A Voice for the Divergent: Abortion and Infanticide as survival strategies for Jewish medics and mothers in the Nazi Concentration Camps
A dissertation submitted by ID: 1745186 as part of the requirements for MA Contemporary History
September 2018
Word Length: 14678 (without footnotes)
22080 (with footnotes and bibliography)
Contents
Chapter Page
Introduction: Testing the boundaries of gender historiography in the Holocaust p.3
Chapter 1: Policy and Power: Gendercide and the Creation of Docile Bodies p.12
Chapter 2: Challenging Narratives of the Heroic Mother p.19
Chapter 3: Facilitation of Abortion and Infanticide by Mothers and Medics p.25
Chapter 4: Self, Survival and Resistance p.32
Chapter 5: Discussion – The Case for the Study of the Divergent p.44
Primary Source and Archive References p.52
Bibliography p.53
2 Introduction- Testing the Boundaries of Gender Historiography of the Holocaust
“Everything we know about war we know with a man’s voice…women are silent”1
The Limitations of a Paradigm Shift
Female experiences of war are marginalised in favour of an androcentric portrayal of the past.2 Such a homogeneous approach to conflict was identified in the field of Holocaust research by Yaffa Elliach in the 1970s, recognising the dominance of male-centred accounts of Jewish concentration camps prisoners.3 Joan Ringelheim, integral to the naissance of the approach, for example, noted the limited representation of women in Holocaust museum exhibitions and memorials, acknowledging the absence of female specific burdens, including pregnancy and motherhood.4 Yet it wasn’t until the “Women Surviving the Holocaust" conference (1983) organised by Esther Katz and Ringelheim that there was a distinctive move towards gender historiography in Holocaust studies.5
There were however epistemological challenges to this paradigm shift. For example, Gisella Bock believed racism prevailed over sexism in Nazi Germany,6 with Ruth Bondy’s exclamation that Zyklon-B didn’t discriminate between men and women supporting this conjecture.7 Gabriel Schoenfeld’s more abrasive judgement that gender history is “witless and malicious theorising”, with feminist ideology detracting from the persecution of the Jews conceptualises this opposition.8 Yet, I support Dan Stone’s argument that by focusing solely on race in historical analysis of the Holocaust
1 S Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War (St Ives, 2017), p.xiii. P. J. Corfield, History and the Challenge of Gender, Rethinking History, 1;3 (1997), pp.241-258, p.242. 2 Ibid, p.xii-xiv; C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (London, 1993), p.6. 3 B. Gurewitsch (ed.), Mothers, Sisters and Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust, (Alabama, 1998), p.xi. 4 See for example: J. Ringelheim, The Split Between Gender and the Holocaust in D. Ofer and L.J. Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust (New York, 1998), pp.340-350. For a summary of the importance of the work of Ringelheim and her role as Director of Oral History as United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, see N. Gutherie and Ina Navazelskis, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum International Database of Oral History Testimonies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://ehri-project.eu/international-database-oral-history (Accessed: 30 August 2018). 5 E. Katz and J. Ringelheim (ed.), Proceedings of the Conference: Women Surviving the Holocaust (New York, 1983) 6 G. Bock, Ordinary Women in Nazi Germany: Perpetrators, Victims, Followers and Bystanders in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, pp.85-101, p.95. 7 R. Bondy, Women in Theresienstadt and the family camp in Auschwitz in, D Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, pp.310-326, p.310. 8 E.R. Baer and M. Goldenberg (eds.) Experience and Expressions of women of the Nazis and the Holocaust (Detroit, 2003), pp.1-3.
3 we are in danger of the ‘Nazification of the Nazis’, with race the central trait of any historiography limiting the scope of our knowledge.9
Gender was central to the concentration camp experience for women. As a consequence of the Nazi ideology of Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene) Jewish reproduction was oppressed to fulfil the objective of the purification of the German race.10 The interlinking of race and gender made life riskier for women, exemplified by survivor Sara Nomberg-Przytyk: “here in Auschwitz the German thugs murdered women and children first”,11 with women who were pregnant or had young children doomed to be sent ‘left’ at selection to their immediate murder.12 However, although a move to a more individualistic modus operandi occurred,13 research by first generation gender scholars such as Sybil Milton and Ringelheim focused on portraying women in Nazi concentration camps as altruistic, nurturing caregivers who found solace in the development of matrilineal relationships.14 In other words, women were represented as exhibiting expected gendered behaviours.15 Tydor-Baumel noted how Holocaust commemoration portrays women as mothers, virgins and warriors,16 and the same semiotics are attached to emotive issues such as abortion and infanticide facilitated by the women in the camps; “for mothers, infants and children’s needs came first”, with the conclusion that death reduced long-term suffering for the child.17 Survivor Charlotte Delbo labels this collective imagery of the selfless mother as ‘common memory’, the assumed reality portrayed in prevalent iconology. The contrasting ‘deep memory’ refers to realities of the camps that have been hidden due to their incomprehensible nature, especially issues relating to sex and reproduction.18
9 D. Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford, 2010), p.10. 10 Triump des Willens (L. Riefenstahl, 1934); A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (37th edition) (Mumbai, 2007), p.125. 11 S. Nomberg-Przytyk, Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land (North Carolina, 1985), pp.79-80. 12 A Grunwald-Spier, Women’s Experiences in the Holocaust in Their Own Words (Stroud, 2018), p.14. 13 R. Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, (London, 2007), p.2. 14 J. Ringelheim, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, Signs, 10;4 (Summer 1985), pp.741-761, p.745; S. Milton, Women and the Holocaust, in R. Bridenthal, A. Grossman and M. Kaplan (eds.), When Biology Became Destiny (New York, 21984), pp.297-333. 15 V. Burr, Social Constructionism (2nd Edition), (London, 2003), pp.2-8. 16 J. Tudor-Baumel, Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust (London, 2017), p.214; R. Lentin, Expected to Live: Women Shoah Survivors Testimonials in Silence, Women’s Studies International Forum, 23;6 (2000), pp.689-700, p.691 17 M. Goldenberg, Female Voices in Holocaust Literary Memoirs, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 16;4, (1998, pp. 75-89, p.87. 18 C. Delbo, La Memoire et les jours (Paris,1985), p.11.
4 There has been some consideration of the latter in research by more contemporary scholars, such as Zoe Waxman’s research on the sexual humiliation of women by the SS.19 Yet, despite Waxman’s exclamation that a domestic focus on the Holocaust hides the diversity of experience,20 she returns in later publications to the importance of matrilineal structures as coping strategies.21 Her recent reappraisal of the oral histories in Gurewitsch’s ‘Mothers, Sisters and Resisters’ also exemplifies a commitment to exploring gendered roles in Holocaust experiences.22 What this illustrates is that a gap in gender historiography exists, with the limited study of what Delbo would label deep memory experiences.23
There are legitimate reasons for gender historiography remaining focused on common memory. No singular document exists to accurately quantify the number of victims of the Holocaust,24 although sources indicate that more women than men were murdered in the concentration camps, with an estimated 60:40 ratio.25 Therefore there are less female survivors to testify. The limitation of the scope of female discourse is enhanced by the reluctance of some survivors to talk about more emotive aspects of camp life, especially behaviour that contravene expectations relating to sex and motherhood such as abortion and infanticide.26 Such behaviour is common for the oppressed during genocide, but remain understudied in Holocaust studies.27 Some historians, such as Hertzog, do consider atypical mother/child dynamics in the camps beyond gender norms, but there is no specific focus on abortion or infanticide.28 Janet Jacobs comments that evasion of study of such issues is due to the concern for academic voyeurism; by making the private suffering of women public there is a fear of violating their memory.29
19 Z. Waxman, Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History (Oxford, 2017) p.91. 20 Z. Waxman, Untold Testimony, Untold Stories: The representation of women’s Holocaust experiences, Women’s History Review, 12;4 (2003), pp.661-77. 21 Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.93. 22 Z. Waxman, Motherhood, Sisters and Resisters: Motherhood and the Holocaust Twenty Years On, paper presented at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide on March 22nd 2018, https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mothers-sisters-resisters-motherhood-and-the-holocaust-twenty-years-on- tickets-41143332816# (Accessed: 24 May 2018). 23 Delbo, La Memoire et les jours, p.11. 24 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Documenting the Number of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008193 (Accessed: 27 May 2018). 25 B. Chalmers, Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices Under Nazi Rule (Guildford, 2004), p.6; J. Jacobs, Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory (London, 2010), p.44. 26 K. Hart-Moxon, Return to Auschwitz (Thirsk, 1981), p.2. 27 E. Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood and the Holocaust, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, 20;1 (2016), pp.16- 35, p.26. 28 Ibid., 29 Jacobs, Memorializing the Holocaust, pp.20-21.
5 I assert that there needs to be a conscious appreciation that historians are speaking for and representing the dead and not violating their memories. This will ensure that their experiences in a context that forced them to make what Langer called ‘choiceless choices’ are heard and validated.30 Censorship of realities that don’t fit the common memory may make the ‘truth’ more digestible for the reader, but by maintaining foci on nurturance we continue to marginalise female experience which diverged from normalcy.31 Stone’s analogy of ‘selective speech’ and the decisions by historians to present a version of the Holocaust at a specific point in time supports my conjecture to move away from trying to fit all Holocaust experiences into one collective narrative.32 The silencing of realities that don’t fulfil gender expectations implies a lack of importance of the experiences of these women, and exposes the need to focus on the silent divergent to ascertain the full gendered reality of life as a Jewish woman under the Third Reich.33
Challenging the Common Memory to Expose the Voices of the Divergent
The objective of the thesis is to challenge universal explanations of female experiences of the Holocaust and explore behaviour that diverged from the common memory of women as selfless caregivers. This is achieved through the study of the facilitation of infanticide and abortion by women in the camps. It is considered that, for some women, these actions may not have been acts to reduce further suffering to the child but were actions that increased their chance of survival. The importance of focus on such specific female experiences resides in my philosophy that without the study of such emotive subjects and by labelling behaviour of prisoners as either ‘male’ or ‘female’, we continue to facilitate a reductionist depiction of lived reality under Nazi rule. From this perspective and due to its ideology being rooted in challenging truth, the research is grounded in the principles of postmodernism.34 This is due to my belief that there is a need, to use Derrida’s discourse, to deconstruct assumed realities of the Holocaust and expose multiple truth. A focus on exposing various truths is important for the validation of the experiences of the silent divergent, encompassing Lyotard’s stance on distrusting grand nomothetic narratives.35
30 L. Langer, Gendered Suffering? Women in the Holocaust Testimonies in D. Ofer and L. J Weitzman (eds.), Women in Holocaust, (London, 1988), pp.351-363 31 E. Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.23-24. 32 Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, p.3. 33 P. Hayes, Why? Explaining the Holocaust, (New York, 2017). 34 N. Royle, Jacques Derrida (London, 2003), pp.15-16; M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: 1 (London 1998), pp.139-40; M. Foucault, Essential Works of Michel Foucault: Vol.3 1954-1984 (London, 2000), p.xii; M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collége of France 1978-1979 (London, 2010). 35 J-F Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984), p. xxiv.
6
The Women Behind the Discourse
The published testimonies of medics and mothers provide qualitative primary sources to investigate abortion and infanticide as survival strategies. The decision to use these two groups emerged through the research progress after initial focus on medics as facilitators of abortion and infanticide drew attention to how their role in the camp affected their experiences in a different way to women who themselves were pregnant. This allows for analysis of how multiple factors influenced the use of abortion and infanticide. The published written testimonies of the following women are used:
Gisella Perl
Figure 1: Photography of Gisella Perl
Photograph of Perl at Auschwitz-Birkenau used on the cover of her published memoir I was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York, 1948).
Gisella Perl (b.10 December 1907 – d.16 October 1988) was a Romanian Jew and trained gynaecologist. She was kidnapped by the gestapo along with her parents and husband in 1944. She never saw them again. She arrived in Auschwitz in March 1944 and was tattooed with the prisoner number A25404 and assigned the role of prison medic. After surviving a death march to Bergen-Belsen and eventual liberation by the British Forces, Perl delivered the first baby born free from Nazi rule free. After the end of the Second World War and recuperation in a convent in France, Perl emigrated to the United States in March 1947. She worked as a medic a Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and became a specialist in infertility. She died in 1988, leaving behind a daughter, Gabriella who had been hidden during the war.36
36 G. Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York, 1948). R. Krell., Confronting Despair: The Holocaust Survivors Struggle with Ordinary Life and Ordinary Death, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 157;6 (1997), pp.741-742, p.742.
7 Olga Lengyel
Figure 2: Photograph of Olga Lengyel
Photograph from Olga Lengyel Institute, https://www.toli.us/about/olga- lengyel/ (accessed: 8 September 2018).
Olga Lengyel was born in Hungary on 10 December 1907 and died in New York in 2001. She was a trained physician’s assistant. In March 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her parents, husband and two sons; only Olga survived. She arrived at the same time as Perl; this is indicted by her assigned prisoner number (A25405). She was assigned to the infirmary and also worked with the resistance in the camp. Following liberation, she remarried and after a short time in Havana moved to New York. Here she founded the Memorial Library and Art Collection of the Second World War at the University of New York State. Her work continues through the Olga Lengyel Institute.37
Lucie Adelsberger
Figure 3: Photograph of Lucie Adelsberger
Photograph from P. Saenger, Jewish Paediatricians in Nazi Germany: Victims of Persecution, IMAJ, 8 (2008), pp.301-305.
