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Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust
Neither before, during, nor after the Holocaust have women been silent about the experiences that left them forever marked by the Final Solution. Here are 28 selections, some long out of print and some written this year, brought together to intensify an awareness of the depths of the Holocaust's tragedy.
435 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1993
12 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Carol Rittner
21 books4 followersCarol Rittner is an American nun and Holocaust historian. She is a Distinguished Emerita Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust Studies at Stockton University.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 13, 2020
"In the beginning was the Holocaust. We must therefore begin again." - Elie Wiesel
"To reconstruct the research on women and the holocaust, we must begin with new questions" - Joan Ringelheim
"[The Holocaust] remains out there, a moral, political, and theological black hole from which no good will come." -Zachary Braiterman (https://jewishphilosophyplace.com/201...)
Ringelheim's essay, from which her quote above comes, should have been at the beginning! The editors themselves say that almost all of their material concerns Auschwitz, which is fine, as that was what was available before the fall of the USSR. But the editors didn't show any sort of doubt about the portrait that they had painted in the first two sections of the book, entirely composed of accounts from survivors. So the Auschwitz-centric nature of the book, as well as the potrayal of life during the Holocaust (more on that below), seemed very old-fashioned, very much what books like Bloodlands are pushing back against.
The accounts about the woman freezing on the train and of the women blowing up the crematoria (a story that I had maybe heard of once or twice before, not enough) were very affecting. I got a sense from these stories of how ghetto and camp and partisan resistance were all connected, and not separate things, which I guess had unconciously been how I'd thought of them before.
Vera laska refers to herself as a gatherer or memories. Irena Klepfisz has called herself a keeper of accounts - how do the tasks of the historian and the survivor intersect?
I am curious how the writers of the camp memoirs approach writing their stories, whether they felt that they need to tell the hopeful stories to counteract the common wisdom about the inhumanity of the camps.
Ringelheim's essay puts an interesting twist on the hopeful stories that precede it (although obviously not all of them are hopeful). Her introduction on the connection between 'cultural feminism' and survivor's memoirs is also very powerful. The other scholarly essays on the disparities between male and female victims were also very interesting - a large-scale view that provided a different persepctive than the survivor's tales.
Ringelheim takes a higher level view of women during the holocaust, and positions them in Primo Levi's grey zone, where they are all navigating different compromises in order to stay alive. For example, the 'families' and close knit groups that survivors recall might not have been so wonderful for the people who were not part of them. I think she's right, and this is one place where the reliance on memoir makes history much harder. The point is not to say that the people who survived were bad people, as she makes clear, but she does sort of snap you out of your haze of thinking that there was hope in Auschwitz, because the people who are telling us that there was hope are the ones who survived. The questions she asks the reader at the end were formatted the same way that Klepfisz asked questions in one of her essays in Nice Jewish Girls.
"Q8. Did anyone really survive the Holocaust?" This made me think of Irena Klepfisz's friend, Elza Frydrych Shatzkin, who died by suicide at age 26 in NY after surviving the war. She was a writer, and one of her stories is in Tribe of Dina. But many who 'survived' and many who didn't also left stories, even if we can't access them today. That material would be illuminating in a different way than the material in this book.
"To reconstruct the research on women and the holocaust, we must begin with new questions" - Joan Ringelheim
"[The Holocaust] remains out there, a moral, political, and theological black hole from which no good will come." -Zachary Braiterman (https://jewishphilosophyplace.com/201...)
Ringelheim's essay, from which her quote above comes, should have been at the beginning! The editors themselves say that almost all of their material concerns Auschwitz, which is fine, as that was what was available before the fall of the USSR. But the editors didn't show any sort of doubt about the portrait that they had painted in the first two sections of the book, entirely composed of accounts from survivors. So the Auschwitz-centric nature of the book, as well as the potrayal of life during the Holocaust (more on that below), seemed very old-fashioned, very much what books like Bloodlands are pushing back against.
The accounts about the woman freezing on the train and of the women blowing up the crematoria (a story that I had maybe heard of once or twice before, not enough) were very affecting. I got a sense from these stories of how ghetto and camp and partisan resistance were all connected, and not separate things, which I guess had unconciously been how I'd thought of them before.
Vera laska refers to herself as a gatherer or memories. Irena Klepfisz has called herself a keeper of accounts - how do the tasks of the historian and the survivor intersect?
I am curious how the writers of the camp memoirs approach writing their stories, whether they felt that they need to tell the hopeful stories to counteract the common wisdom about the inhumanity of the camps.
Ringelheim's essay puts an interesting twist on the hopeful stories that precede it (although obviously not all of them are hopeful). Her introduction on the connection between 'cultural feminism' and survivor's memoirs is also very powerful. The other scholarly essays on the disparities between male and female victims were also very interesting - a large-scale view that provided a different persepctive than the survivor's tales.
