Sexuality, Sexual Violence, and Sexual Barter in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s Camp

Cushman, Sarah M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-38998-7_7

Sarah M. Cushman⁶

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide ((PSHG))

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Abstract

Over the past decade, historical research has generated a nuanced understanding of the role of sexual violence during the Holocaust and of how those targeted experienced and responded to such violence. A point of contention is the problem of sexual agency. Some scholars contend that we cannot speak of sexual agency in the context of the Holocaust, particularly with regard to Jewish women. Others counter that women carved out space in which to make choices, including those regarding sexual activity—“choiceless choices,” but choices nonetheless. Focusing on Auschwitz-Birkenau, this chapter examines and analyzes sexual violence and sexual agency in the women’s camp. It argues that women’s experiences of sexuality were not exclusively those of violence and exploitation. Women engaged in a range of agency: seeking intimacy, pleasure, escape; and using sexuality to engage in “sexual barter.” Still, even as agency characterized some sexualized interactions between prisoners, some women were sexually exploited by other prisoners, men and women alike; and there is evidence of sexual assault and murder by male (and sometimes female) camp personnel.

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Notes

1.
Lawrence L. Langer, “The Dilemma of Choice in the Death Camps,” Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4, no. 1 (fall 1980): 53–58.
2.
Sarah Cushman, “How Deep the Gray: ‘Privileged’ Jewish Women Prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” in Women, the Holocaust, and Genocide, ed., Carol Rittner (Greensburg, PA: Seton Hill University, 2020), 64–74.
3.
Na’ama Shik implied that male prisoners supervised women prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They did not. See her essay, “Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” in Brutality and Desire, ed. Dagmar Herzog (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 234.
4.
For discussions of the historiographical dismissal of sexual violence during the Holocaust, see introductory chapters to the following books: Dagmar Herzog, ed., Sexuality and German Fascism (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2002); Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel, eds., Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010); and Zoe Waxman, Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017).
5.
See Christopher Browning, Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).
6.
My research to date has uncovered no trials in which SS men or male prisoners were tried for the sexual assault of women prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
7.
Regina Mühlhäuser, “The Historicity of Denial: Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the War of Annihilation, 1941–1945,” in Lessons and Legacies Volume XI: Expanding Perspectives on the Holocaust in a Changing World, eds., Hilary Earl and Karl A. Schleunes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 31–58.
8.
Other terms may also be appropriate. See Fionnuala Ni Aolain, “Sex-based Violence and the Holocaust—A Reevaluation of Harms and Rights in International Law,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 12, no. 43 (2000): 44f, “I used the term sex-based violence in conscious contradistinction to the phrase sexual violence…. I am persuaded that it [the latter] focuses attention on penetrative sexual acts, rather than on a wider variety of violent acts that are causally linked to the gender of the victim.”
9.
Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz 1270 to the Present (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1996), in particular, see Chap. 6, “A Concentration Camp,” 163–196.
10.
See Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz, Chap. 7, “IG Farben,” 197–235; Michael Thad Allen, “The Puzzle of Nazi Modernism: Modern Technology and Ideological Consensus in an SS Factory at Auschwitz,” Technology and Culture 7, no. 3 (July 1996): 527–571; Lore Shelley, “Introduction,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 1–11.
11.
Strzelecka, “Women,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, eds., Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1994), 405; Aolain, “Sex-based Violence and the Holocaust,” 55.
12.
For example, see Wadislaw Kielar, Anus Mundi—1500 Days in Auschwtiz-Birkenau (New York, NY: Times Books, 1972), 4i; Primo Levi, “If This Is a Man,” in The Complete Works of Primo Levi, ed., Ann Goldstein (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015), 18–24; and Elie Wiesel, Night (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1960), 32–35.
13.
Wiener Library, P.III.h (Auschwitz), 665; and Anni Sussman, 3–4.
14.
Gisella Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz (Salem, NH: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc., 1948), 82; and USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive (Shoah Foundation), 35356, Rose Berman.
15.
Fania Fenelon, Playing for Time (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1977), 94.
16.
Pelagie Lewinska, Twenty Months at Auschwitz (New York, NY: Lyle Stewart, Inc., 1968), 90.
17.
Debórah Dwork, Children with a Star (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), xxxvi.
18.
Vivien Spitz, Doctors from Hell (Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, LLC, 2005), 194; Alexander Mitlerisch et al., Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes, 52 and 144; and Alfred Pasternak, Inhuman Research: Medical Experiments in German Concentration Camps (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006), 241, 278, 279.
19.
Robert J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1986), 269. For more information on medical experimentation, see Chaps. 15–17.
20.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), RG-50.030∗0030, Magda Blau, 20.
21.
Wiener Library, P.III.h. (Auschwitz), 1047, “Augenaeugenbericht Tauba Bindel geb. Edelman,” 12–14.
22.
USHMM, RG-50.030∗0030, Magda Blau, 20.
23.
For more information on the participation of prisoner doctors in medical experiments, see Lifton, Nazi Doctors, Chap. 13, “Prisoner Doctors: Collaboration with Nazi Doctors,” and Chap. 12, “SS Doctors and Women Prisoner Doctors”; Irena Strzelecka, “Experiments,” in Auschwitz, 1940–1945, Volume II, The Prisoners—Their Life and Work, eds. Alexander Lasik et al. (Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000), 347–369.
24.
Regina G. Kunzel, “Situating Sex: Prison Sexual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8, no. 3 (2002): 259.
25.
Höss , “Autobiography of Rudolf Höss,” in Kl Auschwitz Seen by the SS, eds. Kazimierz Smolen et al. (Warsaw: Interpress Publishers, 1991), 63.
