{"id":9413,"date":"2014-11-23T19:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=9413"},"modified":"2014-11-23T09:06:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-23T07:06:12","slug":"9413","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=9413","title":{"rendered":"The sexual violence that spurred women\u2019s resistance in the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The sexual violence that spurred women\u2019s resistance in the Holocaust<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

By Brian Schaefer<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Marisa Fox, left, Rachel Lithgow and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel at an AJHS panel discussion on women during the Holocaust, November 2014.(Credit: Jeff French Segall) <\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

A panel discussion and new exhibit at the American Jewish Historical Society probe the uniquely harrowing \u2013 and heroic \u2013 stories of women during the Holocaust.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

NEW YORK \u2013 On October 7, 1944, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz blew up a crematorium in an attempted revolt that, while ultimately futile, has become a powerful rebuttal to the claim that Jews succumbed to the Nazis without a fight. Many know this story but few know the names Roza Robota, Estera Wajcblum, Regina Szafirsztajn and Ala Gertner, four women who smuggled gunpowder under their fingernails and stitched it into the seams of their clothes to make the uprising possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their role has been diminished in historical accounts of the event, if mentioned at all, but a new exhibition by the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan, called \u201cOctober 7, 1944,\u201d seeks to reinsert them into the narrative. The exhibition, which opened last month on the 70th anniversary of the revolt and runs through December 30, makes its case in a most unorthodox way: It merges contemporary dance and archival material.<\/span>
\n \u201cHolocaust and dance are not common bedfellows,\u201d choreographer Jonah Bokaer told Haaretz. Bokaer, an internationally renowned artist, was commissioned by the historical society to make a 30-minute dance film inspired by the story that is projected on a wall of the exhibition.<\/span><\/p>\n

The film features four women moving through a stark, factory-like space. Unlike most exhibition films, which consist of archival footage in grainy black and white or static interviews, the modern look of Bokaer\u2019s piece creates a bridge to today and brings a sense of urgency to the room.<\/span>
\n An earlier dance film by Bokaer, also featuring four women, caught the eye of Rachel Lithgow, the director of the historical society and curator of the exhibit. It reminded her of the Auschwitz revolt (and is also included in this exhibition). She asked Bokaer if he would be interested in collaborating, but he was reluctant at first.<\/span>
\n \u201cHistorical material and performance can be a dangerous combo,\u201d he said. \u201cI generally don\u2019t touch it in my work.\u201d Yet he found himself drawn to the story and began to do research of his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

That research took him to Auschwitz, where he spent a week pouring over archival material about the revolt, with the help of the site\u2019s staff, and visiting the muddy crater where Crematorium 4 used to stand. He poured over record books, registration entries, name listings and key testimonies to verify information from the AJHS archive and dig deeper into the lives of these women, all of whom were executed in early January 1945, two weeks before Auschwitz\u2019s liberation<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u2018A little bit out of the box\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lithgow understood that the inclusion of abstract dance films in the exhibition could confuse or alienate visitors who were used to seeing the Holocaust treated in a more straightforward way. But after working at Holocaust museums and archives across the country for more than a decade, she realized that a new approach was needed to keep the stories relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to change with the times, to make the material accessible,\u201d Lithgow said. She admits that the current exhibition is \u201ca little bit out of the box,\u201d but reports that in the month and a half since its opening, it has drawn a record number of visitors, including younger people \u2013 like the elusive Brooklyn hipster.<\/span>
\n On a long table against the gallery\u2019s back wall, eight glass cases house artifacts such as written accounts of life in Auschwitz, military correspondence about the camp and a logbook with the name of Regina Szafirsztajn\u2019s father. Above each case is a slice of musical notation for the Bach Chaconne for solo violin, which plays in the background, and below each is a piece of a deconstructed violin. Together with the films, the exhibition is both informative and emotionally evocative.<\/span>
\n \u201cI want to start with kind of a meta-question,\u201d said Lithgow to an audience of about 40 people on a rainy November evening. \u201cWhich is: Why have women been left out of history? Specifically, Holocaust history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lithgow was moderating a panel conversation called \u201cGiving Women Their Place in Holocaust History,\u201d in connection with the exhibition. She was joined by journalist Marisa Fox; Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Richard Stockton College; and historian Rochelle Saidel, director of Remember the Women Institute, a cosponsor of the event.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of women\u2019s experiences during the Holocaust had to do with the biology of being a woman,\u201d Saidel said at the event. \u201cNot only vulnerability of sexual violence but menstruation and childbirth and forced abortion and forced sterilization. And all of these things are women\u2019s experiences that need to be talked about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Special stigma<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There are several reasons why such things have not been talked about, according to the panel. To begin with, women as historians \u201cis a phenomenon of the late 60s and 70s,\u201d said Lithgow, and the field of Holocaust studies in particular has long been dominated by men. Only in 1983, when Esther Katz and Joan Ringelheim led a conference at Yeshiva University\u2019s Stern College about women\u2019s experiences in the Holocaust, did the subject begin to be widely addressed.<\/span>
\n \u201cIt was controversial,\u201d said Saidel. More books and scholarly articles followed in the 1990s and 2000s. But as the documentation of survivors\u2019 stories ramped up, many interviewers were either too uncomfortable or simply untrained to ask about sexual violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, while Holocaust survivors have been encouraged to talk about their general experience, there is still a special stigma against the sexual violence that women suffered.<\/span>
\n \u201cThere was a tremendous amount of shame,\u201d said Fox, whose mother was a survivor. Many women who survived were often asked with distrust \u201cWhat did you do to survive?\u201d she added. \u201cThey were looked upon with great suspicion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Fox also told of her experience visiting Auschwitz to research women\u2019s experiences and finding very little direct testimony. What she did find was a dismissive attitude from some of the historians there. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t believe how little women\u2019s narratives count, especially at a place like Auschwitz,\u201d she said.<\/span>
\n The panelists pointed out that much of the violence against women at the concentration camps continues in some parts of the world today. \u201cThese stories and the stories of the women in the exhibit really, unfortunately, have a lot of resonance today and in many other instances of genocide,\u201d said Lithgow.<\/span>
\n Modern-day genocides, in Bosnia for example, or more recently in Sudan, use sexual violence against women as a tool of physical and cultural destruction. Acknowledging this often changes how one understands the overall campaign of violence, said von Joeden-Forgey.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrequently when we begin to do research on women\u2019s experiences in the Holocaust or genocide, we begin to see the crime differently,\u201d she said. \u201cNew things come to light. The behavior of men can be addressed or analyzed in a new way. It changes our view of history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The sexual violence that spurred women\u2019s resistance in the Holocaust By Brian Schaefer A panel discussion and new exhibit at the American Jewish Historical Society probe the uniquely harrowing \u2013 and heroic \u2013 stories of women during the Holocaust. NEW YORK \u2013 On October 7, 1944, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz blew up a crematorium in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9413"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9438,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions\/9438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}