Objects like clothes tell a story: powerful. As for moving stories of women in the Holocaust, I want to recommend Phyllis Lassner's <Anglo-Jewish Women's Writing and the Holocaust: Displaced Witnesses>(2008) as well as the Jewish Women's Archive.
I am fascinated by this feeling of erasure because of course many women did pen memoirs (Kluger, Weissman Klein, Tec, Eger, Mozes Kor) but they have not landed in the zeitgeist in the same way. I have many thoughts on this, but I suspect what was true for my grandma was true for many other women: they were busy with survival after the war—recovering their education, finding relatives, starting new families, emigrating to new countries, learning new languages—all impacted by gender. Their works came out much later. (I have a memoir about how my grandma survived by hiding inside the camps, something she could not write herself, which comes out later this year. Sometimes it takes that long.) The interest in women's stories was also not the same in the mid-twentieth century as it is now. We are still learning to value women's voices. It's worth noting that Anne Frank did not publish her book; her dad did.
Recommend Liana Millu’s Smoke Over Birkenau and Magda Preiss' We Were Strangers if you haven't read those. Thank you for this post.
Thank you for this. Your writing style is powerful and gets the horror across along with the scholarship. The description of the clothes will ruin my day.
Interesting, thank you. Delbo’s third volume of her trilogy is an interesting case as the women in it (and 1 man) testify to their experience in the postwar period--and because the testimonies are of the aftermath of the war (rather than of the experience from within the camps, say), they are less constrained by public expectations (as testimony always already is), and what emerges is a tremendous emphasis on relationships, where they connect disconnect overlap and so on.
Such interesting points, Ruth. I’m curious about this Zine, and who publishes it and where? Or if it is old or new. I tried the link but it goes to an artist page where I don’t see the zines. Are they still available?
If you're in London! Colloquium on Jewish Women's Lives: Wolfson College, March 12, 11-7
Vera Fine Grodzinski Programme for Writing Jewish Women's Lives; Professors Vera Grodzinski, Kate Kennedy, Hermione Lee, Sarah Bernstein--among others.
Very sad to miss your talk next week about a subject that we both care about, but I'm in Israel for a few weeks.
Thanks for a very (sand and) intriguing post!
Objects like clothes tell a story: powerful. As for moving stories of women in the Holocaust, I want to recommend Phyllis Lassner's <Anglo-Jewish Women's Writing and the Holocaust: Displaced Witnesses>(2008) as well as the Jewish Women's Archive.
I am fascinated by this feeling of erasure because of course many women did pen memoirs (Kluger, Weissman Klein, Tec, Eger, Mozes Kor) but they have not landed in the zeitgeist in the same way. I have many thoughts on this, but I suspect what was true for my grandma was true for many other women: they were busy with survival after the war—recovering their education, finding relatives, starting new families, emigrating to new countries, learning new languages—all impacted by gender. Their works came out much later. (I have a memoir about how my grandma survived by hiding inside the camps, something she could not write herself, which comes out later this year. Sometimes it takes that long.) The interest in women's stories was also not the same in the mid-twentieth century as it is now. We are still learning to value women's voices. It's worth noting that Anne Frank did not publish her book; her dad did.
Recommend Liana Millu’s Smoke Over Birkenau and Magda Preiss' We Were Strangers if you haven't read those. Thank you for this post.
Thank you for this. Your writing style is powerful and gets the horror across along with the scholarship. The description of the clothes will ruin my day.
Hedgepeth, Sonja M., and Rochelle G. Saidel. Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the
Holocaust. Boston: Brandeis UP, 2010. Print.
.
Kaplan, Marion A. “Jewish Women in Nazi Germany: Daily Life, Daily Struggles, 1933-1939.”
Feminist Studies. 16.3 (Autumn 1990): 579-606. Print.
.
Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive. New York: Feminist Press, 2001. Print. Originally published in German
as Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend (Göttinghen: Wallstein Verlag, 1992).
.
Waxman, Zoë. “Rape and Sexual Abuse in Hiding.” Sexual Violence against Jewish Women
during the Holocaust. Eds. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel. Brandeis UP,
2010: 124-136. Print
Interesting, thank you. Delbo’s third volume of her trilogy is an interesting case as the women in it (and 1 man) testify to their experience in the postwar period--and because the testimonies are of the aftermath of the war (rather than of the experience from within the camps, say), they are less constrained by public expectations (as testimony always already is), and what emerges is a tremendous emphasis on relationships, where they connect disconnect overlap and so on.
Such interesting points, Ruth. I’m curious about this Zine, and who publishes it and where? Or if it is old or new. I tried the link but it goes to an artist page where I don’t see the zines. Are they still available?
If you're in London! Colloquium on Jewish Women's Lives: Wolfson College, March 12, 11-7
Vera Fine Grodzinski Programme for Writing Jewish Women's Lives; Professors Vera Grodzinski, Kate Kennedy, Hermione Lee, Sarah Bernstein--among others.
oclw.web.ox.ac.uk
Thank you for posting this, opening my eyes to the disparity, and thinking beyond my normal scope.