Ringelheim takes a higher level view of women during the holocaust, and positions them in Primo Levi's grey zone, where they are all navigating different compromises in order to stay alive. For example, the 'families' and close knit groups that survivors recall might not have been so wonderful for the people who were not part of them. I think she's right, and this is one place where the reliance on memoir makes history much harder. The point is not to say that the people who survived were bad people, as she makes clear, but she does sort of snap you out of your haze of thinking that there was hope in Auschwitz, because the people who are telling us that there was hope are the ones who survived. The questions she asks the reader at the end were formatted the same way that Klepfisz asked questions in one of her essays in Nice Jewish Girls.
"Q8. Did anyone really survive the Holocaust?" This made me think of Irena Klepfisz's friend, Elza Frydrych Shatzkin, who died by suicide at age 26 in NY after surviving the war. She was a writer, and one of her stories is in Tribe of Dina. But many who 'survived' and many who didn't also left stories, even if we can't access them today. That material would be illuminating in a different way than the material in this book.
December 5, 2014
Painful, but utterly worth it.
Read
May 17, 2024allowing myself to record this for archival reasons, read pages 85-97 "ordinary women in nazi germany: perpetrators, victims, followers, and bystanders" by gisela bock and pages 187-207 "voices of interpretation" by marion a. kaplan and for my women, war, and terror class
November 29, 2018
Hard reading but so worth it.
August 16, 2022
A hard read. Half storytelling half research review.
August 1, 2024
This book was very tough for me to finish. Personally I had horrible nightmares... But I read about the female perspective in such a horrible environment as well.
April 17, 2011
This book is, understandably, difficult to read. Nevertheless, it brings to light issues of the Holocaust I had never considered before. Specifically the focus of the book is on how Jewish women experienced the Holocaust differently than Jewish men and how these women may have been even more at risk due to Nazi ideology.
The book is broken into three parts. The first part, "Voices of Experience," is comprised of stories from Jewish women who lived during the Holocaust. Some of the women survived, some did not. The other parts of the book are mostly articles written by historians.
Overall the book is put together well and serves an important purpose in showing that the victims of the Holocaust did not all have the same experience. My one, rather nit-picky, complaint comes from the fact that the editors' notes preceding each reading are often unnecessary and generally only regurgitate what the reading itself has to say. (Though these notes are helpful in providing background information for the women in the "Voices of Experience" part of the book.)
I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Holocaust or in Women's History in general.
The book is broken into three parts. The first part, "Voices of Experience," is comprised of stories from Jewish women who lived during the Holocaust. Some of the women survived, some did not. The other parts of the book are mostly articles written by historians.
Overall the book is put together well and serves an important purpose in showing that the victims of the Holocaust did not all have the same experience. My one, rather nit-picky, complaint comes from the fact that the editors' notes preceding each reading are often unnecessary and generally only regurgitate what the reading itself has to say. (Though these notes are helpful in providing background information for the women in the "Voices of Experience" part of the book.)
I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Holocaust or in Women's History in general.
November 9, 2015
Women experienced the Holocaust differently than men because they also experienced sexism as well as racism. Males were considered more important so with limited funds available more Jewish men left Europe before the "final solution" was implemented while women remained behind to take care of aging parents. Secondly, Males stood better chances of being chosen for slave labor. Women with children or pregnant were immediately 'selected' for execution. Aryan women for the most part became the stereo-typical dumb blonde, providing a calm home life for their Aryan husbands with no discussion of what they were doing. They kept the private sphere separate from the public.
Women handled captivity differently. They would form friendships, share food, and help each other by providing as much physical and psychological as they could. Men might form friendships but not as deep as those formed by women. This book is important in providing a view different from the male dominated narrative of the war.
Women handled captivity differently. They would form friendships, share food, and help each other by providing as much physical and psychological as they could. Men might form friendships but not as deep as those formed by women. This book is important in providing a view different from the male dominated narrative of the war.
February 27, 2012
A very informative look at women's experiences during the Holocaust. It includes personal stories from survivors ranging from arrival in the camp to life in the camp; perspectives from perpetrators; and the differences between men's and women's experience during the Holocaust. I would highly recommend this book for those interested in the Holocaust and Women's Studies.
August 13, 2008
This is a powerful first hand account of women who survived the holocaust concentration camps and their experiences. I studied this extensively in college and after awhile thier stories were so real I began having nightmares. These are strong women.
February 26, 2011
These true accounts were harrowing, but it was hard for me to jump from story to story. I did not read the second half.
Read
March 26, 2011trade paper
June 11, 2014
excellent!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews