Views of Holocaust Historiography on Women: Analytical Essay

Following on from this examination of PTSD and its impact on the reliable narrator, this dissertation will now interrogate other constraints placed on the accurate representation of women`s Holocaust experiences. In the 1960s and 1970s, the narratives of women which dominated historiography largely focused upon the accounts of resistance fighters or otherwise those considered heroic women. It is important to mention that I will not be discrediting the validity and importance of these experiences but instead questioning why these were often seen as accounts of primary importance. The exclusive emphasis on heroic resistance inadvertently contributed to the silencing of alternative voices, creating a presumed singular experience for women throughout the Holocaust. This development resulted in a purposeful divide between active heroism, which consisted of physical resistance to anti-semitism and Fascism, and passive heroism, of moral steadfastness, spiritual resistance, and the daily struggle for survival.

Within this essay, I will examine some personal accounts which have achieved renown in Holocaust historiography. Alongside this, I will be questioning the extent to which modifications and adaptations were made to these accounts by publishers. I will further seek to clarify the extent to which the dominance of the heroic woman silenced alternative voices and denied other women a platform for sharing their experiences by promoting the notion of an assumed common narrative. I will further examine history's perpetuation of traditional gender roles by highlighting women`s friendships and roles as wives and mothers within concentration camps. In addition, consideration will be given to how male Holocaust historians maintained a biased desire to present women who upheld traditional gender roles throughout the war as heroic. This theme will focus on how these conventional gender stereotypes were considered to represent values, especially in relation to sexual assault, wherein many viewed the victims as active participants and lacking morality.

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

When analyzing the narratives of heroic women which arose after the war it is important to clarify these terms of reference. The heroine complex of this thesis refers to the purposeful highlighting and promotion of women who were considered traditionally heroic during the Second World War. This could be achieved either through publicly courageous acts of resistance or notable moral steadfastness, which placed them on a pedestal above their peers in Holocaust historiography. There are many examples of these women, such as Malka Zimetbaum, the first woman to escape from Auschwitz, whose final words, I shall die a heroine, espoused her valiant attempts. However, similar to many actively heroic women, Malka Zimetbaum was killed before liberation, after being caught post-escape. Therefore, there are limited primary source materials to draw upon, in the case of Zimetbaum, her story was first told publicly through the film, The Last Stage, released in 1948, chronicling her life and escape attempt. Her heroism was also publicized by Wieslaw Kielar, Auschwitz, survivor, who included Zimetbaum`s escape attempt in his autobiographical book Anus Mundi: 5 Years in Auschwitz. However, this level of historical recording on a primary source level was rare for other actively heroic women, it was more common for them to be recounted between friends through stories and oral history. As a result, one of the reasons for Anne Frank`s renown and prominence in Holocaust historiography was due to the expansive detail within her diary. If one examined the history of women`s Holocaust experiences, there would be little doubt that Anne Frank`s life story would be pre-eminent. A consequence of her diary`s popularity was that Frank`s personal experience, as a young girl, in hiding, with her family, presented a very specific type of Jewish suffering. It is important to note that although Anne Frank`s story remains invaluable to understanding some of the issues that Jewish women faced in the Holocaust, it was not a framework to which many other Jewish women could relate. Her diary was one of the first to be published from the perspective of a young girl who lived throughout the Holocaust, providing readers with invaluable insight and the ability to learn about this history without having to confront the horrors of the camps or ghettos. It is known that testimonies are often used as a means of establishing solidarity between the writer and reader. Therefore with a young girl's testimony, the tone is often overtly sentimental which rarely reflects the writer's original intention. In fact, the purity of Anne`s diary is exactly what attracted readers and publishers to it. As her diaries, privacy gives an intimacy that makes many feel as if they know her therefore she was considered an accessible source. The worldwide perception of Anne as a beacon of hope is well established, a truth confirmed by her memorable quote, I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

However, one must question why people chose not to focus on the final line of her diary, A voice within me is sobbing... I get cross, then sad... and keep trying to find a way to become what I`d like to be and what I could be if...only there were no other people in the world.