26.
Lewinska, Twenty Months, 111.
27.
Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1947), 197–198.
28.
Claudia Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, trans. Allison Brown (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996), 1.
29.
Shoah Foundation, Linda Breder, 22979.
30.
USHMM, RG-50.030∗0270, Rose Szywic Warner, 32.
31.
Shoah Foundation, 21978, Stephanie Heller.
32.
USHMM, RG-50.030∗0326, Susan Eisdorfer Beer, 32.
33.
Lengyel, Five Chimneys, 199.
34.
See Anna Hajkova’s seminal article, “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto,” Signs 38, no. 3 (spring 2013): 503–533.
35.
Perl, Doctor in Auschwitz, 78.
36.
Shoah Foundation, Dvora Bernath, 14240.
37.
Perl, Doctor in Auschwitz, 78–79.
38.
Shoah Foundation, Sientje Backer, 32515.
39.
Liana Millu, Smoke over Birkenau (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986), 171–174.
40.
Perl, Doctor in Auschwitz, 79.
41.
Rudolf Höss, “Autobiography,” 59.
42.
Millu, Smoke over Birkenau, 180.
43.
This idea is related to Foucault’s discussion of power as diffuse and simultaneously controlling and creative and that power necessitates resistance as its counterpoint. Resistance, however, cannot be absolute because resistance requires power of some kind. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979; Reprint, New York, NY: Pantheon, 1977); and Anne Cahill, “Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Female Body,” Hypatia 15, no. 1 (Winter, 2000): 47–48.
44.
USHMM, RG-50.030∗0326, Susan Eisdorfer Beer, 31.
45.
Elizabeth Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?,” 54, and Annette Timm, “Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity,” 226–227, both in Sexuality and German Fascism, ed. Dagmar Herzog (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2005).
46.
Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 270–271; Eugon Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them (New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1998. Reprint, London: Secker & Warburg, 1950), 126 (Kogon did not refer to Auschwitz specifically, but rather to camps generally); Christa Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos,” USHMM Summer Workshop on Gender and the Holocaust, Washington, DC, 2004, 3; Shoah Foundation, 32515, Sientje Becker. The brothel in Auschwitz was located in Block 24. Apparently, the camp administration planned to build another brothel in Birkenau, also for the use of privileged male prisoners. This structure was never built. See Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz, Plate 20.
47.
Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 54; Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos in the Camps,” 1; and Shoah Foundation, 39064, Fela Fonti-Grynbaum.
48.
Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 54. For a more in-depth discussion of camp brothels and Nazi prostitution policy, see Christa Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos in the Camps”; Christa Paul, Zwangsprostitution. Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im nationalsozialismus (Berlin , 1994); Christa Schulz, “Weibliche Häftlinge aus Ravensbrück in Bordellen der Männer-Konzentrationslager,” in Frauen in Konzentrationslager, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, eds. Claus Füllberg-Solberg, Martina Jung, Renate Riebe, and Martina Scheitenberger (Bremen, 1994), 135–146; Julia Roos, “Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policy,” in Sexuality and German Fascism, 9; and Robert Sommer, “Sexual Exploitation of Women in Nazi Concentration Camp Brothels,” in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, 45–60.
49.
Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos in the Camps,” 1. Ravensbrück was the primary source for prostitutes.
50.
Elizabeth J. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 57; Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos,” 1–2 and 4; and Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 48–49.
51.
Shoah Foundation, 39064, Fela Fonti-Grynbaum; Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos,” 2–3.
52.
Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 57; and Schikorra, “Prostitution and Bordellos,” 1–2.
53.
Shoah Foundation, 39064, Fela Fonti-Grynbaum.
54.
Shoah Foundation, 32515, Sientje Backer; Kielar, Anus Mundi, 140.
55.
Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 62.
56.
Hedgepeth and Saidel, Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, 2–4.
57.
Mühlhäuser, “Historicity of Denial,” 32–33.
58.
Shoah Foundation, 6992, Pearl Gottesman
59.
Shoah Foundation, 21203, Shary Newman.
60.
Shoah Foundation, 18748, Sophie Rosenthal.
61.
Naama Shik, “Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women,” 239.
62.
Shoah Foundation, 29854, Ann Lenga.
63.
Cahill, “Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body,” 45.
64.
Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, and Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (New York, NY: Zed Books, 2007), 13.
65.
Perl, Doctor in Auschwitz, 61–65; and Lengyel, Five Chimneys, 160–162.
66.
Höss, “Autobiography,” 63.
67.
Rare exceptions include Anna Hajkova, “Sexual Barter”; and Kirsty Chatwood, “Schillinger and the Dancer: Representing Agency and Sexual Violence in Holocaust Testimonies,” in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, 61–74.
68.
See Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston and New York, NY: Mariner Books, 2013); and Elissa Mailänder, Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–1944 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015).
69.
Yehuda Bauer, Death of the Shtetl (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). For an excellent discussion of agency and resistance, see Lissa Skitolsky, “Rethinking the Existential Condition of the Sonderkommando,” in Lessons and Legacies, Vol. XIII: New Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Social History, Representation, Theory, eds. Alexandra Garbarini and Paul B Jaskot (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018), 288–309.

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Sarah M. Cushman

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Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA
Thomas Kühne
Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA
Mary Jane Rein

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Cushman, S.M. (2020). Sexuality, Sexual Violence, and Sexual Barter in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s Camp. In: Kühne, T., Rein, M. (eds) Agency and the Holocaust. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38998-7_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38998-7_7
Published: 29 April 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38997-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38998-7
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