Photograph Lucie Adelsberger (b.12 April 1895 – d.2 November 1971) was born in Nuremberg, Germany. She trained as a medical physician, practicing in Berlin. She also conducted research at the Robert Koch Foundation. She was a prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943 where she was assigned to the infirmary. She also spent time in Ravensbrück and Neustadt. After liberation in May 1945 she emigrated to New York where she established herself as an immunologist, working at the Montefiore Hospital, and remained in the United States for the rest of her life.38
37 The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust studies and Human Rights, Profile of Olga Lengyel, https://www.toli.us/about/olga-lengyel/ (Accessed: 8 September 2018); Centre for Jewish History, Lucie Adelsberger Collection 1947-1994, Record AR10089, http://digital.cjh.org/R/TIRTPDY3BI7PL8KK3PYX61VFRHYRPHJP4MJPKL75KER45D3ECJ-00052?func=dbin-jump- full&object_id=1569502&local_base=GEN01&pds_handle=GUEST (Accessed: 1 September 2018). O. Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz (Chicago, 1947). 38 L. Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story (Suffolk, 1997); P. Saenger, Jewish Paediatricians in Nazi Germany: Victims of Persecution, IMAJ, 8 (2008), pp.301-305.
8 Ruth (Huppert) Elias
Figure 4: Photography of Ruth (Huppert) Elias
Photograph courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.- https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id- card/ruth-huppert-elias (Accessed: 8 September 2018)
Ruth Elias was born in the Czechoslovakia on 6 October 1922. She lived with
her sister Edith and her grandparents after her parents divorced. In 1939, the girls were sent to live with their Aunt in Vyskov, but in 1942 was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto where she married and fell pregnant. She arrived pregnant at Auschwitz later that year, remaining until the camp was liberated US forces. After time in Prague, where she remarried Kurt Elias, the family emigrated to Israel where she lived until her death in October 2008. She had two sons with Kurt; Rafi and Gabi.39
A thematic analysis of memoirs identified discourse and memories that fulfils the common memory of the caring mother, as well as evidence that supports the hypothesis that for some women, abortion and infanticide were used as survival strategies. There are of course challenges in the use of survivor testimonies as primary sources, such as self-censorship.40 The research took heed of Tydor- Baumel’s observation that testimonies written immediately post-liberation were less censored and less likely to be influenced by collective responses to the Holocaust or affected by memory decay;41 Perl and Lengyel’s were published within three years of liberation, and Adelsberger in the mid-1950s. The memoirs therefore should provide a clear reflection of life in the camps. As Peter Davies argues, testimony should be central to developing knowledge of the Holocaust and should not be deemed as second-rate sources,42 and I add that it is the subjective nature of testimonies that aids in the rejection of homogeneous theories. Person-centred sources such as the memoirs of Perl et al convey warmth and vividness that adds to the human element to history, in turn leading to a more idiographic
39 R. Elias, Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel (New York, 1998). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Record 60.5003, Oral Testimony of Ruth Elias, 1979, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1003912 (Accessed: 1 September 2018). USHMM Record 2004.621.1 Ruth and Kurt Elias correspondence papers, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn515224#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-2193%2C- 267%2C7831%2C5322 (Accessed: 8 September 2018). 40 See for example, S. Banwell, Rassenschande, Genocide and the Reproductive Jewish Body: Examining the use of rape and sexualised violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 15;2 (2016), pp.208-227, p.210. 41 Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, p.342. 42 P. Davies, Testimony and Translation, Translation and Literature, 23 (2014), pp.170-84, p.170.
9 perspective.43 Every memory is true to the individual and the use of qualitative sources can help expose the multiple truths of life for women in the Nazi concentration camps. However, to ensure academic rigour, the memoirs are validated by other sources, including correspondence between Nazi officials, legislation documentation, UN minutes and court records from post-war trials of Nazi officials and other eye-witness testimonies.
Summary
Using testimonies and other primary sources, the thesis demonstrates the role of infanticide and abortion in survival for some women, and the multiple aspects of self that impacted upon the choiceless choices made in the concentration camps of the Third Reich.
Chapter one explores the influence of Nazi policies on women. Foucault’s postmodern theories of biopolitics and docile bodies are used to exemplify the impact of legislation and laws on women via deindividuation and loss of agency. However, in the context of the camps, agency was not an acquisition of independence or freedom in the manner that modernity may define it; actions were mediated by the oppressive geo-political boundaries women existed in. Consequently, herewith agency is referred to as the acquisition of limited personal control in a restricted environment.
In chapter two, research centres on how biopolitics fed the narrative of care in the camps that represents the common memory of female experience. Conversely, evidence is presented to challenge the narrative of the heroic mother. This is explored in chapter three specifically through the facilitation of abortion and infanticide by women.
Chapter four investigates why some women facilitated abortions and infanticide and how this may have increased their chance of survival. Multiple variables are discussed, including physical survival, acquisition of agency and a sense of self that was lost through the process of deindividuation. The impact of the role of the women as medic or mother is also considered, alongside how abortion and infanticide were expressed by some as acts of resistance.
43 For a well-written text that demonstrates the importance of testimony and female discourse in developing knowledge in history, I recommend S. Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War (St Ives, 2017). Although the book is centred on Soviet women during the Second World War, the insight provided adds to the assertion that the rejection of universal approaches can be furthered using first-hand accounts of war time experiences.
10 Chapter five discusses how the thesis confirms that by focusing on common memories entrenched in gendered expectations, gender historiography is failing to encapsulate the breadth of Holocaust experiences for women. Grounding the conclusion in postmodern epistemology, it is suggested that there is a need to challenge truth about the collective experiences of the Holocaust, moving research foci from the current common memory trajectory of gender history to enable researchers to embrace less prevalent experiences that challenge heuristics of Jewish women in the camps.
11 Chapter 1: Policy and Power: Gendercide and the Creation of Docile Bodies
This chapter will briefly outline the ideology and legislation of the Third Reich that led to the intentional attack on the reproduction potential of Jewish women. These aspects of the Nazi regime dictated the gender-specific experience of women in the concentration camps and discussion is embedded in postmodern theory of how biopolitics led to the creation of docile bodies. Such academic consideration is paramount to enable later discussion on how women responded to the assertion power over their bodies.
The Double Bind of Gender and Race
Because of the Nazi Rassenhygiene agenda, race and gender were inseparable and it is this that created the double-bind for women; 44 due to them being Jewish and female, they were the primary focus for fortpflanzungshygiene (procreation hygiene).45 Hitler advocated selective procreation, emphasising how reproduction between two different ‘breeds’ would lead to inferiority with the principles of eugenics applied to reach the desired political ends: “it is our will that this [‘Aryan’] state shall endure for a thousand years”.46 Such rhetoric, alongside legislation including the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring’ (1933)47 and the Nuremberg Race Law ‘For the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’ (1934)48 is indicative of this intentionalist approach of the Nazi regime.49 For example, article 1(i) of the cited Nuremberg law identifies the need for surgical sterilisation for inheritable diseases;50 if we consider anti-Semitic rhetoric such as
44 H. Marcuse, Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Vol 1 (New York, 1998) in D. Herzog, Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 11;1 and 2 (2002), pp.3-21, p.4. 45 G. Bock, Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany, p.401. 46 Triump des Willens (L. Riefenstahl, 1934); Hitler, Mein Kampf, p.125. 47 G. Bock, Nazi Sterilization and Reproductive Policies, in D. Kuntz (ed.), Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (Washington, 2008), pp.61-87, p.82. 48 Yad Vashem, Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Document no. 30, Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor: 15 September 1934. Fein. H, Genocide and Gender: The uses of woman and group destiny, Journal of Genocidal Research, 1;1 (1999), pp.43-63, p.52. 49 M. Pascoe, Intentionalism and Functionalism: Explaining the Holocaust, http://www.shshistory.com/extra%20pages/AAAintentionalisim%20and%20functionalism%20eplain%20the%2 0holocaust.pdf (Accessed: 16 May 2018). Triump des Willens (L. Riefenstahl, 1934). 50 Yad Vashem, Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Document no. 30, Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, 15 September 1934.
12 Himmler’s Posen speeches where he describes Jewish people as “bacillus”, the Jewry were viewed as one such disease that the Reich wanted to quash.51 Subsequently, women became political subjects whose biology was regulated through reproductive legislation to eradicate the ‘Jewish problem’.52 For Jewish women this meant living in the body of the condemned.53 They may have been deemed the “stupid inferior”,54 but the Nazis were threatened by the role women could play in undermining their political objectives.55 Consequently, the greatest threat to Jewish women was pregnancy or motherhood.56
Deindividuation and Dehumanisation
Women were subjugated through dehumanisation that systematically shattered their identity. Removal of hair, being paraded naked in front of the guards, delousing and tattoos to replace names were all markers of the loss of agency and indicative of how women’s bodies were constrained by the state.57 Assault on the female body included examinations in “…the Nazi way…oral, anal and vaginal”,58 and such humiliating practices were affirmed at the Nuremberg Trials; for example SS guard Franz Hössler recalled how women were paraded naked in front of camp doctors,59 an event recollected by Adelsberger.60 Such controlling practices led to the creation of a monolithic mass where idiosyncrasies were overtly destroyed,61 with Lengyel articulating that such routines led to the loss of aspects of femininity;62 individuals became “a mere number”63 forced to be subservient through physical and sexual humiliation.64 Such discussion highlights the importance of rejecting non-gendered
51 National Archives, Audio Visual Records, Item 242-189, 242-224, Heinrich Himmler Speech at Posen, October 1943. 52 S. L. Bartky, Foucault, Femininity and the Modernisation of Patriarchal Power, in R. Weitz (ed.), The Politics of Women’s Bodies, Sexuality, Appearance and Behaviour (Oxford, 1998), p.28; R.M Schweitzer, Gendered Testimonies of the Holocaust: Writing Life (London, 2016), p.75. 53 A. King, ‘The Prisoner of Gender: Foucault and the Disciplining of the Female Body’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5.2 (2013), pp.29–39, p.30. 54 S. Helm, If this is a Woman – Inside Ravensbrück: Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (St Ives, 2015), p.7. 55 National Archives, Audio Visual Records, Item 242-189, 242-224, Heinrich Himmler Speech at Posen, October 1943. 56 For a concise summary of the development of eugenics and the application of the principles in Nazi Germany, see J. Hunt, Perfecting Humankind: A Comparison of Progressive and Nazi Views on Eugenics, Sterilisation and Abortion, The Linacre Quarterly, 66;1 (1999), pp.29-41. 57 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.16; Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.28. 58 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.28; Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp.130-131. 59 The National Archives, Kew, Ref: FO 1060/95. Nuremberg Trials transcriptions, 1945-1947. 60 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.86. 61 Ibid., p.28; Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz p.46-47. 62 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.30. 63 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.30. 64 Ibid., p.56.
13 explanations of the Holocaust, as although men were subjected to sexual abuse such as forced masturbation,65 attacks on women were more sustained. 66 For example, a woman was murdered at Treblinka for signs of menstrual blood on her clothes.67 Systematic attacks on menstruation as a controlling mechanism was suspected through the addition to food of what Perl labelled “a mysterious chemical powder” which was thought to be bromide, 68 leading to widespread amenorrhea.69 Although some women were fearful of cessation of menstruation due to the long-term effect on fertility,70 others expressed gratitude as amenorrhea helped them avoid the pain, embarrassment and potentially fatal consequences of menstruation.71 Such dichotomies in responses are evidential of the non-universal reactions to life in the camps.