It is this presumption by many readers that the girl in the diary is representative of, not only Anne but numerous other women and their experiences during the Holocaust. However, there were those who knew Anne in the camps who tell a story in stark contrast to the one portrayed in the diary, of someone broken by the genocide, for them, the fate of Anne Frank represents not a traditionally heroic tale of good over evil, but rather the terrible fate of so many concentration camp inmates. Even Anne`s tale which has become renowned for its optimistic message was edited by her father to exclude more controversial topics, as Ephgrave notes, it referenced sexuality and Anne Frank`s body that were edited out of her infamous diary. Therefore, if even this relatively innocent memoir was edited, how were women who had been brutally raped and abused supposed to present their accounts on a wider scale. As boldly stated by survivor Judith Isaacson, there were no frameworks for such violent narratives, the Anne Franks who survived rape don`t write their stories. Overall, this construction of the heroic Jewish woman clearly helped to suppress the narratives of women who had suffered from sexual violence.

The theme of female heroism and courage re-emerges time and again wherein similar accounts are recorded, as evidenced by Sara Zyskind`s account of her teenage years spent in the ghetto, Auschwitz, and then the Mittelstein slave labor camp, Stolen Years. This book was first described by its publisher as, an odyssey of agony that should never be forgotten... an epic of love and courage that the reader will want to remember forever. However, nowhere in her testimony does Zyskind state or imply that she views it as an epic of love and courage. In fact, the testimony contains brutal detail of the rape, abuse, and torture that occurred against both Jewish men and women in the ghettos and camps. It is clear from analyzing sources such as these that the reality of rape and abuse was considered by publishers to be too unvarnished to be sold. Instead, there was a desire that these, feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, and physical torment could be masked by the icons of resistance, heroism, or martyrdom. Therefore, the experiences of women such as ‘Pauline’ who was molested by the male relatives of the people hiding her, were not regarded as either appealing or important by early Holocaust historians. Even the survivors themselves became convinced that their experiences had no place in history, as traditional Holocaust narratives made it difficult to discuss anything considered to be outside the range of accepted accounts as outlined by existing testimony. ‘Pauline’ herself considered this and stated, In respect of what happened, (what we) suffered and saw the humiliation in the ghetto, seeing people jumping out and burned is this (molestation) important?

It is impossible to truly understand the actions taken by those in the Holocaust, however, history has been judgemental toward those who were not deemed heroes, forgetting that heroism is a luxury of hindsight. As Gottlieb states, any Jew who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe showed resistance towards their oppressors, by simply surviving. Therefore, the heroine complex was based upon the assumption that a common Holocaust narrative existed, and was mutually experienced. This ultimately resulted in the creation of one mainstream narrative, where the experiences of women who were neither mothers nor fighters, but manipulated sex for their own and their family`s survival, remained an untold story of the Holocaust.

Through independent research, another common theme I have identified is the frequently mentioned lasting preference by male survivors to view female survivors through a traditionally gendered lens. This is evident in notes written throughout the Holocaust, most notably Emmanuel Ringelblum`s, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto. This compilation of personal diaries, notes, and decrees is an essential source for modern historians providing an understanding of daily life within the Warsaw Ghetto. Beyond that, this source provides an essential first-person account of how Jewish women were perceived and treated by their male counterparts. Ringelblum studied the lives of Jewish women in the Warsaw Ghetto before deportation, specifically asking about their roles as mothers and wives. This work became the focus of much Holocaust gender historiography. It is important to recognize that Ringelblum`s testimonies largely reflected the wider opinion of the time concerning how women should act to be seen as moral, heroic, or noble. It was the result of accounts such as these that the central theme of women, as mothers and wives, merely appendages to the men in their lives, never the main character in the historical narrative arose, that has remained to this day. A central trend in Holocaust history was that greater respect was attributed to women who had maintained traditional gender roles throughout the war. Even in Ringelblum`s testimony, there was a focus on the middle-class woman who had still maintained the role of caring for her husband and family despite difficulties.

