Damairus Law

04/6/15

Professor Werz-Orbaugh

Research Review: Draft

The Holocaust was a traumatic experience to the Jews that lived in Germany in that time period. We have all heard the stories of famine oppression and killing yet not many have heard the stories of the corrupt SS officers raping women and forcing them into prostitution. Two articles that I found useful in my writing were Elizabeth D. Heineman writes Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable and Steven T. Katz Thoughts on the intersection of Rape and Rassenchande during the Holocaust.

During the Holocaust women were forced to work in brothels (sex houses) where they would have to have sex with an average of ten men a day (H1) , some of these girls being as young as 14. They ladies were often times treated better than your average concentration camp woman making most women prefer to work there even though it was degrading and violating (H2). They did not have any source of contraception yet were not allowed to get pregnant either. Women had to get an abortion at the moment they found out they were pregnant. If they decided to give birth to the child they would put both the mother and the new born inside of the gas chamber (H3).

Hitler did not allow NAZI to sleep with the women, only prisoners and workers were able to in hopes that it would give them motivation to work harder. Yet this did not stop many SS officers from raping the women (S1). One of the few women interviewed said that she had hated the man that would come in her room and regularly rape her yet she got use to it. He would give her things like food and keep her out of the gas chamber, her view of the situation as stated, “I did not think of the future then. I lived one day at a time. Whatever I did was my way of surviving. (S3)”

One thing that I noticed that they had done was put an extreme focus on making the Jews feel powerless. Some of the women that were raped had families. They would have to listen to their mother or sister being sexually assaulted and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it (S3). I think that this strategy helped add to the gloom of the situation in that people were not just starving, they also had no capabilities to protect the people that they care about which hurts more than not being able to protect yourself.

After the Holocaust, the women who had to become prostitutes were shamed by the community and did not speak of the events that happened there(S4). Most women’s fears prevented them from doing interview which kept the information about the events that took place limited.