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Idealised or Ignored: Female Victims of the Holocaust

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Women in European Holocaust Films
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Abstract

This chapter focuses on female victims, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and examines the corresponding forms of silencing their experiences in Holocaust research. Firstly, it argues that the experiences of Jewish women have been framed by a narrow perspective that tends to idealise their behaviours while ignoring testimonies outside the norm. Secondly, it considers how the emphasis on the “double jeopardy” of Jewish women, meaning their double persecution as women and as Jews, shadowed other categories that, consequentially, became doubly silenced: for being women and for being “other” than Jews. Finally, four categories of non-Jewish victims of the persecution set in place by the Nazis are foregrounded: Gypsies, lesbians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and disabled people.

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Correspondence to Ingrid Lewis .

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Lewis, I. (2017). Idealised or Ignored: Female Victims of the Holocaust. In: Women in European Holocaust Films. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65061-6_4

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