But it was pregnancy as the ultimate sign of fertility that presented the most poignant problem, especially following compulsory abortion orders issued from July 1943.72 It is also pregnancy that demonstrates the extent of Nazi control over female reproduction and the effect of this on female behaviour. Women testify to witnessing and being subjected to forced abortions,73 or women like Ruth Elias who attempted to obtain an abortion before their pregnancy was discovered.74 The UN war trial records corroborate these accounts, with charges of enforcement of abortions against SS guards.75 If gestation continued, mothers were shackled during labour,76 had their unborn baby cut from their uterus,77 or were killed. For instance, Auschwitz camp physician Josef Mengele told two- hundred-and-ninety-two pregnant women they would be liberated, only to throw them alive into the crematorium.78 Infanticide also occurred, with babies burnt alive, crushed against trees,79 or starved to death.80
65 See for example Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.190-191. 66 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.100. 67 C. Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (London, 2012), p.406. 68 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, pp.98-99. 69 KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau, HN104328, Survivor testimony interview notes of Miriam Rosenthal, p.4. 70 K. Mosaker, The experience of women and girls at Auschwitz, Crescat Scientia (2016), pp.1-14, p.7. 71 Ibid., 72 For a detailed overview of abortion laws in Nazi Germany see P. Henry; D. Jochen Fleischhacker and C.Hohn, Abortion and Eugenics in Nazi Germany, Population and Development Review, 14;1 (1988), pp. 81-112. Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.113. 73 KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau, HN104328, Survivor testimony interview notes of Miriam Rosenthal, p.11; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101. 74 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.115. 75 The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: Volume XIII (London, 1949), p.19. 76 S. Helm, If This Is Woman, pp.187-188. 77 E. Eger, The Choice, (London, 2017) p.87. 78 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.84. 79 I. Ehrenburg and V. Grossman, The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry (London, 2001), p.16. 80 Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp.149-151. S. Helm, If This Is Woman, p. 457;
14
What this illustrates is that through a sustained attack on biology, the female body became a surface where the ideologies of the Nazi dictatorship were inscribed, creating a physical representation of the geo-political context that became the lived reality for Jewish women. 81 The use of controlling legislation and practice is engrained in issues of power and consequently shows how choices for women were constrained, issues that I avow can be examined successfully by adopting theoretical principles of postmodernism.82
Through questioning truth, postmodern advocates the deconstruction of presumed reality for the exposé of new, and I would add hidden, constructs of reality.83 I adopt Delbo’s language to explain the relevance of this postmodern concept to the current thesis: the common memory needs to be challenged so the deep memory can be exposed to construct a more accurate reality of the Holocaust.84 Scholars such as Robert Eaglestone recognise postmodernism as an apposite historiographical approach to study the impact of power relations on Holocaust victims,85 a perspective supported by Stone who articulates that the philosophies of postmodernism are incomprehensible without the Holocaust.86 There is some criticism that application to the Holocaust has not been sustained or specific and the use of postmodern theories to explore female experiences in the Holocaust remains limited.87 Yet their usefulness is evidential, such as in Katy Chartwood’s study of the relationship between power and sexual violence in the camp.88 There has also been utilisation of Foucauldian principles in the exploration of the objectification of women through regulatory practices, most notably in the syncretic work of Judith Butler.89
Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.127. 81 H.F Haber, Foucault Pumped: Body Politics and the Muscled Woman in S. J. Hekman (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault (Pennsylvania, 1996), p.138. 82 Bartky, Foucault, Femininity and the Modernisation of Patriarchal Power, in Weitz, The Politics of Women’s Bodies, p.28. M. Deveaux, Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault, Feminist Studies, 20;2 (Summer, 1994), pp.223-247, p.223. 83 Royle, Jacques Derrida, pp.15-16. 84 Delbo, La Memoire et les jours, p.11. 85 Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, p.2. See also: C. R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers and German Killers (Cambridge, 2002), p.32; C. Ratliff, Postmodernism in E. Trauth, The Encyclopaedia of Gender and Information Technology (Minnesota, 2006) pp.1018-1019, p.1018, http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/12865/ (Accessed: 23 May 2018). 86 Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, p.10. 87 M. Milchman and A. Rosenberg, Michel Foucault and the genealogy of the Holocaust, The European Legacy, 2;4, (2008), pp.696-699, p.697. 88 K. Chartwood, (Re)-Interpreting Stories of Sexual Violence: The Multiple Testimonies of Lucille Eichengreen in E. Hertzog (ed.) Life, Death and Sacrifice: Women and Family in the Holocaust, (Jerusalem, 2008), pp.161- 179, p.161. 89 J. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (Oxon, 1993), p.xiii; See also J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity (London, 1990).
15
I however postulate that it is the Foucauldian principles of biopolitics that are the most appropriate postmodern theory to explore how women were specifically targeted in the camps through the manner in which Nazi patriarchal dominance seized power over female reproduction,90 an assertion supported by Stone who argues that Nazism is the ultimate expression of medical biopolitics.91
Biopolitics and the Creation of Docile Bodies
Biopolitics, where life and the growth of a population is the concern of the state, was fundamental to the Nazi drive for the growth of the ‘Aryan’ race through gendercoercive policies.92 Policies in paradox to this were implemented to control the Jewish people, established through the use of disciplinary technology to restrict Jewish reproduction as well as the aforementioned reproduction legislation.93 This is evidential in correspondence relating to the Endloesung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question), such as communication after the Wansee conference between SA-Gruppenführer Hermann Goering and SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich which refers directly to the integral nature of sterilisation in achieving their genocidal goals.94
But it is German gynaecologist Carl Clauberg’s sterilisation experiments at Auschwitz which were authorised from July 1942 that are perhaps most indicative of motives beyond fortpflanzungshygiene, and exposes sterilising as a means of the assertion of power to dehumanise and control women.95 Injection with hormones directly into the uterus,96 removal of the uterus and ovaries and liquid injected into the genitals were all utilised to find the most effective means of mass
A. Allen, Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 10;2, (2002) pp.131-149, p.134. 90 Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, p.314; Schweitzer, Gendered Testimonies of the Holocaust: Writing Life, p.76. 91 Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, p.287. 92 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality:1, pp.139-40; M. Foucault, Essential Works of Michel Foucault, p.xii; M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, pp.21-22;78. 93 P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (London, 1991), p.17. 94 United States National Archives, Correspondence from Goring to Heydrich regarding the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, Accessed from: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/Wannsee/wannsee/Goring%20Authorization%20Lette r.jpg (Accessed: 12 July 2018). See also H. Fein, Genocide and Gender: The uses of woman and group destiny, Journal of Genocidal Research, 1;1 (1999), pp.43-63. 95 R. G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (London, 2006), p.211. 96 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.190; Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, p.211.
16 sterilisation.97 Preference for the use of x-rays is evidenced in correspondence between SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack to SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler98 and in the UN Law Trials of Brack,99 despite the pain and burns the technique caused.100 It wasn’t enough to destroy reproductive potential, but it was done in the most painful way. Pain creates fear and in turn renders the individual powerless, creating what Foucault labelled ‘docile bodies’.101
The female body was a commodity, a surface on which Nazism reinforced its power;102 starting with tattoo branding as a permanent, deindividuating mark of submissiveness and fully exposed in the way in which reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and infanticide became weapons of mass destruction.103 The biopolitics underpinning Nazi ideology to secure the success of the ‘Aryan’ race led to the Jewish women forcibly acquiring a ‘docile body’, a body that was used, transformed and improved. 104 This is evidential in the use of women for sexual gratification by the SS soldiers through rape,105 transformed through deindividuating practices of hair removal, tattooing and destruction of fertility, and for the Nazis, Jewish bodies were improved by the destruction of their reproductive capabilities.106 To be docile is to be submissive and compliant, and women were subjugated by the controlling, painful practices employed to destroy their fertility. Consent and agency were obsolete, with permission and power firmly in the jurisdiction of the Nazis. Deindividuation was beyond the physical, with all unique traits being destroyed to create powerless, faceless victims.107
97 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.191-192. 98 Correspondence between Viktor Brack to Himmler, June 23rd 1942, in Arad., Y., Hutman and A. Margaloit (eds.) Documents of the Holocaust, (Yad-Vashem,1981), p.272, http://fcit.usf.edu/holocuast/resource/document/DocSteri.htm (Accessed: 13 July 2018). 99 The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: Volume XIII (London, 1949), p.54. 100 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.192. 101 Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, p.17; Allen, Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault, p.131. 102 Haber, Foucault Pumped, in Hekman (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, p.138. 103 T. Chelcuche, Doctors, pregnancy and childbirth and abortion during the Third Reich, IMAJ, 9, March 2007, pp.202-206, p.202. 104 Bartky, Foucault, Femininity and the Modernisation of Patriarchal Power, in Weitz, The Politics of Women’s Bodies, p.28. 105 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, pp.2;42; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.28. 106 Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, p.17; Allen, Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault, p.131. 107 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.28; Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.46-47.
17 Chapter Summary
A sustained attack on female reproduction led to the creation of docile bodies. Focus herewith moves to how this impacted the experiences of women in the camps when presented with challenges created by their reproductive capability, specifically their reaction to pregnancy and motherhood. I am mindful of the recurrent theme of androcentrism and patriarchal bias in critiques of the feminist use of Foucault’s theories and how this may lead to questioning of the use of postmodernism in developing knowledge of female prisoners.108 Yet I reemphasise how issues of power and deconstruction of truth at the root of postmodernism provides a solid foundation to discuss the impact of biopolitics on women, as such constructs are relevant to all genders, albeit in different ways. 109 Consequently, it is the application of postmodern constructs that reveals the power play and dehumanisation that the attack on the female form.110 From this point and to retain a postmodern position, sources explore whether there is evidence to deconstruct the collective narrative of gender historiography which focuses on women exhibiting ethics of care in relation to pregnancy and motherhood in the camps.111
108 S. J Hekman, Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, p.1; Sandra Lee Barkty, ‘Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power’, in R. Weitz (ed), The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Apperance and Behaviour (Oxford, 1998). 109 J. Sawicki, Feminism, Foucault and ‘Subjects’ of Power and Freedom, in Hekman, Feminist Interpretations, p.161. 110 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, pp.21-22;78. 111 Royle, Jacques Derrida, pp.15-16.
18 Chapter 2: Challenging Narratives of the Heroic Mother
Gender is a socially constructed set of expectations which informs the implicit and explicit rules of how someone is expected to perform due to their biological sex.112 In this formulated reality the status of a women as child bearer has been made central to the life of females,113 with second- wave feminists recognising how culture assumes that women are nothing of value if they do not become mothers.114 Consequently, the role of a woman has become immersed in the private sphere of the home and for Jewish women, religion is a primary force that adds to this gendered expectations. 115 Judaism promotes traditional and rigid sex role division, with the home and family at the heart of the faith.116 Female qualities of nurturing and servitude are emphasised,117 with women having responsible for the regulation of the household.118 These religious presumptions present in numerous ways; For example, women are meant to follow all negative commandments (mizvots) of the halakhah (Jewish Law) but are exempt from time-based mizvots. This includes exclusion from morning prayer to allow for the completion of family chores and childcare. Barrenness is viewed as a curse,119 and matrilineal descent of Jewishness affirms the importance of the role of the woman and emphasis on niddah, the law of family purity. 120
By considering the impact of culture and discourse in shaping gender identity we can reject essentialist theories such as bio-evolutionary notions of maternal instinct,121 instead considering the multiple cultural webs of meaning which intertwine to create the semantics of ‘woman’ and ‘mother’.122 Such a perspective is aligned with historical doctrines that adopt a psycho-sociological
112 Burr, Social Constructionism, pp.2-8; J. W. Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, The American Historical Review, 91;5 (1986), pp.1053-1075, p.1053; J. Meyerowitz, A History of ‘Gender’, The American Historical Review, 113;5 (2008), pp.1346-1356, p.1347. Corfield, History and the Challenge of Gender,p.244. 113 A. Rich, Of Women Born (London, 1976), p.11. 114 L. Segal, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts of on Contemporary Feminism (London, 1987), p.145. 115 Rich, Of Women Born, p.46. 116 P. Hyman, The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition, in E. Koltun (ed.), The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives (New York, 1976), pp.105 – 113, p.105. 117 Ibid., p.106. 118 M. A. Maplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1999), pp.50 -54. 119 The Holy Bible, Old Testament, Genesis 17:16. 120 Hyman, The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition, in Koltun, The Jewish Woman, p.106. 121 N. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, (California, 1978), p.13; A. Balint, Love for the Mother and Mother-Love, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 30;5 (1949) pp.251-259. S. Hampton, Essential Evolutionary Psychology (London, 2010), pp.96-113. 122 C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 2017), p.11.
19 approach.123 If a biologically reductionist definition of mothering was adopted we would fail to encapsulate the multitude of factors that combine to make a women an agent of society at a specific point in time and context. Anthropological observations legitimise this focus on the centrality of culture and social situations in shaping gender, supporting the rejection of essentialist approaches in Holocaust historiography.124
Social Constructionism in the Camps
To the Nazis, Jewish women were a collective mass who had the potential of destroying the vision of a 1000-year Reich due to their reproductive capabilities, emphasised in the intentionalist legislation and practices of subjugation outlined in the previous chapter.125 This created the double- edged sword of gender and race where “every Jewish child automatically condemned his mother to death”.126 Gendercide is patent in first-hand accounts of the camps which describe children being sent alone directly to their death,127 and women were led ‘left’ at selection with their children straight to the crematorium.128 As discussed, although recognising the importance of moving from a male- centred approach to the Holocaust, gender historiography has continually fed normative prescriptions of women as caring and nurturing in the camps since its conception in the 1970s.129 The question is whether this was the reality for all women.
Gender informed the structural framework and experiences in the camps, driven by the reproductive decrees which created different challenges for women and men.130 Consequently, focus on the adoption of survival strategies of women and development of matrilineal structures adds to our knowledge of how some women formed mutually caring relationships to improve their chances
123 P. Burke, The French Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (Cambridge, 1990). 124 M. Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York, 2003). 125 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.100; Hitler, Mein Kampf, p.125. 126 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story p.xxiv. 127 USHMM, Record: 50.233.0059, Oral Testimony of Katalin Karpati, 9 June 1992; The National Archives, Kew, Ref: FO 1060/95. Nuremberg Trials transcriptions, 1945-1947. 128 Lengyl, Five Chimneys, p.24.; USHMM, Record: 50.462.0061, Oral testimony of Lilly Friedman, Tape 1-1-7, 22 April 1984. 129 See for example: Ringelheim, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, p.745; M. Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender, in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.337; J. Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, pp.329-347; A.B Shostak, Stealth Altruism: Forbidden Care as Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust (New York, 2017), p.178; Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.14. 130 Goldenberg, M and Sapiro, A. H (eds.)., Different Horrors, Same Hell: Gender and the Holocaust (Seattle, 2013), p.12.
