Module 2: Gender and Sexuality
2.2 Sexual Violence and the Holocaust
Lecture by Dr. Deidre Butler
This mini-lecture focuses on how the story of sexual violence during the Holocaust has been studied and remembered. The first question is: why has there been such silence around sexual violence during the Holocaust? The second question complicates our understanding of sexual violence as an individual trauma to underscore its use as a tool to terrorize, dominate, and increase the suffering of Jews as a collective.
Please note that the readings and oral histories in this section on sexual violence are particularly difficult and explicit.
“[R]ape is a language. Within the context of the Holocaust the rape of Jewish women by German soldiers and their non-German allies is not only a sexual act but a political declaration as to the degenerate status of the Jewish victims in accordance with Nazi ideology. The action communicates that Jewish girls and women are not fully human, that they are not shielded by normal moral rules, that they stand outside police and state protection, and that they do not belong to the universe of ethical obligation that ordinarily constrains Aryan behaviour.”
Katz, Steven T., “Thoughts on the Intersections of Rape and Rassenchande during the Holocaust,” Modern Judaism 32, no. 3 (2012): 293–322.
Oral History: Blanka Rothschild
In her oral history, Blanka Rothschild explains her arrival at Ravensbrück and the physical abuse she experienced
Oral History: Dora Goldstein Roth
In her oral history, Dora Goldstein Roth shares the difficult memory of witnessing the mass rape of camp inmates at the Stutthof concentration camp.
Jan Grabowski and Molly Applebaum’s diary
Dr. Jan Grabowski describes how he came across the diary of Molly Appelbaum. He later published it in Polish and wrote the introduction to the translated version published by the Azrieli Foundation.
Buried Words: The Diary of Molly Applebaum
Reflection Questions:
- Blanka Rothschild and Dora Goldstein both describe how sexual humiliation and violence was used against Jewish women in the camps. Listening to their testimony, how do they distance themselves from this trauma?
- Jan Grabowski writes in his introduction to Buried Words: The Diary of Molly Applebaum that the diary should “be a warning against simplistic interpretations of the stories of the Righteous.” How is Molly’s story also a warning against simplistic interpretations of consent?
