What We Learn, at Last: Recounting Sexuality in Women’s Deferred Autobiographies and Testimonies

Abstract

The range of sexual assaults, transactions, and exchanges during the Holocaust has only recently been openly discussed—both by the people who experienced and remember them, and by researchers and scholars. Scholars of sexuality during Holocaust and in other contexts have carved out useful distinctions and definitions for such things as transactional sex, sexual barter, forced prostitution, non-consensual sex, instrumental sex, rational sex, rape, and violation. The working out of these definitions is important to the study of the Holocaust, and of sexuality more broadly, to better understand these experiences and their psychological, social, and political aftereffects. Some survivors find these definitions useful in understanding their experiences, while others resist categorizing their own experiences under these rubrics. By examining deferred accounts, we come to understand past experiences, their effects on survivors, and the interpretive demands placed on these accounts by others.