20 of surviving in the camps vs. male preference for solitude. 131 This focus is complimentary not only of the culturally prescribed gender norms, but also the traditional view of the nurturing Jewish female.132 Tydor-Baumel for example emphasised the development of quasi-families and lagerschwestern (camp sisters) for survival,133 and Waxman continuing to focus some effort on the benefit of female relationships.134 Gender historiography has however extended this foci on the stereotypical nurturing women to experiences of motherhood during the Holocaust. Female prisoners had responsibility for keeping their child alive,135 and research has fed the common memory that glorifies motherhood;136 when faced with the decision of going to death with their child at selection or abandoning their child for self-survival, language of heroism describes the sacrificing mother.137 Testimonies by women in response to reproductive decrees, such as accounts of abortion and infanticide, are likewise labelled as gestures of love to reduce future suffering of their child.138 Gender stereotypes of women as selfless caregivers is reinforced.139
The expectation of women to protect her offspring manifested when they were faced with the decision to survive alone and abandon their children, or to go with their babies to the gas- chamber. A case in point is Ofer and Weitzman’s documented selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau where only two out of six-hundred women sent their child to the gas chamber alone – the majority of women chose to sacrifice themselves with their child.140 The testimonies of Perl, Lengyel and Adelsberger give insight into this behaviour from the perspective of an observer. For example, Lengyel gives voice to mothers and daughters who didn’t want to be separated so they went to a quick death together,141 and Adelsberger recalls mothers at Auschwitz-Birkenau holding their child’s hands tightly or pushing baby carriages as they traipsed together to the gas chambers.142 Images captured by SS guards authenticate such recollections (see figure 5).
131 Ringelheim, The Unethical and the Unspeakable, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Annual, (Jan 1984) Vol.1, http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394977 (Accessed: 1 May 2018). 132 Ibid., 133 J. Tydor- Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, pp.329-347. 134 Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.2. 135 N. Ephgrave, On Women’s Bodies: Experiences of Dehumanization during the Holocaust, Journal of Womens History, 28.2 (2016), pp.12–32, p.23. 136 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.26; Z. Waxman, Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony and Representation (Oxford, 2008), p.123. 137 L. J Ofer, D and Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust, p.12. 138 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust, p.151. 139 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.26. 140 Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.12. 141 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.88. 142 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.83.
21 Figure 5: A Jewish woman walks towards the gas chambers with three young children and a baby in her arms, after going through the selection process on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Photographer: Bernhardt Walter/Ernst Hofmann Date: May 1944
USHMM Photograph Record Number: 77217
Memoirs of emotive responses by mothers draws attention to these culturally entrenched gendered behaviours. Sodderkommandos Zalman Gradowski testifies that when women were walking naked to their death, they were still “… calming their babies by stroking and kissing them...”143 Ruth Elias adds that she witnessed mothers singing lullabies to sooth their child before their death.144 The observations made by eyewitnesses are corroborated by survivors who experienced the precariousness of life in their role as mother, such as Edith Potok who reveals how she tried to comfort her daughter prior to her being shot.145 Such evidence of tender protection are akin to reassuring children after nightmares and evokes suppositions that some women remained steadfast in their endeavour to shield their babies from the real-life terrors created by the Nazis.
But it is the mental image captured by survivor Charlotte Delbo that epitomises the resilience of mothers; women lying in the snow during the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau, women, “dead with her new-born frozen between her thighs”.146 The reality of women squatting in the snow, birthing in the most treacherous conditions fully encapsulates how some women remained undeterred from mothering until the end.147 It is hard to dispute the common memory of the heroic mother when faced with such emotive memoirs, yet I draw attention to my use of the phrase ‘some women’ in the previous sentence. Just because some women acted in a way reflective of the gendered norm doesn’t mean that we should accept this as the universal reality.
143 Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.81. 144 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.106-107. 145 Testimony of Edith Potok in Orkin, M (ed.),You Tell it to Your Sons (Tel Aviv, 1990), http://www.zchor.org/testimonies/potok.htm (Accessed:22 August 2018). 146 C. Delbo, Auschwitz and After (New Haven, 1995), pp.261-262. 147 Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.81.
22 Maternal behaviour as a female trait is also perceptible in the way female medics acted towards women in their care. Gisella Perl recalls how “I helped young women bring their babies into the world, easing their pains by telling them stories about a peaceful, secure future”.148 Kindness is a theme resonating in many of Perl’s memories, such as the story of Ibiolya, a woman she supported during labour.149 Although this is not the actions of a mother protecting her own child, it denotes characteristics consistent with the Jewish belief in the importance of rachmones (compassion); incidence of wet nursing also accentuates altruistic narratives.150 Compassion by Perl to women in such manners illustrates how kindness, a trait readily associated with femininity was observable in different forms in the camps beyond the mother/child dynamic. 151 Other such compassion was shown through women cleaning each other to protect from infections.152 Such autobiographical accounts justifies to an extent the focus of gender history on care and the importance of matrilineal.153 These characteristics also denote the life of Jewish women prior to the Second World War, with the centrality of their role of homemaker, wife and mother.154 Such descriptions highlight how self-abnegation was principal to some women, with sacrifice of themselves with their child judged as the ultimate display of love: women were the “beacon[s] of light and humanity in an era of darkness.”155
It would be imprudent to deny that testimonies and photographs that reveal women going to the gas chambers stoically with their children do not demonstrate care and compassion. Philanthropy in this manner emphasises the assumed female quality of mothering, and consequently the courage of these women has been interpreted as a representation of the Jewish belief in shekhinah – the female figure of the indwelling presence of God.156 The expectation of the Jewish women being responsible for lessening and absorbing her child’s pain and suffering are also identifiable.157 However, hagiographical interpretations of mothering in the camps presents the danger of masking facets of history; by linking heroism and atrocity we are silencing experiences that diverged from the norm. I
148 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.14. 149 Ibid., p.109-110. 150 KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau, HN104328, Survivor testimony interview notes of Miriam Rosenthal (2008), p.11. 151 W. Staiton-Rogers and R.Staiton-Rogers, The Psychology of Gender and Sexuality (Buckingham, 2001), p.51. 152 M. Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (Abingdon, 2006), p.69. 153 J. Ringelheim, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, p.745; M. Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender, in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.337; J. Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, pp.329-347; Shostak, Stealth Altruism, p.178. 154 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.20. 155 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust, p.123. 156 M. Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, p.60. 157 D. Ofer, Motherhood under Siege in Hertzog, Life Death and Sacrifice, pp.41-68
23 highlight my earlier choice of the phrase ‘some women’ and emphasise the need to be careful with the choice of discourse when analysing experience. By purposefully avoiding language that denotes a collective reality we can begin to develop a more individualistic depiction of the Holocaust. If gender historiography adopts a one-dimensional narrative of women as compassionate, we are, as Horowitz asserted, in danger of domesticating the Holocaust.158
I return to the example by Ofer et al to accentuate my point. Focus of research is typically on the five hundred and ninety-eight women who died with their child.159 But, if mothering is an entrenched construct and all Jewish women are governed by faith and compassion, why did two women walk away? And these two women were not the only ones who challenged semantics of mothering. For example, interviews by Anita Tarsi reveal that some parents chose to abandon their children.160 Although Tarsi’s interviews reveal experiences in Nazi ghettos, they exemplify the need to consider instances where children and their parents did not remain together, providing support for the adoption of more idiographic approaches to female historiography of the Holocaust.161
Chapter Summary
Testimonies speak in polyphonic voices and heroism is not the only discourse. Women reassured their dying children about a future without the Nazi regime in the way that a mother reassures a child that there aren’t any monsters under their beds. The problem was that the monsters in the camps were real and led women to making decisions that challenge the common memory. ‘Maternal fiction’ masks the unspeakable,162 and in conflict to the heroic women, an image which embraces the belief that to die a holy martyr is the truest form of Jewish heroism, is the deep memory reality of abortion and infanticide facilitated by women in the concentration camps of the Third Reich.163
158 S. R. Horowitz, Women in Holocaust Literature: Engendering Trauma Memory, in Ofer and Weizman, Women in the Holocaust, p.370. 159 Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.12. 160 C. Klinger, From a Ghetto Diary (Tel Aviv, 1959), p.56 cited in Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.29. 161 Langer, Gendered Suffering? in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, pp.351-363. 162 M. Raphael, The kiss of the Shekhinah: Narratives of Human and Divine Motherhood in the Holocaust, Temenos, 42;1 (2006) pp.93-110, p.103. 163 Shostak, Stealth Altruism, p.19.
24 Chapter 3: Facilitation of Abortion and Infanticide by Mothers and Medics
As discussed in chapter one, the Nazis regime was threatened by the role that females could play in undermining their objective to cleanse the Fatherland of the Jewry,164 and the reality of the Nazi determination to extinguish the reproductive potential of the Jewry is exposed in the testimonies of the camp medics and mothers. Despite the argument from functionalist scholars of a lack of evidence to support the objective of the Nazis to eradicate the Jews, intentionalist ideology is revealed through the targeting of pregnant women, mothers and their children.165 For instance, Perl recollects a deportation order for new-borns to be thrown alongside their mother directly out of the cattle carts and into the crematorium.166 From such observations, female prisoners were cognisant of this additional risk to women, that they were condemned to death and that they would always be sent left at selection.167 Elias endeavouring to seek an abortion on arrival at Auschwitz provides further evidence that women were aware of the danger posed by motherhood. 168
But absent in the main in gender historiography is the discussion of abortion and infanticide facilitated by female prisoners. Amesberger’s essay ‘Reproduction under the Swastika’ addresses forced abortions in the camps but fails to explain the role of women in the facilitation of their own reproductive control. 169 In the same collection of essays, Ben-Sefer acknowledges that this remains an understudied area of Holocaust research.170 Multiple explanations are evident to elucidate a lack of focus on such issues, as discussed in the introduction. I however postulate that the integral reason for scholars shying away from abortion and infanticide facilitated by women is that they could be interpreted as actions that blur the line between perpetrators and victim.171 Although the motivations of the Nazis were inherently different to those of the oppressed prisoners forced to make constrained choices, the outcomes were the same and creates a grey area that causes discomfort to the reader, with the underlying fear that the innocence of the Jewish victim is betrayed. But life in a langer created
164 For an account of the relationship between perceived female inferiority and the use of patriarchy to assert dominance, see King, The Prisoner of Gender: Foucault and the Disciplining of the Female Body, p.30. 165 Pascoe, Intentionalism and Functionalism, (Accessed: 16 May 2018). 166 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.20; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.85. 167 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.23; p.47. 168 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.115. 169 H. Ambesberger, Reproduction under the Swastika: The Other Side of the Nazi Glorification of Motherhood in S. M. Hedgepeth and R.G. Sadiel (ed.), Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust (London, 2010), pp.139-155. 170 E. Ben-Sefer, Forced Sterilisation and Abortion as Sexual Abuse, in Hedgepeth and Sadiel, Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, p.170. 171 See for example, P. Levi, The Grey Zone in P. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (Transl. R. Rosenthal) (London, 1989), pp.22-51.
25 a new moral reality “where the extremes were both the typical and accepted norm”.172 These women were not consenting to the constrained choices they were forced to make and we need to be mindful that judgements are not based on contemporary notions of morality.173 Instead analysis should be rooted in the Foucauldian concept of genealogy, aware that there needs to be an attempt to reveal semantics at the moment it appeared to preserve social and historical contexts.174 In this regard, in the camps women were presented with the ultimate choiceless choices,175 guided by knowledge that they could “… kill a child or…surrender it to death by crueller hands” and their actions need to be considered as responses to adaptive living. 176
The Case for ‘Some’ not ‘All’
Lengyel identifies occasions when women inadvertently sent children to their death, with mothers lying about their child’s age with the hope of removing the chance of hard labour, but unwittingly sending them to the gas chambers.177 These examples however still denote an attempt at protection. Yet, medics became aware that mother and child were both sent to the gas chambers postpartum, but the mother survived if the baby was stillborn; the birth of new-borns would enhance the future reproductive capabilities of the Jews, but the women could provide labour in the camps.178 Memoirs of pregnant women also expose awareness that pregnancy made the threat of murder greater,179 with survivors, such as Elias, (unsuccessfully) seeking a termination on arrival at Auschwitz- Birkenau, citing the need to increase her chance of survival.180
Abortion and infanticide occurred in numerous ways, including through the acquisition of drugs to induce premature birth,181 or causing death postpartum by using a lethal injection or pinching neonates noses.182 The scale of infanticide in the camps is exemplified by the statement that there was “never enough” poison to kill all the new-borns,183 as well as multiple young corpses being found
172 M. Goldenberg and A. H Shapiro, Different Horrors, Same Hell, p.112. 173 Goldenberg and Sapiro, Different Horrors, Same Hell, p.112. 174 Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, pp.76-100. 175 Langer, Gendered Suffering? In Ofer and Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust, pp.351-363, p.351. 176 K. A. Plank, A Mother on the Wire Face: Inside and Outside the Holocaust (Louisville, KY, 1994), p.28. 177 Lengyel, p.100. 178 Ibid., p.113. 179 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.117. 180 Ibid., p.115. 181 Lengyel, p.116. 182 Ibid., p.114. 183 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101.
