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Abortion and Infanticide As Survival Strategies for Jewish Medics and Mothers in the Nazi Concentration Camps

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Abortion and Infanticide As Survival Strategies for Jewish Medics and Mothers in the Nazi Concentration Camps 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.
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