Long hidden topic of sexual violation in Holocaust sees the light

The Holocaust evokes nightmarish imagery: depraved medical experiments, asphyxiation in gas chambers, emaciated walking skeletons. One subject that has been consistently difficult to discuss, however, is the sexual degradation and exploitation that women faced in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe during the Holocaust (1933-1945). A ground-breaking book has brought these experiences to light and emboldened some women to speak of their trauma.

In spite of the Nazi concept of “rassenschande”, German for “racial shame”, referring to sex with non-Aryans, a pioneering book has showed that sex across the race line was common. “The contention that Germans wouldn’t rape a Jewish woman was absolutely false,” said one of the editors, Dr Rochelle Saidel. Many Germans had no scruples about having forced sex with supposed “untermenschen” (those of an inferior race).

Saidel was speaking at a webinar titled “Sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust: challenges and reflections” on 28 January.

Intense research has revealed a variety of depraved sexual practices in the Holocaust, including the humiliation of Jewish women having to stand naked before male soldiers, having their hair shaven, and sometimes their genitals groped in public. Like many conflicts before and since, rape was used as a weapon of war in World War II.

The concentration camps ran brothels for officers, guards, and non-Jewish inmates. Some officers kept women – including Jewish women – as personal sex slaves. Saidel noted that some women had to endure slave labour as prostitutes. The opportunity to visit a brothel was an incentive for male inmates to work harder. Attractive Jewish women fell prey to this practice.

Co-editor Dr Sonja Hedgepeth said that in the camps, German men and their henchmen had “complete control, and Jewish women were completely vulnerable”. Women who became pregnant were forced to undergo abortions and many were sterilised. A member of a Sonderkommando – the work units in the camps made up of Jewish inmates – said that in 1943, SS men of all ranks touched the sexual organs of every woman entering the gas chambers.

As horrific as the Holocaust was for men, women faced additional stress and violation from their Nazi tormentors and their collaborators. Holocaust historian Miram Novitch said shortly before she died in 1990, “We must collect the tears of the Jewish people.” This webinar sought to gather the tears of Jewish women.

“The Germans had a huge number of descriptive words for different types of violence against women,” said Madene Shachar, from the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum (Beit Lohamei Hagheatot) in Israel. “It’s like the Eskimos, who have a thousand words for snow.”

In 2010, Hedgepeth and Saidel published a book titled Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women in the Holocaust, a trailblazing work that brought the hidden to the surface around this subject. For 25 years, Saidel has been working through the Remember the Women Institute (www.rememberwomen.org) to tell women’s stories, focused on those from the Holocaust.

“Researching this subject was like encountering a brick wall,” Hedgepeth said. “But we found some cracks by 2006 and felt a book was in order, or long overdue. We sought scholars to collect those who were silenced, those who had spoken out, and those who had chosen to remain silent.”

Hedgepeth said these events have been shrouded in shame and secrecy for decades. “Rape is part of wartime violence. We see it now in Ukraine, and this was no less true in the Shoah [Holocaust]. Silence has given the perpetrators impunity.”

The editors also talked about sexual violence in literature and cinema related to the Holocaust, including the novel by Nava Semel, And the Rat Laughed, published in Hebrew in 2001, German in 2007, and English in 2008. It tells the fictional story of a young woman hidden in a potato pit on a Polish farm in World War II and her subsequent rape in the pit.

“There was the shame of the survivors, but also the embarrassment of the interviewers who didn’t want to think about or ask about such things,” Saidel said. “But times have changed, and there’s more openness now. It’s sad that so many of the people we would have wanted to interview are gone now.”

Saidel mentioned two events that stemmed from their book. In 2012, with the Shoah Foundation, the first ever gathering of academics researching sexual violence in the Holocaust was convened.

In 2018, an exhibition of art on this subject, titled “Violated: Women in the Holocaust and Genocide” was held in New York’s Ronald Feldman Gallery. Exhibits included the works of 30 artists from six countries, and also featured later genocides including Rwanda, Guatemala, and the Yazidis in Iraq.

“We need the courage to imagine and accept these truths,” said Hedgepeth. “Whatever I couldn’t imagine happened during the Holocaust. We faced resistance at every turn in 2006. The lay of the land is different now. There are many researchers working on this subject, including new revelations from the Soviet archives in Russia and across Eastern Europe.”

Although this isn’t their focus, the researchers commented that male rape and abuse also occurred in the camps. There was also evidence of sexual abuse of women by female guards.

The webinar was a partnership between the Ghetto Fighters’ House, the Remember the Women Institute, Women in the Holocaust – International Study Center (Moreshet), Wagner College Holocaust Center, Classrooms Without Borders, Rabin Chair Forum Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.