26 hidden in women’s clothing at Bergen-Belsen post-liberation,184 and in the plumbing at Ravensbrück.185 Non-medics were also instrumental in infanticide. Elias recollects how “I killed my own child”,186 as well as helping others kill their child with morphine.187 Abruption of pregnancy and infanticide would protect the child from further suffering at the hands of the Nazis, with Lengyel explaining her actions by observing that the ordeal would be worse if the child survived.188 The chance of survival for the women was also increased, with Lengyel concluding “we must at least save the mothers. To carry out our plan we would have to make the infants pass for stillborn”.189 The medics demonstrate an act of kindness, not directed at the new-born but by enhancing the mothers chance of liberation if they kill the baby. The medics commitment to the principles of the Hippocratic Oath also support this presumption;190 they are using their ability and judgment to keep women from harm and injustice,191 and it is this that indicates that infanticide was, for some, a survival tactic.192
Linguistic Choices: Validating Subjective Memoirs
Due to the subjective nature of memoirs, the validity of these sources needs consideration. One point of discussion is that despite disclosure of prisoner induced abortion and infanticide in the camps, the language used in testimonies indicates a level of censorship. For example, Perl refers to ‘destroying’ rather than ‘killing’ new-born babies, words more readily associated with the euthanasia of animals.193 Such linguistic detachment is a consistent feature of the memoirs of Perl, like referring to ‘love’ rather than ‘sex’ when discussing physical intimacy between prisoners at the latrines. 194 Additionally, Perl focuses on the personal psychological consequences of her actions, evidential in expressions such as “no one knew what it meant to me to destroy those babies…”.195 The same emotive discourse is seen in Lengyel’s memoir: “sleepless nights…turning this tragic dilemma over in
184 USHMM, Record: 50.462.0061, Oral testimony of Lilly Friedman Tape 1-1-7, April 22,1984. 185 Y.Bauer; R.Rubenstein;V. Ketels; J. Doneson; M. Goldenberg; C. Friedrichs; M.Faber; E. Westermann; M. Johnson; C. Rittner; D. Gushee; R. Melson; R. Modras; D.Mirkovic and D. Patterson, The Holocaust, Remembering for the Future, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548 (1996), pp.14-218, p.86. 186 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.151. 187 Ibid., p.153. 188 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.114. 189 Ibid., p.113. 190 Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp. 150–151. 191 R. Hajar, The Physician’s Oath: Historical Perspectives, Heart Views, 18;4 (2017), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5755201/ (Accessed 2 August 2018). 192 B.H Bechtold and D Cooper-Graves, The Ties that Bind: Infanticide, Gender and Society, History Compass, 8/7 (2010), pp.704-717, p.710. 193 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.76. 194 Ibid., p.78. 195 Ibid., p.82.
27 our minds”.196 The careful use of language helps remove any perceived blame, with linguistics creating a distance between prisoner and perpetrator to reassure readers that the medics were not consenting to the actions, but was responding as victims living in the depths of Nazi Hell.
Elias in contrast is more overt in the description of the death of her new-born, referring directly to “killing” her girl. 197 Her narrative subsequently appears more objective, emphasising how her actions enhanced the likelihood for her own survival.198 This desire to survive was also evident in her aforementioned attempt to have a termination,199 averment of Elias adapting to the constrained and oppressive context she was forced to reside in. Consideration of social circumstances in this manner are revealed through anthropological research which demonstrates how the survival of mother or child is linked to resource availability,200 and the limited food and sanitation available to prisoners could have been a determining factor for Elias.201 The candidness of Elias’ memoirs adds authenticity to her narrative; awareness of the shame and stigma attached to the violation of cultural expectations of mothering could have led Elias to being opaque. 202 What this suggests is that she wanted her truth to be heard and validated, regardless of any negative responses from readers, leading to the conjecture that she is attempting to provide an honest account of her experience.
The differences between the bluntness in the women’s recollections was surprising. Most importantly, Elias herself was the mother whose child died, and it is not presumptuous to suggest she was more emotionally invested in the child, especially if we link this to the religious and cultural expectations attributed to mothering. In that respect, we would conceive that she may write a more cautious narrative. But perhaps the greater personal attachment she had compared to the medics is the very reason that Elias writes in a more detached form; she physically and emotionally suffered due to her pregnancy as well as experiencing the pain associated with childbirth, a feat more challenging due to her weakened physical status.203 Infanticide for her was a means of survival and her use of objective language may be indicative of distancing herself from the emotive aspects of her constrained choice.
196 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.113. 197 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.151. 198 Ibid., p.115. 199 Ibid., 200 Bechtold and Cooper-Graves, The Ties that Bind, p.705. 201 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.109, p.143, 202 Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, p.342. 203 See for example, Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.124.
28 Reflection on Baumel's assertion that testimonies written immediately post-liberation were less influenced by collective responses to the Holocaust or affected by decay in memory would also suggest that the memoirs of Perl and Lengyel should provide a clearer reflection of life from the camps, as they were written in the 1940s compared to Elias’ testimony which was not published until the 1980s.204 However, Perl may have been mindful of the desire for a positive reconstruction of society following the end of the war and censored her language accordingly, especially when such a theory is linked to testimony that reveals that people were reluctant to hear non-normative stories of the camps: Kitty Hart-Moxon was silenced by her uncle when she wanted to speak about experiences relating to sex as he wanted to prevent his children from hearing the unspeakable.205 Other memoirs substantiate such censorship, for instance Genia Weinberg denied killing her child, despite evidence to the contrary.206 Each individual is an organiser and editor of their own memories. Hence, Elias' writing can be interpreted as a product of the passing of time, with a fluid and honest narrative possible due increased public and scholarly awareness of the Holocaust significantly enhanced by disclosures at the Eichmann trial in the 1960s; alongside the collective fifteen indictments of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes, there was the acknowledgement of the intention and means to sterilise Jews.207
The Paradox for the Medics
Other instances of abortion create an even more complex puzzle of the dichotomy of decisions and ethical dilemmas women were faced with. On the order of SS-Frauenführer Irma Grese, Perl performed an abortion on the woman she called a “cruel, imaginative sexual pervert”.208 The threats and violence from Grese to Perl to secure the abortion fulfils expectations of the sadistic nature of the Nazis,209 an observation confirmed by Lengyel who labels the SS women who abused female prisoners as “abnormal…treacherous female”.210 Yet, such examples raise questions about the reasons prisoner medics performed abortions.211 It is scrupulous to assert that Perl supported Grese through fear of
204 Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, p.342. 205 Hart-Moxon, Return to Auschwitz, p.17. 206 Z. Waxman, Untold Testimony, Untold Stories, p.669. 207 Wiener Library of Holocaust and Genocide studies, Eichmann Trial Collection, Collection:621/1 Eichmann Trial collection transcription; D. Lasok, The Eichmann Trial, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 11;2 (1962), pp.355-374, p.356. 208 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.63. 209 Ibid., p.61-62. 210 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.133. 211 See C. Gilligan’s empirical study on the multiplicity of reasons for women to seek an abortion: C. Gilligan and M. F Belenky, A Naturalistic Study of Abortion Decisions, in R. Selmand and R Yando (eds.), Clinical Developmental Psychology, New Directions for Child Development no. 7 (San Francisco, 1980), p.69-90.
29 retribution, but it also triggers debate about the impact of the role of ‘medic’ in the camps on the experiences of these women. As a medic, Perl had expressed that it was her responsibility to save all pregnant women,212 assuming her place as an ambassador for women.213 This provided a purpose for Perl as a prisoner, which inadvertently led to her helping Grese.214 Other instances support the perception of Perl assuming her role of a medical professional: following orders from Mengele, she caused the abruption of a pregnancy at two months gestation and conserved the embryo, exclaiming that “it was beautiful…[I] rushed to show Mengele”.215 Two elements are of interest in this quotation. Firstly, Perl’s use of the term “beautiful” to describe the foetus demonstrates a medical appreciation of human physiology, evidential that Perl was able to retain, to some extent, her pre-war role as a medical professional. Secondly, although Perl rushing to see Mengele may be indicative of excitement in sharing her knowledge with another medic, given the circumstances it is more likely that her exclamation was a way to please Mengele. Pleasing him could keep her alive longer.
Such recollections are indicative of why there remains reluctance to research gendered experiences beyond the guise of care. It could be construed that by revealing an objective appreciation of the physiology of the foetus, Perl is removing herself to some extent from the trauma created by the camps and recalling memories of herself as a doctor rather than a prisoner. In other words, changing the demarcation from ‘victim’. By no means is this a statement made to challenge that Perl was a victim or to question the positive role that Perl had in the camp. There needs to remain a sympathetic analysis that protects the memories of those who were victims of the Nazi; as Adelsberger quoted, “Nazis turned nature on its head”, which in turn destabilised ‘normal’ moral expectations.216 However, these sources reveal elements of experiences that go beyond the common memory, and Perl’s disclosure of actions that aided her survival adds support for analysis of instances of abortion and infanticide outside of those which fulfil cultural expectations. This adds to the argument that scholars shouldn’t shy away from potentially provocative realities as new ways of thinking about and responding to the Holocaust will help dissimilation the common ‘truth’ to accommodate any hidden rhetoric.217
212 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.81. 213 N. Broxan, Out of Death, A Zest for Life, New York Times, 15 November 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/15/style/out-of-death-a-zest-for-life.html (Accessed: 22 August 2018). 214 Ibid., 215 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.120. 216 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.xxii 217 R. Eaglestone, Derrida and the Holocaust: A Commentary on the Philosophy of Cinders, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 7;2 (2002), pp.27-38, pp.33-35.
30 The differences that are revealed in the testimonials, as well as the problems such as censorship associated with first-person narratives provide recognition that it is not possible to establish a singular objective truth about Holocaust experiences. But history is not an exact science, and neither should we try to reduce human experience to quantitative measures; truth is not determined by the number of victims who had a certain experience in the camps. As Perl emotively surmised,
“when I see the words ‘6 million Jews dead’…my hands harden into fists and my heart beats with strong revolt…those six million dead are so many terrible, heart-breaking stories; they are Bettys and Roses…”218
Perl’s words reflect the core postmodern position of this thesis; every memory is true to the individual and subjective archives expose the multiple truths of life in the camps.
Chapter Summary
The memoirs and testimonies explored confirms divergence from the common memory and underpins the need for research to explore reasons for abortion and infanticide beyond self-sacrifice. As Derrida conceptualised, we need to adopt a revisionist approach and expose new truths via the deconstruction of presumed reality, the presumed reality that decisions by women were driven by socially constructed expectations of the entrenched ethic of care attached to mothering and femininity.219 This does not mean that we refute existing testimonies that construct a reality of the camps driven by altruism. Instead, we need to recognise that this reality was not the only reality and there is importance in considering individual survivor perspectives as any evidence of diversity adds to our appreciation of the complex reality of the Holocaust.220
218 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.137. 219 Royle, Jacques Derrida, pp.15-16. 220 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust (2008), p.1.
31 Chapter 4: Self, Survival and Resistance
With testimony revealing some pregnant women and mothers diverged from expected gendered norms, sources provide insight into the diversity of reactions to the constrained choices. Consequently, it is construed that abortion and infanticide which was not facilitated directly by the hands of the Nazis were ways in which some women enhanced their chance of survival. Although the mothers and medics had different echelons of involvement vis-à-vis the abruption of life of a foetus or neonate, with mothers making decisions about their own body and medics facilitating limited reproductive choices in others, motives for both groups were analogous: physical self-preservation, survival of self and agency emerge as thematic considerations. There is also evidence that reassertion of some power through biological means were viewed by some as acts of resistance against gendercide ideology. I reinforce however that agency in this context is the acquisition of limited personal control in a restricted environment.
As revealed, some of the testimonies relating to abortion and infanticide do fulfil expectations of women as caring, supporting prevalent discourse in gender history, such as the aforementioned publications of Tydor-Baumel and Shostak. 221 Yet the testimonies of medics and mothers at the centre of this thesis reveal incongruence between their intrinsic self and socially and religiously imposed expectations, i.e. what a woman does in response to her role vs. heuristics of the sacred nature of motherhood. Elias’ testimony about her choices post-partum illustrates this clearly. In just one paragraph, Elias goes from talking about going to her death with her child, fulfilling the expectation for her to be ‘mother’ until the end, to the conclusion of killing her new-born:
“Tomorrow we’ll go the gas chamber together. But, you know little one, I wanted so much to live a little longer. I’m still so young, only twenty-two and now I must die…I want to live, live, live!!”222
Consequently, “I killed my own child”.223 Although seemingly justifying her actions (“she will die anyway…”)224 and later prose revealing postpartum guilt and melancholia, her will to live, to survive prevailed:225 “youth triumphed…I had a lifetime ahead of me”.226 This short extract surmises the
221 Shostak, Stealth Altruism, p.178. Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, pp.329-347. 222 Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp.149-50. 223 Ibid., p.150. 224 Ibid., p.150. 225 Ibid., p.151. 226 Ibid., p.223.
32 necessity of exploring female experiences beyond the desire to reduce the suffering of their child. By decentring from the dogma that women were altruistic caregivers, we are able to expose not just one new truth that Derrida emphasises the need for, but multiple truths of survival instincts, agency and resistance.227
Survival Instincts and the Physical Self
As discussed in chapter one, in the camps women became häftlinge (prisoners), a genderless mass deindividuated by the loss of hair and clothes,228 creating what Donna Haraway labelled the ‘cyborg manifesto’.229 Such trauma led to overt visual transformations and inevitable loss of dignity; one survivor spoke of how being naked and shaved in front of SS soldiers “remained the most psychological trauma…of the entire wartime experience” (my emphasis).230 This exposes how abuse and dehumanisation corroded numerous aspects of self beyond physicality,231 leading to what David Patterson labelled as “the death of self”.232 The human ‘self’ is more than an animal programmed to maintain homoeostasis and biologically functioning. The image of the muselmann is evocative of this; basic, albeit diminished physical functioning remains in the staggering corpses of the camps, but the prisoner is devoid of consciousness, of drive, of emotion. In other words, the elements of their true self have been consumed.233 Socio-psychological theory is instrumental in deciphering the multifaceted human self, with personal priorities, cognitions, experiences, socialisation and emotion combining to create the holistic self.234 It is these qualities that make us human and separates us from what Agamben called “bare life” a state more readily associated with primitive, less cognitively advanced animals.235 Through the deindividuating of the prisoners, an empty space where the idiosyncrasies of self once resided was created. I will return to how the destruction of self impacted female experiences in the camps; however, without the preservation of the physical self, other more ‘human’ qualities could not remain or be re-established. The testimony of Adelsberger supports this initial focus on how biological deprivation was destructive to all other aspects of self, recalling how
227 Royle, Jacques Derrida, pp.15-16. 228 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust, p.60. 229 D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women (London, 1991), p.150. 230 Tydor-Baumel, Double Jeopardy, p.22. 231 S. Harter, The Construction of the Self: A Developmental Perspective (London, 1999). 232 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust, p.68. 233 For a detailed and emotive description of muselmann of the camps, see G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York, 1999), pp.41-86. 234 For a comprehensive introduction and historical overview of different socio-psychological theories of self, I recommend: S. Harter, The Construction of the Self: A Developmental Perspective (New York, 1999), pp. ix-27. 235 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p.41.
