Gender and Genocide Flashcards
(160 cards)
Helene Sinnreich (2008), rape of Jewish women
rejects the myth that laws forbidding Rassenschande would prevent the rape of Jewish women and argues that genocidal conditions provided fertile soil for such abuses.
Helene Sinnreich (2008), rape in genocide
rape occurs during genocide not only as a systematic means of attack but also because it places its victims in physically vulnerable positions with limited or non-existent access to redress. Although during the Holocaust the organised rape of Jewish women was not part of official German genocidal policy, the conditions that exposed women to various abuses put them at risk of being raped by a wide range of individuals including perpetrators, bystanders, and fellow victims.
Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour
September 1935
not only prohibited marriage between Jews and ‘subjects of the state of Germany or related blood’ but also explicitly forbade extramarital relations. Punishment for either offence was hard labour
HOWEVER
German soldiers who engaged in consensual - or even non-consensual - sexual relations with non-German women were rarely reprimanded
Helene Sinnreich (2008), dehumanisation and rape
the notion that dehumanising Nazi propaganda would create a barrier to rape contradicts numerous theorists who argue that rather than deter rape, the rendering of a victim as sub-human enables a perpetrator.
Catherine Derderian - rape and Turks
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
rape helped the Turks dehumanise the Armenians.
Conversely, the dehumanisation of the Armenians made it easier for the Turks to rape them.
Helene Sinnreich (2008), in what context should we understand the rape of Jewish women
one should understand the rape of Jewish women within the context of German men perpetrating violence against Jewish women rather than German men and Jewish women engaging in sexual relations
Copelon - war and violence
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
‘War tends to intensify the brutality, repetitiveness, public spectacle, and likelihood of rape. War diminishes sensitivity to human suffering and intensifies men’s sense of entitlement, superiority, avidity, and social license to rape.’
Christoph Schiessl, why do soldiers rape during warfare
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
‘domination and demoralization’
‘in wartime the distinction between killing and other forms of violence gets easily lost. A group power develops which has no comparison in civilian life, enlarging the power of men alone.’
Reasons why historians have failed to explore rape of Jewish women
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
gender bias in Holocaust scholarship
significant work on the particulars of women’s experience during the Holocaust did not appear until the mid and late 1990s
mistaken belief in the idea that Germans implemented their genocidal policies with unwavering ideological purity has caused many to turn a blind eye to numerous sources, German and Jewish, which testify to the realities of Jewish experiences during the war.
Helene Sinnreich (2008), rape as collective genocidal experience
rape as an experience of Holocaust victims was not just a personal experience because Jewish women were especially vulnerable precisely because of their Jewish identity
Helene Sinnreich (2008), significance of USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive
- Unlike in previous interview projects, interviewees were specifically asked whether or not they had witnessed sexual abuse
- Since they did not begin collecting material until the 1990s, enough time had passed for women to be forthright about their experiences
Jakub Poznanski, Diary from the Lodz Ghetto
wrote of the rape of a Jewish girl by Hans Biebow; the head of the German Ghetto Administration, in a diary entry dated 2 September 1944
One evening when he was drunk, he grabbed her in the hallway, dragged her into his office, and tried to rape her. The girl tried to defend herself and started screaming. It was then that ‘the master of life and death’ shot her in the eye
Helene Sinnreich (2008), Bina W
Bina W was among those few who were left in the Lodz Ghetto after the final liquidation to clean up the ghetto area. She was roomed in a women’s barrack. One night, Hans Biebow dragged her from her bed. Together these separate reports of Biebow as a rapist lends credibility to each of the survivor’s stories
Helene Sinnreich (2008), Ana C’s testimony
the Germans took Jewish women from the Lodz Ghetto for forced prostitution
she herself was selected for this duty
Helene Sinnreich (2008), brothels
Early in his regime, Hitler positioned himself and the Nazi party as being opposed to prostitution
by 1936, the Military Supreme Command declared that the construction of military brothels “an urgent necessity”
Regulations against Jewish women serving in brothels were made explicit in 1939 when the brothels were first set up but had to be reiterated in another order in March of 1942 suggesting the prohibition was not being observed
Helene Sinnreich (2008), affidavit signed in New York City on 14 January 1940
Dr. Henryk Szoszkies, a former member of the Executive of the Warsaw Jewish Community Council testified that, to my own knowledge proposals were made by Nazi officials to the Jewish Community Council to organize houses of prostitution in Nazi-occupied towns, and that Jewish girls be provided for use of the army.
Helene Sinnreich (2008), other testimonies suggesting systematic sexual exploitation of Jewish women
in her memoir I was There, Frances Penney claims that such a list of women was created in the Vilna Ghetto.
Another survivor from Lithuania testified that very attractive women were rounded up and selected for ‘labour’ in the Kaunas ghetto.
A.A. Ruzkensky testified in 1941 that Jewish girls were taken from the streets of Lvov and put into a brothel and shot a few days later
Helene Sinnreich (2008), sexual exploitation in concentration camps - Skarżysko-Kamienna
The leadership of Skarżysko-Kamienna engaged regularly in the rape of the Jewish prisoner population
Survivors testified that numerous German officers took part in the rape of Jewish women, with more than one testimony specifically naming Kurt Krause, Otto Eisenschmidt, and SA member Fritz Bartenschlager
Sexual abuse pervasive
Felicja Karay described it as a place where ‘the “rites of manhood” were expressed in orgies of drunkenness and gang rapes of Jewish girls
Helene Sinnreich (2008), necrophilia and power
numerous testimonies from a variety of camps which discuss women being sexually violated after death. As a way of expressing power over a corpse, this act of necrophilia further desecrated and dehumanised both the deceased and living witnesses
Helene Sinnreich (2008), Lya C’s testimony of Haidari concentration camp, Greece
every morning the commandant would select the seven most attractive female prisoners - the same seven women. One day, one of the women was sick and he approached Lya. Lya was 14 - she thought the girls were cleaning the rooms; instead she was raped by a young German
Sofsky, The Order of Terror
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
the ‘condition of omnipresent murder attracts and breeds sadists’
Helene Sinnreich (2008), sexual exploitation in concentration camps - Dachau
One survivor, Erica B., testified that she was arrested for Rassenschande and incarcerated in Dachau. The guards repeatedly raped her in her cell: ‘There was sex from morning to night and there was not anything you could do about it … Two or three would come in and you had to lie on the floor and that was it.’
Emil G. reported that while he was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Germans arranged a ‘show’ where they took 20 Jewish women prisoners and raped them in front of one of the labour groups. Emil reported that the male prisoners were supposed to stand and applaud.
Helene Sinnreich (2008), sexual exploitation not permitted in all concentration camps
Shari B. was a 14 year old girl in Augsburg when a German man more than twice her age grabbed her underdeveloped breasts. She felt helpless to prevent his assault and pleaded with him to stop but he did not let go until he saw a female guard coming
Ulrich Herbert in his introduction to National Socialist Extermination Policies
Helene Sinnreich (2008)
one of the weaknesses of German histories of the Holocaust has been the focus on the perpetrators’ perspective