Gender Roles In The Holocaust

When examining gender and the holocaust, one must keep in mind the phrase “different horrors, same hell”. This is the very fitting title of a collection of essays examining gender and the holocaust. It is a very simple way of describing the gender differences during the holocaust. Although men and women were treated differently, one sex was not treated better than the other. It is important to view the Holocaust through both lenses, male and female. History is often told through the male perspective. The liberators became heroes and the women were ‘saved’. Women were mothers. Women were wives. Women in the holocaust played important roles and Ringelheim expanded on their specific difficulties having to deal with sexual advances, and being the bearers of the poisoned race. As Ringelheim says, “Consequently, without some focus on gender, it is impossible to understand the victimization of women in its many forms” (Ringelheim 344). The retelling of the Holocaust through a female perspective will reveal greater horrors than previously imagined because they are being told through a new perspective, the sense of hell is being seen through a different light. The female experience during the Holocaust differs from the male in many ways(do i need more specificity? sexual victimization, pregnancy and the burdens associated with it, intimate shaving), and it is essential to the greater understanding of the Holocaust to examine at it through women’s perspectives.

Women are mothers.

Women were grouped with children. In many instances the arrest of all males had taken place before women and children were taken (Eichengreen 13). In the oral history of Lucille Eichengreen she recounts how her mother acted when her father had been taken away. While living together still after her father had been taken, her mother remained hopeful although Lucille did not. The mothers were often left with their children initially and strived to remain hopeful but were torn down as time went

on.
This mother-child relationship directly affects people when in time they were taken to the camps. Even non-biological maternal instincts are often brought up when women recount their time in the Holocaust. Feinstein comes to the realization that women were often described using maternal words whereas men during the Holocaust were described as brotherly, no matter what the age gap. Feinstein states, “Women survivors automatically focused on activities involving homemaking and mothering,” (167) and she tries to determine whether this is a cultural bias or whether females actually acted in this way. Sisters became mothers cousins became mothers, women felt an obligation to care for those younger and more naive than they were. Perhaps this is because women and children were often grouped as one in the Shoah, and sent together to death. Perhaps it is due to cultural bias prevailing during the Shoah and women saw that their role was not to fight but to care for those around them. Either way there is a great schism between many female testimonies and male testimonies. “I was not ready for the role of mother. Sometimes it was more obligation than love that kept me linked to her. But if I had the choice, I would do it again,” says Faye Schulman(170), who in matter-of-fact terms states that she felt an obligation to take on the role of mother. The difference that is observed between men also taking “father-like” roles on, is that they rarely refer to them as “father-like” (170). This is why it is important to note the female experience in relation to motherhood and children. Oral histories of women directly refer to the feeling of obligation they had when caring for others.
There were many aspects of the Holocaust that made pregnancy unbearable. The physical strain of malnutrition made it difficult for women to become pregnant after the Holocaust(173), stripping them of their fertility and in many women’s minds their very identity as a woman/mother. Even if they did succeed in remaining pregnant, there was a mental fear and distrust of doctors and hospital that had been engrained in them during the Shoah, so many went through their pregnancy without proper medical care(172). This obligation and identity of motherhood which women felt during the Holocaust, was a source of motivation for life, and at many points if they were stripped of this, it was extremely devastating. When examining pregnancy there is a very blatant and important difference between the way men and women experience it. Men whom left a pregnant wife to go to camps or the ghetto, had no actual physical manifestation that could hinder their capability to survive. However, for pregnant women, surviving in the concentration camps was next to impossible. “The Nazi extermination
policies, however, had selected older women and those with young children for the gas chambers, so that very few women survivors had first-hand knowledge of childbirth” (172) further contributing to their irresolute ignorance and negligence that hindered the health of their fetus, often leading to miscarriage. Many women, realizing the severity of what could happen, inflicted abortions upon themselves that were fatal.