33 “work and hunger, heat and physical abuse had destroyed her both body and soul”.236 The need to consider the relationship between biological and psychological facets of self is corroborated by Gilligan, who recognised how changes inflicted on the body has a psychological impact.237
Women testify that they realised at selection the need to maintain a strong and intrinsic survival instinct,238 a veracity accentuated by Lengyel who recalls how her mother promoted the need for selfishness to enhance the chance of survival. 239 Despite narratives of lagerschwestern kinship that promote survival through collaboration,240 sources illustrate how this was not the long-term reality for all. Perl reveals how Auschwitz operated on the ‘Law of the Jungle’, where self-preservation involved physical abuse and hostility to others.241 Lengyel endorses this version of reality, indeed using the same ‘jungle’ reference to affirm the existence of eros, the incessant animalistic life instinct:242 female prisoners “…were evil, hard and cruel…[and we] renounced our humanity because we wanted to survive”, fighting for bunk space, food and use of the latrines.243 Perl recounts becoming angry at a fellow prisoner for dropping meagre yet life-prolonging food portions,244 and such infighting was also documented at Terezin and Ravensbrück.245 Survival instinct proliferated for the duration of imprisonment, with Adelsberger writing in the third person to explain why she left an ill prisoner in the barracks rather than staying with him whilst she went on a death march: “did a person who had survived nearly two years of Auschwitz have the right to risk her life?…she had no hope of helping anyway”.246 Interestingly, this is the only occasion in her memoir that she decentres from the first- person, carving instead a narrative form that crafts an impression of distancing her choice of self-care rather than self-sacrifice.
236 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.95. 237 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, p.xi. 238 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.109. 239 The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights: The Memorial Library, University of Southern California Shoah Foundation, https://www.toli.us/videos/survivor-videos/?vid=6&page, Oral interview with Olga Lengyel, Extract taken from 8min12sec – 8min35secs (Accessed: 19 August 2018). 240 Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender, in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.337; Ringelheim, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, p.745; Shostak, Stealth Altruism, p.178. Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, pp.329-347. 241 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.37. 242 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.59. 243 KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau, HN104328, Survivor testimony interview notes of Miriam Rosenthal (2008), p.4. 244 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.40. 245 J. T. Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies During the Holocaust, Women’s Studies International Forum,22;3 (1999), p.329-347, p.329 and 341; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.127. 246 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.127.
34 The relevance of these observations to the current thesis is that they expose movement away from normative characteristics associated with women, with a presentation of traits that are more commonly attributed with male-survival tactics; male prisoners are readily depicted as selfish, lone- wolves,247 “lowered ….to beast status” to scramble for the last piece of precious bread.248 Subsequently, when pregnant women were aware that a birth moment was also a death moment,249 abortion or infanticide were chosen by some due to torschlusspanik, fear of impending death.250 Witnessing events where pregnant women, mothers and children were being sent to their death at selection251 revealed that they could not save their own children.252 Killing became a necessity, with self-survival taking precedence over their offspring or the social expectations that behold them. By stripping themselves of the role of ‘mother’, these women had increased the chance of their own existence. 253 This mentality is also observed in women who concluded that abortion was chosen to make the life of a woman easier,254 or with knowledge of the risk posed by hiding other infants leading to terminations.255 These women were exhibiting a drive to survive which depended on them making restrained choices. Caution is needed in asserting such perspectives to ensure women are not viewed as less of a victim due to their actions. This re-emphasises the need to withhold contemporary moral judgments and remember that these women were not consenting to their actions but were forced to act based on necessities dictated by the Nazi world in which they endeavoured to survive.
Agency and a sense of self
Returning to my assertion that there is a need to consider the distinction between physical and psychological self, testimonies expose how some women endeavoured to preserve or recapture aspects of their psychological self beyond maintenance of their biology. Multifaceted aspects of the women, such as their family self, religious self and sexual self were attacked by systematic deindividuation, demonstrated through Perl’s exclamation that she “ceased to exist as a private
247 Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors, in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.337; Tydor-Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies in the Holocaust, p.330. 248 KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau, Source: A204, Oliver Lustig, Unpublished Dachau survivor manuscript ‘Dicitionar de lagar’ (1945) 249 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.25. 250 M. Goldenberg, Sex-Based Violence and the Politics and Ethics of Survival, in Goldenberg and Sapiro, Different Horrors, Same Hell, p.116. 251 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.23;47. 252 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.20; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.85. 253 Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors, in Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust, p.329; E. Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.22. 254 Ibid., p.29 255 Ibid., p.23.
35 individual”.256 I therefore propose that some women endeavoured to re-establish elements of their psychological self in the same manner in which they fought for physical survival.
The dissolution of family identity through separation and bereavement removed the familiar role of wife and mother,257 with consequent caregiving in the camps and the cultivation of matrilineal families though lagerschwestern providing individuals with a known purpose. The void left by the destruction of their previous social networks was filled by forging relationships with those with a common fate and whose company, according to Perl, helped fill time.258 Religious self was also impacted upon. Aspects of religious traditions were maintained through hidden practices, such as daily praying,259 and survival was labelled as a ‘spiritual reward’.260 Nonetheless, religious beliefs are challenged by the trauma of the camp; as Primo Levi articulated, “there is Auschwitz, therefore there can be no god”.261 Less considered is the loss of a sexual self. Destruction of sexual identity through abuse, exploitation and amenorrhoea was inexorable.262 It has also been recognised how sterilisation surrenders portions of femininity.263 Rare testimonies of lesbian sexual relations indicate cravings of love and intimacy, 264 as did sexual encounters between prisoners at the latrines.265 Women had been rendered powerless and their body was one manner in which they had limited choices. As such, it is also considered to assert that control over their bodies and reproduction, such as through abortion and infanticide was driven by an instinct for self survival more broadly, a deduction supported by Bechtold and Graves.266 Enduring life was made more feasible with maintenance of essences of self.
Accordingly, abortion and infanticide were not only as a response to biological oppression and a means to the preservation of physical life, but also a means of re-establishing elements of their former self. Motherhood was a site of power that threatened the realisation of the Reich’s ideology,267 yet inadvertently provided women with choices (albeit ‘choiceless’) relating to their bodies and babies as an exercise of limited power and agency.268 This hypothesis is substantiated by Remmler who
256 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.160. 257 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.24. 258 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.29; p.59. 259 Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, p.107. 260 Shostak, Stealth Altruism, p.9. 261 Ibid., 262 Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, p.1. 263 Rich, Of Women Born: Motherhood, p.93. 264 Hart-Moxon, Return to Auschwitz, p.90. 265 Ibid., p.180 266 Bechtold and Cooper Graves, The Ties that Bind, p.704. 267 Hertzog, Subjugated Motherhood, p.18. 268 Langer, Gendered Suffering? in Ofer and Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust, pp.351-363, p.351.
36 recognised that the violation of ones’ physical self impacts on psychological survival drives.269 Such statements are concurrently corroborated by Dina Wardi who noted that post-liberation women exhibited a desire to reconstruct identify and a sense of belonging.270 What these scholars also provide is support for my earlier assertion that survival went beyond the physical.
Attempts at securing agency is initially denoted in Lengyel’s description of the early stages of her incarcerations where in the ‘Sauna’ she ripped off her clothes and refused to adhere to a rare request for her to keep her hair. She consequently expressed how her own physical appearance disgusted her and that she felt her hair loss symbolised a loss of femininity.271 Yet opposition to the regime, in albeit a seemingly paltry way, provided the chance to retain some level of self-efficacy regardless of how this had a detrimental effect on other aspects of ones’ psyche.272 In this respect, although Foucault made little distinction between the bodies of the sexes, or how biopolitics influenced women and men differently,273 I revisit the belief that there is merit in the use of postmodern theories exploring instances of infanticide and abortion. The notion of power being both imposed and having the potential to be voluntary as an assertion of self can be considered as a mechanism to illustrate how some women tried to affirm control on their dominated body as a means of self-survival.274 The distinction between power and domination is important, with the domination of Nazi power mechanisms leading to the affirmation of restricted power by women over their own fate through the acquisition of some level of control, i.e. through their restrained choices relating to pregnancy and motherhood.
Congruous attitudes for the affirmation of power are evidential in the memoirs of the medics. Lengyel recalls how abortion made dreams of a future more conceivable,275 with similar assertions made by Adelsberger who talks of the survival of a women who strangled her new-born to enable her to return home to her other children.276 Perl’s observations corroborate the testimony of the other medics, with her interventions of accelerated birth and infanticide aiding women: “…[it was] up to me to save all pregnant women” (my emphasis).277 Interestingly, through the choice of the word “me”,
269 K. Remmler, Gender Identities and the Remembrance of the Holocaust, Women in German Yearbook, 10 (1994), pp.167-187, p.168. 270 D. Wardi, Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust (London, 1990). 271 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.30. 272 Ibid., pp.28-29. 273 Deveaux, Feminism and Empowerment, p.225. 274 Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, p.317. 275 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.116;136. 276 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101. 277 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.80.
37 Perl places focus on herself to help save other women and is another indication that women were seeking hegemony; for Perl however, and indeed the other medics, their agency was being re- established through their role as camp medic and the opportunities this provided. The women who testify to their own abortion or infanticide substantiate this desire to seek self-efficacy.278 In a context where every aspect of life, death and everything in between was controlled and subjugated, it was the aspect of self that created the double bind for women, i.e. their gender, that in fact offered them some opportunity for agency. What is ascertainable is the desire for the human spirit to survive beyond the physical self, however temporary or in fact illusionary the assertion of agency may be due to the unpredictable whims of the Nazis.279
Mothers vs. Medics
I return to the distinction between the mothers and the medics. The women, like Elias, who had an abortion or killed, or agreed to the killing of their baby postpartum, were asserting control over their own reproduction. The memoirs of the midwives who killed neonates however is less straight- forward.280 Perl et al reveal how they made choices for the reduction in suffering of the child.281 Reference to medical ethics and their commitment to their Hippocratic Oath also support this presumption.282 Yet Anderson suggested that these apparent acts of care are in fact exhibitions of egotistical concerns, survival of self and are not evidential of altruism.283 Even though Perl labelled herself as the ambassador of women in the camps, it is comprehensible that her helping behaviour was also motivated by self-survival, made possible by her role as physician. Were her actions therefore a contradiction to the care ethic that was bestowed? Such hypotheses can be supported by re- considering apparent ambiguous behaviour of Perl, presenting herself as the caring medic as well as revealing a less emotive side through the admiration for the preserved aborted foetus.284 Other instances add weight to the argument that abortion and infanticide by the medics were not purely acts of kindness. Perl for example increased her chance of liberation by performing an abortion on
278 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.223. 279 J. T. Baumel, Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies, p.330. 280 J. T. Baumel, ‘You said the words you wanted me to hear but I heard the words you couldn’t bring yourself to say’: Women’s First-Person Accounts of the Holocaust, The Oral History Review, 27;1 (2000), pp.17-56, p.50. 281 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.100. K. A. Plank, A Mother on the Wire Face, p.28. 282 Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp. 150–151; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101. R. Hajar, The Physician’s Oath: Historical Perspectives, Heart Views, 18;4 (2007), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5755201/ (Accessed: 2 August 2018). 283 V. Anderson, Gender Differences in Altruism among Holocaust Rescuers, Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality, 8;1 (January 1993), pp.43-58, p.47. 284 A. Brown, No-one will ever know: The Holocaust, privileged Jews and the ‘grey zone’, History Australia 8;3 (2011), pp.95-116, p.96.
38 Irma Grese.285 Adelsberger’s dialogue also moves away from selflessness; at a roll call at Auschwitz- Birkenau she wouldn’t come out of line to help a friend in distress as it would mean she herself would have died.286 Additionally, she discloses that on the death march from Auschwitz she refused to drag another woman along as this would impair her chance of survival.287
Yet as Primo Levi explains, relationships under Nazi rule were complex and the ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ were not always polar opposites with decisions being dictated by geographical frontiers and the structural and political hierarchy of the camps.288 He identifies how the mechanisms of the camp placed some prisoners in positions that were viewed as ‘privileged’ as they were afforded elements of comfort that aided survival, such as improved shelter and additional food.289 From 1942, prison medics had an increasingly important role due to the additional need for labour;290 as such, Perl et al did have some level of protection and their memoirs allude to this. For example, Lengyel talks of how the medical barracks were paradise compared to others,291 and Perl, Lengyel and Adelsberger all acknowledge they were in an advantageous position compared to other prisoners, such as freedom from selection.292 She also expressed how when she was initially assigned the role of medic in the ghettos she was “winged with happiness”; feasibly this is demonstrative of awareness of how this assignment could benefit her by allowing her to continue with an aspect of self, her professional self, that was fundamental to her pre-war identity.293 In this guise, the position of medic enabled them to adopt a function beyond that of a female Jewish victim and were provided with the opportunity for the assertion of agency through their role. This role and purpose aided their survival.294 In other words, there is a multiplicity of factors influencing the facilitation of abortion and infanticide.