Ultimately this one-sided perspective encourages and allows readers to judge those who were unable to uphold their traditional roles, due to starvation, poverty, or even assault. As Waxman argued, what about those who couldn`t resist eating their bread rather than giving it to their husbands, their actions are just as human and not less worthy of praise, but there is this shame of not being able to control their hunger.

This sense of morality and gender is most clearly emphasized in historical accounts and representations of how women behaved within the concentration camp environment. As women were often separated from their families upon entering camps, a post-war judgment emerged, regarding how they should have acted at the point of separation. For example, on arrival at Auschwitz, it was noted that most women clung to their children (and many young girls to their mothers) and were sent to the gas chambers with them. While this was undoubtedly a brave decision that some women made, there were other women who followed orders and entered the camps alone. While these were patently different decisions leading to different outcomes, there is not one that we can judge as being more courageous than the other, as many of these women did not know what awaited them, nor their separated family members. However, this did not deter historians from passing judgment on the actions of these women. In fact, many historians continued to view women specifically in terms of how they maintained their positions as mothers and wives. This desire to maintain a sense of normality throughout the genocide through imposing gender roles is reflected in the importance placed on female friendship and purity. This trope of focusing on female friendships in camps was based upon a presumption of bonding and care. This has been significantly problematic as these conversations about sisterhood have managed to create a glorification of the motif of womanly strength in the face of persecution. The popularity of objects in Holocaust museums that show female friendships highlights this trend. For example, Gerda Gerstl`s friendship ring made from silver spoons in the Riga ghetto, by her best friend Issi Lurie survived the war, whereas both girls perished (see Fig .1).

The ring is popular as it acts as a reminder to viewers of the innocence of a young girl`s friendship and can be seen as an accessible source with which to understand the genocide. This bias is further acknowledged in Marlene Heinemann`s 1986 study on women which states that egocentric people are never shown as the main protagonists in Holocaust memoirs, but they often exist in secondary roles to highlight even more the humanity of the main character.

A desire to impose traditionally heroic values on women in concentration camps has created a tiered system reflecting the level of respect afforded to different survivors. Therefore, when one considers how survivors of sexual assault ranked, it becomes clear why so many victims believed they didn`t have an available platform upon which to share their stories. As H¡jkov¡ has explored in her works, the postwar public believed women had engaged in illicit activities to survive the war. This narrative became a staple of the public perception of women in the camps. In the eyes of the public, female survival was sexually purchased. When considering the thesis of why and how the early historiography of the Holocaust suppressed the plight of women who suffered from sexual violence, it becomes clear that pre-determined expectations placed on women`s actions specifically within their capacity as mothers and wives helped to create a singular narrative, whilst excluding those whose experiences deviated and wanted to speak of their sexual assaults.

In summary, this analysis reveals that the complex of the heroic woman created resounding effects on the perception of women throughout the Holocaust. Historical writings were based on the concept that women needed to maintain traditional gender roles to be perceived as heroic. Therefore, in an examination of why sexual assault has been excluded from mainstream historiography, it can be clearly linked to the desire to promote the heroic Jewish woman. The women who suffered as a result of sexual assault felt themselves sidelined by both historians and historiography, finding no platform for sharing their experiences, a reality that ultimately silenced voices with alternate accounts to the preferred and promoted one. The emphasis on female friendships by recent historians was another means by which to enforce the idea of women as subsidiaries, friends, mothers, and wives, not individuals worthy of their own voice. Overall, this essay has provided insight into how women were viewed in Holocaust historiography and how the homogenous account of ‘heroic women’ came to be.