
19 Steir-Livny, Shtei Panim B’Mar’eh; and Dror and Linn, Eich Kara She-saradet, 20.
20 Steir-Livny, Shtei Panim B’Mar’eh.
21 Bartov, “Kitsch and Sadism.”
22 Ibid., 42.
23 Ibid., 55–6.
24 It seems that Israeli society's perceptions of survivors, especially of female survivors, and the phenomenon of the kapo trials can be linked. From the early fifties and until the early seventies, in the young State of Israel there were several dozen trials under the law ‘On Judging Nazis and Their Collaborators.’ Out of about four hundred complaints that were filed with the Israeli police – particularly by camp survivors – between thirty and forty people who were alleged to have been ghetto police, camp kapos and Blockälteste were brought to trial. The trials provoked public unrest, though mainly among the survivors themselves. In many ways, complaints to the police, and reports in the press and in the legal arena were places where survivors – who were being questioned by Israeli society about how they survived, the nature of their morality and the truth of their stories – could fight, consciously or unconsciously, over the definition of Jewish-Israeli affiliation: who belonged and who was excluded, who was a worthy Jew and who should be ‘outside the camp’ of the Jewish nation. As in the case of the biblical leper: ‘He shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be’ (Leviticus 13:46). More on the kapo trials can be found in the work of Hannah Yablonka, Yechiam Weitz, Galia Glasner-Heled, Dan Bar-On, Rivka Brot.
25 See, for example, the following testimonies: Testimony of Hanna Rothe Magid. Magid recounts how she was gang raped by Polish students after she ran from the Aktion that occurred in the Legionowo ghetto. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/1570, 1960 [Polish]; Testimony of Meir Robinstein. Robinstein tells how his wife was raped and murdered by Poles. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/868, 1958 [Yiddish]; Testimony of Ivi Bert. Bert describes how she was gang raped by Red Army soldiers after her liberation. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/7812, 1995 [Hungarian]; Testimony of Ita Shmulevski. Shmulevski tells about being sexually harassed by a Hungarian guard. Yad Vashem Archives, V.T/1584, 1997 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Vera Veresh. Veresh was a virgin when she was raped by a Hungarian soldier. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/1950, 1946 [Hungarian]; Testimony of Naomi Donat. Donat was raped by a Hungarian policeman. Yad Vashem Archives, O.33.C/3521, 1995 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Brina Levin Fridmann. Levin Fridmann talks about Jewish girls who were raped and then murdered by Lithuanians. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/12674, 2006 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Yehodit Zik Finkel. Zik Finkel was sexually abused by the Polish farmer who owned the house she was hidden in. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/12630, 2005 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Sonia Perminger. Perminger talks about Jewish girls who were raped and then murdered by Lithuanians. Yad Vashem Archives, O.33.C/4235, 1995 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Soria Shlomovitzch. Shlomovitzch recounts how the owner of the house where she was hidden in Belgium tried to rape her. Yad Vashem Archives, O.69/354, 1981 [English]; Testimony of Edith Wollf. Wollf describes how a Yugoslavian who cooperated with the Nazis tried to rape her. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/6275, 1991 [Hebrew]; Testimony of Yulan Petrover. Petrover tells how a Hungarian soldier raped and then murdered her sister. Yad Vashem Archives, O.69/43, 1981 [English]. Two stories concern German perpetrators: Testimony of Zofia Minc. Minc tells how an SS officer tried to rape her in Auschwitz. Yad Vashem Archives, M.49.E-Zih/2504, 1947 [Polish]; and Testimony of Hela Shmolivtz. Shmolivtz describes how German policemen raped her in the police station in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland. Yad Vashem Archives, O.3/5596, 1989 [Hebrew].
26 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust.
27 In her article in this Special Issue, Debórah Dwork writes about shame and survivors’ silence along with scholars’ silence concerning sexual abuse of young boys during the Holocaust. See Dwork, “Sexual abuse, sexual barter, and silence.”
28 Bondy, Shvarim Shlemim, 44.
29 See, for example, the following testimonies about this sense of shame: Testimony of Fela Mybuam, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/4326, 2.4.1989, Jerusalem [Hebrew]; Testimony of Zipora Tehori (Helena Zitron), Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/6766, 3.6/7/1992, Jerusalem [Hebrew]; Testimony of Rachel Eitan, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/7615, 7.6.1994, Jerusalem [Hebrew]; Testimony of Yaffa Hart, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/8873, 8.5.1995, Jerusalem [Hebrew]; Testimony of Sara Brill, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/9933, 30.7.1996, Jerusalem [Hebrew]; and Testimony of Klara Cohen, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/10852, 3.3.1998, Jerusalem [Hebrew].
30 Pagi, Lo Mevateret, 91–2.
31 Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors. Some of what is written here is taken from Shik, “Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women.” I want to thank Dagmar Herzog (editor of the volume) for her permission, and for her friendship, support and her expansive knowledge, wisdom and generosity.
32 See, for example, Testimony of Nina Kaplan Rossman, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/4540, 11.4.1988; Testimony of Naomi Dagan-Donat, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/7852, 30.3.1995; Testimony of Lea Molcho, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/12155, 2.9.2002, Jerusalem; and Testimony of Manka Alter, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.3/12354, 17-28.3.2004, Jerusalem.
33 Langer, Holocaust Testimonies; Epstein, Children of the Holocaust; Moses, Persistent Shadows of the Holocaust; Kellermann, Holocaust Trauma; and Gampel, Ha'Horin Sh-Hayim Darchi.
34 LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 118.
35 Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors, 1–7.
36 Waxman, “Buried Words,” in this Special Issue.
37 LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 215.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Na’ama Shik
Na’ama Shik is a Holocaust historian with expertise in the Nazi camps, women and gender in the Holocaust, and sexual abuse in Holocaust testimonies. She has published articles about women in Auschwitz-Birkenau, sexual abuse during the Holocaust, Holocaust testimonies, pregnant Jewish women in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and mother-daughter relationships in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her forthcoming book, Jewish Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau 1942–1945, will be published in 2022 and won the Open University - Goldberg Foundation Prize for Publication of Exceptional Manuscripts. She has been lecturing, teaching and working at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem since 1999, where she serves as the director of the e-learning department.