I am conscious that such propositions may be viewed as negating the trauma suffered by these women and others have tentatively labelled Perl’s actions as self-serving, coercive and harmful, which I dispute.295 The thread of the narrative of Perl is centred around helping other prisoners, and I have
285 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, pp.62-65. 286 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.49. 287 Ibid., p.126. 288 Levi, The Grey Zone in Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, p.22-23. 289 Ibid., p.26. 290 Brown, No-one will ever know, pp.100-101. 291 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.71;147 292 Ibid., p.71. Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz p.18-19; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.xvii; 293 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz p.18. 294 Ibid., pp.18;35;65;81. 295 Brown, No-one will ever know, p.96.
39 quoted numerous examples where she was caring towards women.296 Yet the double-bind of race and gender was a reality for all female prisoners, regardless of their position, and thus Perl was a victim of the same challenges. Rather than adopting Levi’s term ‘privileged’ we should discuss how these women were functionaries in the camps, presenting them with different ways to make constrained choices. I also reject Levi’s conjecture that the National Socialist structure made the ‘privileged’ similar to the Nazi tormentors.297 These women were not facilitating the anti-natalist ideology of the Reich, they were not causing needless pain and suffering but were instead showed compassion towards the pregnant women and babies. For example, Perl kissing a new-born following his death.298 She also at times steps away from her assigned identity and expresses she sometimes acted like a mother, not a medic to the women in her care.299 If this is compared to the testimonies of the brutal and senseless murder of new-borns by Nazi soldiers, then the unjustness of Levi blurring the lines between victims and perpetrators is blatant.300 The women also endangered their own lives through their actions, such as the risk posed by leaving the barracks at night to abort babies.301 The risk to the medics was also recognised by the other women, such as Elias acknowledging that the doctors would not give her a termination on arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau as “the punishment for doing so [for them] was severe”.302 These women, like all prisoners, adapted to the “rhythm of uprooted life”.303
But what is ascertained is that abortion and infanticide were not purely acts of care and compassion directed at the infant, reaffirming the assertion that gender historiography needs to continue to challenge the common memory of female experiences in the camps. Revisionist historiography needs to explore such socially-sensitive issues to helps fill the gaps between dominant discourses and lived experiences for women of the Holocaust,304 albeit maintaining objectivity through the suspension of moral judgements made in the extremis.305 What is however shown is that there was a myriad of motivations for women: as Steven Katz articulated, “Auschwitz will not yield to any conceptual oversimplification”.306
296 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.127 297 Levi, The Grey Zone in Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, p.25. 298 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.84. 299 Ibid., p.82. 300 Ehrenburg and Grossman, The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, p.16. 301 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.73. 302 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.115. 303 Waxman, Women in the Holocaust, p.26. 304 R. C. Synder, What Is Third-Wave Feminism?, Signs, 34.1 (2008), pp.175–96, p.179; p.184. 305 Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, pp.26-27. 306 Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, p.2.
40 Beyond Survival: Enduring Hope and Resistance
Alongside emerging evidence that challenges common memory, sources reveal an enduring hope for liberation.307 Despite some contradictions exhibited through Perl and Lengyel’s periods of suicidal ideation,308 (which also accentuate the need to silence any qualms that they did not suffer due to their positions), they expose a prevailing aura of quiet optimism: “someday a new life would arise, phoenix-like from the ashes of the dead of Auschwitz”.309 Elias also experienced depression following the death of her daughter and post-liberation, but the prospect of the future and her family made her resolute in her quest for survival. 310 Even in the antechamber of hell, there remained an integral desire to remain 'me', with women in the depths of destruction able to engage with constrained choices that were rational in the way in which they enhanced their chance of a future life. 311
Consideration of the facets of self is inherent in the distinction between the female as self and how she became a docile body, a product of dominating mechanisms of disciplinary power; the self was malleable as a consequence of the repressive ideology of Nazi policies.312 The adoption of the Foucauldian agonistic model is hence appropriate,313 with constructs of subjectivity and power having a role in investigating the emergence of a new self via growth of limited agency for survival.314 This conjecture asserts that the aforementioned expressions of agency observant in the medics who assumed the role of ambassador for the pregnant women, and in mothers such as Elias who decided to have an abortion or commit infanticide, went beyond desires for survival. Behaviour also encompassed expressions of power and resistance against the Nazi ideology that had led to the loss of self-efficacy through the systematic attack on their reproduction. Abortion and infanticide provided some women with the opportunity to reassert efficacy on their docile body by seizing ownership over decisions of life and death of pregnant women and their children, consequently acting to reduce supremacy from the hands of the Nazis. Kellenbach champions this postmodern approach, acknowledging that reproductive choices were a form of resistance; genocide specifically targets
307 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, pp.12-14. 308 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.80. 309 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, pp.53-54 310 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.145; p.222 311 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.116. 312 J. Sawicki, Feminism, Foucault and ‘Subjects’ of Power and Freedom, in Hekman, Feminist Interpretations, p.161. Corfield, History and the Challenge of Gender, p.248. 313 M. Deveaux, Feminism and Empowerment, p.234. 314 Ibid., p.223; Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, p.3.
41 women in their role as a mother and it is therefore one site that women can challenge the oppression of the anti-natalist ideology.315 The medics support this supposition, such as Lengyel who showed defiance by providing fake reports of childbirth to the Nazis and said that the reason to live was to work with the resistance. 316 Perl also exhibits defiance, telling mothers that it was their “duty to fight against them, against death, against their power to debase”.317
The stance of considering that where there is power, there is also resistance gives insight into the variables that impacted female decisions; discourse of survival of the group over the individual may be the moral dialogue, but abortion and infanticide are evidential as acts of resistance. This is accentuated by Deveaux’s observation that individuals can contest the expected through engagement with resistance to assert their own sense of self.318 This is also noted in the previously discussed narratives that reveals a fear of long-term amenorrhea. Women queried whether “they will bear children again”,319 and an interview with survivor Gerda Klein exposed how she feared infertility, deducing that if women survived but could not reproduce, Hitler had still won.320 Lilly Friedman also substantiates that cessation of menstruation would be a triumph for Nazi ideology of the eradication of the Jewry: “If I’m not gonna have a child, the Jewish people are…finished…[I have] an obligation. I have to have children. And it was that [reason]…that I survived”.321 Concerns expressed about post- war identity linked to future reproductive capabilities are therefore illustrative of survival instinct and acts of resistance.
In support, although exhibiting radical views on feminism, Andrea Dworkin illustrates the power that abortion and infanticide presents women with: "a person’s struggle for dignity and self- determination is rooted in the struggle for actual control of ones’ own [docile] body, especially control of physical access to ones’ own body";322 through the facilitation of abortion and infanticide, the fate of the docile body is returned somewhat to the hands of the individual. Kellebach’s reference to the case of Ruth Cronheim supports this assertion, describing pregnancy as self-affirming; having a baby
315 K. von Kellenbach, Reproduction and Resistance During the Holocaust, pp.19-32 in E. Fuchs (ed.), Women and the Holocaust: Narrative and Representation (New York, 1999), p.19. 316 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.115-16;89. 317 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.88. 318 Deveaux, Feminism and Empowerment, p.233. 319 Mosaker, The experience of women and girls at Auschwitz, p.7. 320 M. Goldenberg, Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women’s Holocaust Narratives, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548 (November, 1996), pp.78-93, p.82. 321 USHMM, Record: 50.462.0061, Oral testimony of Lilly Friedman Tape 1-1-7, April 22,1984. 322 A. Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (NY, 1989), p.243.
42 in Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1942 for Cronheim was also described as an act of defiance.323 As Perl said, “we will fight against them…against their power to debase them…fight together”.324
Chapter Summary
I am mindful that the presented arguments may be viewed as implying that women were in some way empowered, or those who didn’t resist gave in easily to Nazi oppression, and thus it may be interpreted that suffering is being minimised. This is not my intention and emphasise the restrained definition of agency that I advocated. Yet I return to the consistent view that actions could be driven by forces beyond the prevailing narrative of care. Segal would articulate that this is a way of embracing forms of identity for political ends; in this case the personal becomes political through the survival of the Jewish women against the anti-Semitic and anti-natalist Nazi ideology.325 Waxman however presumes that there is a danger of moving from caring narrative to what she calls anti- mothering.326 But through an exploration of experiences that challenges the romanticising of motherhood, to consider how women endeavoured to maintain a sense of self, to acquire levels of constrained agency,327 or to engage in acts of resistance, gender history can begin to give voice to the innumerable personal experiences that have been silenced due to the uncomfortable deep memory that they expose and destabilise unitary views which use motherhood as a frame of reference for females in the camps. 328
323 von Kellenbach, Reproduction and Resistance During the Holocaust, in Fuchs (ed.), Women and the Holocaust, p.30. NB: the baby was listed missing and therefore it is concluded the new-born did not survive. 324 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.88 325 L. Segal, ‘After Judith Butler: Identities, Who Needs Them?’, Subjectivity, 25 (2008), pp.381–94, p.381. 326 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust p.141. 327 E. Dickstein , Self and Self Esteem: Theoretical Foundations and their Implications for Research, Human Development, 20 (1977), pp.129-140. 328 von Kellenbach, Reproduction and Resistance During the Holocaust, in Fuchs (ed.), Women and the Holocaust, p.30.
43 Chapter 5: Discussion – The Case for the Study of the Divergent
Summary
The testimonies of the medics and mothers confirm that female experiences in the concentration camps of Nazi rule were made more challenging by the double-bind created by gender and race. Intentional gendercide left women subjugated by biopolitics, leading to the erosion of biological and psychological facets of self through the creation of docile bodies. Victims responded to the geopolitical context in numerous ways and abortion and infanticide were responses by some women due to the knowledge that reproduction and motherhood increased the risks to them. The observation of the multiplicity of ways women adapted and acclimatised to the constrained circumstances in which they were forced to reside supports the conjecture that any homogeneous conclusion about experiences fails to encapsulate the complexity of the Holocaust reality for women
A move from nomothetic analysis of female Holocaust experiences supports the suggestion throughout the thesis that postmodernism can be used to investigate divergent narratives. The testimonies expose the need to confront the common memory of gender normative behaviour and that gender historiography should focus more readily on the idiosyncrasies of victims in their response to the oppressive context.329 Such considerations are supported by Tirumalsesh’s proposition of how postmodernism can be constructive in the study of multi-facets of Nazi ideology.330 To challenge the common memory of the Holocaust relating to abortion and infanticide being governed by discourses of care, we need to decentre from the entrenched gender schemas of women as selfless carers to enable an alternative truth to be voiced.331 This alternative truth is the deep memory that women were governed not only by the restraints of the gendercide ideology of the Reich, but also by the multiple facets of self that influenced the way they responded to their enforced reality. Consequently, by disengaging from the collective perception of the altruistic woman and mother will help establish a holistic depiction of the Holocaust experience for women.
329 Delbo, La Memoire et les jours, p.11. 330 K. V. Tirumalesh, ‘The Holocaust: A Postmodern Perspective”, The Centennial Review, 36;1 (1992), pp.471 – 496. 331 Deveaux, Feminism and Empowerment, p.223.
44 Polyphonic Voices and Diverse Experiences
Before continuing, it is important to highlight my deliberate use of the terminology ‘some’ women’. I use this language as rather than using the singular labels of ‘female’ and ‘male’ for experiences, we are recognising variations in Holocaust experiences within and across the genders. Without such a proviso the research would provide just another homogenous account that I endeavour to challenge.
The prevalent discourse of gender historiography which advocates caring and self-sacrificing behaviour was substantiated by some testimonies: for example, women who went ‘left’ with their children to the gas chambers or eluded that abortion and infanticide were used to reduce suffering to new-borns.332 Behaviour of these women fulfilled gender and religious heuristics.333 Conversely, the sources also exposed cases which contest this common memory, with memoirs of the medics and mothers, alongside other primary sources, questioning the heritage of heroism.334 As observed, women were aware of the added danger of pregnancy and motherhood and consequently, abortion and infanticide were used by some women as means of survival.335
Elias was overt in her endeavour for physical survival, speaking a monologue to her child about her endearing need to live and the desire to see her family and friends again, with infanticide increasing the possibility of liberation to allow this.336 Elias’ latter reflection on the desire to see her re-establish pre-war relationships resonated with other memoirs, with previous life impacting behaviour in the camps. This is evidential in Adelsberger discussion of the woman who killed their neonate to increase her chance of being reunited with the children she had left at home.337 However it was the profession of the medics that emerged as an additional variable with an unanticipated yet dynamic impact. Besides the additional, albeit limited privileges that Perl et al had which increased the likelihood of survival, their function as camp medics enabled them to maintain some facets of self, such as use of their intelligence and enquiring mind and their role as a qualified doctor. 338 This was most distinct in the way Perl responded to the preserved foetus, demonstrating that her medical
332 See for example, Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.100. 333 Hyman, The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition, in Koltun, The Jewish Woman p.105. 334 Langer, Holocaust Testimonies, p.xii. 335 See for example, Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.23; p.47. 336 Elias, Triumph of Hope, pp.149-50. 337 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101. 338 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.18-19; Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.xvii; Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.71.
