Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women's Voices Under Nazi Rule by Beverley Chalmers

Author:Beverley Chalmers [Chalmers, Beverley]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Sexual Survivor Guilt

Societal perspectives following the Holocaust, particularly in Israel, could not readily accept the innocence of those who survived without impugning their moral integrity.[1274] Women were suspected - and condemned - for having survived through sexual exchange and were shunned in consequence, leading to their unwillingness to report such experiences.[1275] Survivor guilt, especially if their survival was associated with the use of sexuality, caused many to keep silent for years.[1276] As Ruth Bondy wrote: “In Israel Jews wanted to know: How did you stay alive? What did you have to do in order to survive? And in their eyes, a glimmer of suspicion: Kapo? Prostitute?”[1277] Some reactions to survivors included censure for women who survived as having - possibly - used their sexuality to save their lives.[1278] Helen Lewis, an Auschwitz survivor who returned to Prague, reports that, in 1946, while travelling on a crowded tram, her sleeves fell back while she was holding on to the overhead straps. A nearby man said loudly and distinctly, “Isn’t it funny how only the young and pretty ones have come back?” She reported that the implications were clear and “It hurt as much as anything we had survived. More.”[1279] This attitude persisted from the immediate post-war period into the late 1990s in Israel at least: Three Israeli films released between 1987 and 1997 continued to present the image of the whore-survivor: Tel-Aviv-Berlin (1987), Eretz Hadasha (1994) and Henrik’s Sister (1997).[1280]

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.