Women and the Holocaust
August 5, 2008 10:06 AM Subscribe
Women and the Holocaust is a site about women's experiences in the Holocaust. It has poetry, testimonials, personal reflections, tributes, essays and more.
See also (background).
What exactly is your point? Alexey Vayner is a con artist, so we shouldn't believe anything bad happened to women in WWII? Please tell me you're not just shitting in a Holocaust thread.
posted by languagehat at 11:15 AM on August 5, 2008
What exactly is your point? Alexey Vayner is a con artist, so we shouldn't believe anything bad happened to women in WWII? Please tell me you're not just shitting in a Holocaust thread.
posted by languagehat at 11:15 AM on August 5, 2008
So...what was unique in women's experiences during the holocaust, as opposed to the horrors that all survivors faced?
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:50 PM on August 5, 2008
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:50 PM on August 5, 2008
The didn't use internet explorer, and so had access to an entire database of their own stories.
posted by yhbc at 1:01 PM on August 5, 2008
posted by yhbc at 1:01 PM on August 5, 2008
"Women and the Holocaust is a site about women's experiences in the Holocaust. It has poetry, testimonials, personal reflections, tributes, essays and more."
And also the world's worst idea for a men's magazine.
posted by klangklangston at 4:25 PM on August 5, 2008
And also the world's worst idea for a men's magazine.
posted by klangklangston at 4:25 PM on August 5, 2008
Didn't expect to enjoy the site but it's so well put together and the histories gripping in their details.
grobstein's mentioning of Alexey Vayner's notorious past adds a strange and somewhat mysterious aspect to the site. My first thought was that narcissists, whose pathological lying, grandiosity and entitlement issues almost always get them into trouble, are also capable of constructive and wonderful creations, which may not redeem them in an intimate relationship but may in a larger social context.
The excellent, if schmaltzy, film, Life Is Beautiful, depicted what it was like to be a father of a young child in a concentration camp, also what it was like for a husband ripped from his wife, seeing the mother of his child imprisoned. This added a new dimension to my understanding the emotional impacts on people incarcerated there.
In the preface to the site it says:
If any policy could be considered a "victim equalizer", it is genocide. Every Jew was equally a victim in the genocide of the Holocaust. Consequently, it is not surprising that most perspectives on the Holocaust have been gender neutral or seemed to erase gender as a category of analysis. Likewise, it is no wonder that any emphasis on gender seems irrelevant and/or even irreverent.
And then this interesting statement:
Then again, one might be incredulous that gender has not been of greater interest. There is something unusual in the intention to kill every woman and child along with every male from a targeted community. The Nazi so-called "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," was one of the first times in history the the female population wasn't treated primarily as "spoils". It was one of the rare historical moments when women and children were consciously and explicitly sentenced to death in at least equal measure with men.
...However, Jewish women carried the extra burdens of sexual victimization, pregnancy, childbirth, rape, abortion, the killing of newborns, and often the separation from children.
I think that last sentence makes a valid point in the creation and particular significance of this site.
posted by nickyskye at 4:55 PM on August 5, 2008 [2 favorites]
grobstein's mentioning of Alexey Vayner's notorious past adds a strange and somewhat mysterious aspect to the site. My first thought was that narcissists, whose pathological lying, grandiosity and entitlement issues almost always get them into trouble, are also capable of constructive and wonderful creations, which may not redeem them in an intimate relationship but may in a larger social context.
The excellent, if schmaltzy, film, Life Is Beautiful, depicted what it was like to be a father of a young child in a concentration camp, also what it was like for a husband ripped from his wife, seeing the mother of his child imprisoned. This added a new dimension to my understanding the emotional impacts on people incarcerated there.
In the preface to the site it says:
If any policy could be considered a "victim equalizer", it is genocide. Every Jew was equally a victim in the genocide of the Holocaust. Consequently, it is not surprising that most perspectives on the Holocaust have been gender neutral or seemed to erase gender as a category of analysis. Likewise, it is no wonder that any emphasis on gender seems irrelevant and/or even irreverent.
And then this interesting statement:
Then again, one might be incredulous that gender has not been of greater interest. There is something unusual in the intention to kill every woman and child along with every male from a targeted community. The Nazi so-called "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," was one of the first times in history the the female population wasn't treated primarily as "spoils". It was one of the rare historical moments when women and children were consciously and explicitly sentenced to death in at least equal measure with men.
...However, Jewish women carried the extra burdens of sexual victimization, pregnancy, childbirth, rape, abortion, the killing of newborns, and often the separation from children.
I think that last sentence makes a valid point in the creation and particular significance of this site.
posted by nickyskye at 4:55 PM on August 5, 2008 [2 favorites]
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posted by plexi at 10:13 AM on August 5, 2008