45 knowledge and appreciation of physiology remained.339 For her and the other medics, facilitation of abortion and infanticide presented them with a purpose.340 I however feel it is imperative to reiterate the definition of agency that has been adopted throughout the research: the acquisition of limited personal control in a restricted environment. Yet the testimonies explored did reveal examples of women who had an abortion or committed infanticide to try and re-establish some aspect of agency.341 For example, in the example of Elias’ decision to kill her new-born to increase her chance of a future, as well as the medics advocating their role in saving other women through abortion and infanticide.342 The examples of limited acts of resistance by mothers and medics also illustrate that actions beyond the guise of care. 343
It is however the distinction that can be drawn between the medics and mothers in the camps that undeniably exemplifies that survival was not a unitary concept.344 It wasn’t just the label of ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ that impacted the lived realities of female prisoners, but an array of individual socio-contextual factors including function in the camp, pre-war responsibilities and whether women were themselves pregnant or mothers. As Waxman articulated, the Holocaust speaks in a multiplicity of voices. 345
The challenges of survivor testimony
As discussed in the introduction, there are multiple reasons why there remains limited scholarship that challenges common memories of the Holocaust. Self-awareness of the moral judgements surrounding abortion may also have impacted the presentation of reality in the memoirs. Challenges relating to how gender-related crimes are subject to stigmatisation and shame are evidential in the testimonies explored.346 For example, the medics use language which at times is
339 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.120. 340 Ibid., p.81. 341 Langer, Gendered Suffering? In Ofer and Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust, pp.351-363, p.351. 342 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.80. 343 von Kellenbach, Reproduction and Resistance During the Holocaust, in Fuchs (ed.), Women and the Holocaust: Narrative and Representation, p.30; Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.115-16;89; Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.88. 344 E. Luchterhand, Prisoner Behaviour and Social System in the Nazi Concentration Camps, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 13;4 (1964), p.245-264, p.247. 345 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust, p.19. 346 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p.88; Hart-Moxon, Return to Auschwitz, p.17. Human Rights Watch, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwanda Genocide and its Aftermath (USA, 1996), www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm (Accessed: 25 September 2017).
46 suggestive of them justifying their facilitation of abortion and infanticide as compassionate actions for others.347 Adelsberger also alludes to this by acknowledging that “artificially induced termination of pregnancy in healthy women was taboo all over the world”.348 Jewish beliefs about abortion could also present further reasons for cautious disclosure in testimony. The Jewish law of pikuakh nefesh (protection of life) emphasises the need to save a soul with the life of a mother taking precedence unless the baby has emerged from the birth canal.349 However, abortion was not widely supported by Jewish rabbis despite the passage in Exodus that forms the foundation for beliefs about rights to life in Judaism.350 What this reveals is potential incongruence between assumed culturally and religious driven morality and the facilitation of abortions. Another variable is added to the complex web of choiceless choices women faced, and how this may impact the candidness in their writing.
The pressure to censor by others post-liberation also impacts sources that challenge conventional memories, as seen in Kitty Hart-Moxons’s enforced silence by her uncle; 351 as survivor Ruth Bonti clearly articulated: the experiences of Auschwitz and Theresienstadt were “not fit for public memory”.352 Such unwillingness to hear the scale of the horrors of the Holocaust for women may also have led survivors to believe that others would not accept their story as truth. Lengyel herself found it difficult to believe the stories she was hearing about the abuse of Polish Jews prior to her own incarceration, commenting how “they might be exaggerating”. 353 Other primary sources also corroborates this, such as Langer’s cited example of the testimony of Magda F who articulated that “if someone told me this story I would say she was lying…because this can’t be true”.354 If those central to persecution found it difficult to comprehend the actions of the Nazis, then it is just to reason that people geographically and personally removed from the situation would find the enormity of the diabolic actions even more incomprehensible. The public consciousness could just about fathom the terror the Nazis unleashed on the most vulnerable when immediate post-war interviews of David Boder began to expose experiences that have become the common memory,355 but the reality of a mother who sends her child away or kills them for self-survival is difficult to accept when viewed from the entrenched schema of mothers who will do anything to protect their child.356 Yet in such
347 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.114. 348 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101. 349 G. Robinson, Essential Judaism (New York, 2016), p.141. 350 The Holy Bible, Old Testament, Exodus: ch.21 v.22-23. 351 Hart-Moxon, Return to Auschwitz, p.17. 352 R. Bodi., Lefeta Belev Hamizrach (Tel, Aviv, 1972) in Lentin, Expected to Live, p.693. 353 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.13. 354 Langer, Holocaust Testimonies, p.xiii-xiv. 355 See A. Rosen, The Wonder of their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder (Oxford, 2011). 356 Langer, Holocaust Testimonies, p.11.
47 discussions it is imperative to reiterate the lack of power these women had. Residing in “Planet Auschwitz” led to the Nazi creation of morality,357 where both the extreme was both the typical and the accepted norm.358 Distance by the researcher and reader from contemporary moral judgement is essential to protect the label of ‘victim’, placing social-casual morality at the centre of analysis;359 this reiterates my support for Foucault’s genealogical perspective. 360
Continuous focus on common experiences for women will only add to the locus classicus; the loudest, or perhaps the quantitatively superior voices does not make that reality the most authoritative.361 Purely using numerical measures to validate experiences results in the loss of value placed on less common realities. Each individual reality is itself a locus classicus, an authoritative voice of a lived experience that can add to our knowledge of the complexities of the Holocaust for all victims. Advocating a more idiographic approach to historiography does of course instil its own academic challenges, a point I will return to shortly, yet I draw on Tydor-Baumel’s question to illustrate the importance of this endeavour: what version of a story is most accurate? 362 This research has illustrated that there is not just one Holocaust story and just because one person’s narrative doesn’t fit the collective norm does not make it any less accurate. Experiences are subjective, identity and memories are malleable and the narratives that arise therefore are influenced by the idiosyncrasies of self. But it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and it doesn’t make the testimony unimportant. Consider this as a case in point. Dina Pronicheva gave testimony of witnessing the rape of women during the massacre at Babi Yar in September 1941. However, questions were raised about whether she provided a true representation of reality as it was seen as difficult to form a coherent analysis of the women in this context, with concerns that her testimony didn’t coincide with other narratives.363 But this one voice provides one important representation of aspects of the truth. There is thus, as Waxman observes, the utmost importance in the exposure and protection of memories and intricate details provided by survivors,364 a point made more poignant with the observation that testimonies can be cathartic for
357 A. Brown, Confronting ‘choiceless choices in Holocaust video testimonies: Judgement, ‘privileged’ Jews and the role of the interviewer, Continuum, 24;1 (2010), pp.79-90, p.80. 358 Goldenberg and Sapiro, Different Horrors, Same Hell, p.112. 359 Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 2017), p.170-1. 360 Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, pp.76-100. 361 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p.49. 362 J. Tydor Baumel, You said the Words you Wanted me to Hear, p.27. 363 Z. Waxman, An Exceptional Genocide? Sexual Violence in the Holocaust in A. Randall (ed.), Gendercide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey (London, 2015), pp.107-120, p.110. 364 Z. Waxman, Testimonies as Sacred Texts: The Sanctification of Holocaust Writing, Past and Present, Supplement 5 (2010), pp.321-341, p.322.
48 the victim, helping them assimilate their past; as Karen Remmler noted, female Holocaust victim reclaim herself through the writing of her personal history.365
There must however be some level of caution applied to the use of the survivor memoirs of Perl, Lengyel, Adelsberger and Elias as the main body of primary sources in this research. The post- hoc nature of testimony opens sources to the risk of the realignment of memories and the influence of external perceptions, although all the medics testimonies were written within a decade of liberation. Yet, David Roskier makes the distinction between survivor literature and the ‘real’ Holocaust history which would be told by those who perished.366 I find it difficult to accept Roskier’s position here as it diminishes the poignancy of the emotive and candid testimonies that survivors provide. As Svetland Alexievich articulated “war is an all too intimate experience, and as boundless as human life,”367 and from this I return to my earlier assertion that every memory is true to the individual, and even if there is self-censoring, survivor testimonies provide us with a window into which we can gaze to gain knowledge of the individual experience of the Holocaust.
However, elements of the linguistic style of the memoirs add to the authenticity of the memories. For example, Perl includes intricate details of daily life in the camps, such as the length of roll.368 She also write in a non-linear narrative form, adding details when they appear to spring to mind, as well as revisiting certain events on numerous occasions, such as her encounters with Grese.369 Reemphasising experiences in such a style adds confidence to the candid and accurate nature of her testimony. This view is supported by Eaglestone in regards to the memoir of Lengyl.370 Evidence of non-censoring is seen in all the testimonies explored despite concerns about the openness of gender- related crimes testimonies: Elias talks openly about her attempted abortion and infanticide,371 Lengyel discusses how infanticide was covered up by declaring the babies stillborn,372 Perl’s appreciation of the foetus, and Adelsberger talking of the need for more poison to kill the new-borns.373 Such frankness adds validity to the testimonies, as does the consistent experiences revealed between the women.
365 Remmler, Gender Identities and Remembrance of the Holocaust, p.171. 366 Waxman, Writing the Holocaust p.54. 367 Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War, p.xvii. 368 Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, p.35. 369 Ibid., pp.61-65. 370 Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, p.18. 371 Elias, Triumph of Hope, p.115;152-153. 372 Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.114. 373 Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, p.101
49 Yet, to ensure academic rigour in the study of the Holocaust, research needs to delve in the archives beyond the use of memoirs. In the thesis the accounts provided in the survivor testimonies were corroborated by multiple sources, including legislation relating to Rassenhygiene, communication between Nazi officials and war trial records. Additionally, despite the differences between the medics and mother that emerged, the collective testimonies of these women reaffirm the systematic attack on women and the way in which abortion and infanticide were consequences of this.
Conclusion: The ‘Blank Space’ of the Silent Divergent
What is established is that a lacuna exists in current gender historiography of the Holocaust. The common memory of women as selfless does prevail, yet there remains a silencing of experiences that diverge from the accepted discourse, namely the avoidance of the deep memories that did not depict socially constructed schemas of mothering or womanhood. In the current research this is the unspeakable and the incomprehensible reality of infanticide and abortion facilitated by women. 374 This is not to deprecate scholarship in gender history as it is the endeavour of the doctrine to reject universal accounts of Holocaust experiences that exposes the different challenges faced by men and women in the camps. Yet, by placing further emphasis on the study of issues of deep memory, more emotive and morally challenging issues, and embracing a more idiographic perspective to survival we can contribute to deconstruction of ‘truth’.375
Exploring in more depth the variations in experiences presented by the medics and mothers was beyond the scope of the current research. However, what emerges is specific areas for future comparative research in gender historiography, specifically targeted analysis on the differences between experiences of groups of women in the camps. For example, research could look at the impact of the gendercidal ideology between the medics and mothers, or women in the Roma camps vs. those in the Familienlager. Comparison could also consider how pre-war experiences relating specifically to reproduction impacted reactions to challenges of the double bind. Collectively what is ascertained is that there remains a multiplicity of research opportunities focusing on the idiographic realities of specific groups of individuals in the concentration camps. In this light, what the current research has identified is the ongoing need for gender historiography to
374 The National Archives, Kew Ref: FO 1060/95 Disposition 112, Nuremberg Trials 1945-1947, 375 Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, p.2.
50 push research objectives beyond the realms of collective narratives, further embracing the rejection of a universal approach the Holocaust.
In conclusion, the ongoing objective for gender historiography is lucid. To continue to give voice to strong women. Brave women. Women who survived through whatever means necessary. To not shy away from exposing silenced truths that have been hidden due to their incomprehensible nature. And who are we to judge women who made choiceless choices made in a life caged and restrained by poisonous politics enacted by poisonous men? Our job is not to make conjectures about morality. Nor should we consider these women as anything but victims of gendercidal ideology. Our endeavour should be to find and listen to the multitude of realities. To fill the lacuna of female Holocaust experiences. To give voice to the divergent.
51
Primary Source and Archive References
The Centre for Jewish History, New York Lucie Adelsberger Collection 1947-1994.
KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau Archives, Dachau Interview with Miriam Rosenthal Unpublished Dachau survivor manuscript
The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, New York Interview with Olga Lengyel
Published survivor testimonies Adelsberger, L., Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story (Suffolk, 1997). Elias, R., Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel (New York, 1998). Hart-Moxon, K., Return to Auschwitz (Thirsk, 1981). Lengyel, O., Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz (Chicago, 1947). Perl, G., I was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York, 1948).
The National Archives, Kew Heinrich Himmler Posen speeches Nuremberg trial records
The United Nations, New York Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington
Interview with of Katalin Karpati Interview with of Lilly Friedman Oral Testimony of Ruth Elias, 1979 Photograph archive of Ruth (Huppert) Elias NSDAP correspondence papers Ruth and Kurt Elias correspondence papers
Wiener Library of Holocaust and Genocide studies, London Eichmann Trial Collection
Yad Vashem Nuremberg Laws Correspondence between Vicktor Brack and Heinrich Himmler
52
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