Leonard Martinez

October 31st, 2019

Dr. Toth – HST 495

Final Paper

Weathering Exodus: Defying Death Camp Expectations with Life in Sisterhood

“If you are sisterless, you do not have the pressure, the absolute responsibility to end the day alive.” 1 A
statement by Holocaust survivor Isabella Leitner from death camp Auschwitz, the weight behind these
words carry much stimulus to the topic of investigation and examination for women’s experiences
during the Nazi Era. Although much historical literature focuses on gender studies in the realms where
male experiences are easily categorized and examined due to the expansive amounts of data recorded
through that perspective, new information in forms of memoirs and camps descriptions have given rise
to new dimensions of Holocaust studies. One awakening argument is how Jewish men’s experiences
were not the same as Jewish women’s and therefore a whole new perspective of study is unveiled to
find women’s Jewish studies give new perspective to camp experiences from motherly, daughter, aunt,
and feminist Jewish outlook. Through these outlooks, the traditional role of a women in a household
through 1933-1939 is shifted, mass exodus occurs having Jewish families separated and destined to
death camps, and we see a rise in not only gender roles shifts but also resistance and survival.

As this mass exodus took place impacting all sorts of groups of people in Germany, the Jews respectively
faced mass extinction through motivations fueled by anti-Semitism. With such monstrosities, little hope
was stored in surviving the destinies upon the Jewish people. Better yet, the homosexual community,
handicapped and mentally disabled, the Gypsies, Jehovah witnesses, political opposition groups, and
anyone who is of different color or ethnic origin of Aryan decent all faced similar outcomes. Although
such depiction seems utterly impossible to accommodate, as history has shown today, the agendas
pushed fourth by the Nazi party shocked the world. Making it one of the darkest eras known to
mankind, one reflects and asks how anyone survived Hitler’s Germany and conquest. Better yet for
those who did survive, what was the narrative behind it? Does the tale show the factors taken into
account that assisted this survival?

Examination of literatures point out that with persecutions, a unique genre arises of Jewish women
having to survive the outcomes they are in by not only adapting to them but conquering them. Although
this scrutiny tries to identify, as previously mentioned, that these persecutions come into arguments of
both Jewish males and females suffered similarly, memoirs and evidence suggest that there is half truth
in such statements. There were a variety of factors that assisted men and women’s survival, therefore
showing that all Jews were affected by the holocaust to even children and kids. Especially in the biggest
aspect of what assisted mass genocide, the Concentration camps, and the shift in society overall, “Jews
in the Holocaust resorted to unconventional forms of resistance to survive the attempted annihilation of
their race.”2. Resistance is key to relating such events between both sexes. Not stating that Jewish men
1
Leitner, Isabella., and Leitner, Irving A. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. New York: Crowell, 1978.
2
Anderson, Anna Marie. "Jewish Women in the Concentration Camps: Physical, Moral, and Psychological
Resistance." Order No. 1523769, University of Houston, 2013.
http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/docview/
1437024031?accountid=4485.
did not have their own ways of resistance throughout the holocaust but stating that in relation to
speaking about the traditional Jewish women in the time of Hitler’s regime, unconventional forms of
traditional ‘Resistance’ are shown. With relation to old social norms and gender roles along with new
defined ones due to extreme factors, the old view of armed resistance is challenged, traditional roles
transform to adaptations, and now we see how women, through gender examination and environments
in deathcamps, form resistance and adaptations in order to weather out jarring conditions of their
concentration camps.

This brief synopsis of this paper will encompass the sole focus of women’s forms of adaptations and
resistance for survival through the early stages of German society, to the shift in societies once Nazi
power became influence, to the focus of camp life and its experiences. Although as many respective
historians agree that gender difference studies tend to be new studies and are controversial, the
accounts of women’s experiences through various platforms are no longer unheard. As much as scholars
argue about women and men’s experiences, Raul Hilberg states "The road to annihilation was marked
by events that specifically affected men as men and women as women” 3. Therefore, now more recent
scholars agree with Hilberg’s statement and see that when we view the holocaust (like this paper
focuses on camps) through its historical context, a healthy balance through similarities and differences
in both sexes needs to be accounted for to grasp the full experience of the Jew.

Such historians like Lawrence L. Langer are adamant about the risks of the inclusion of women’s studies
in the holocaust and these new studies. In his Gendered Suffering? Women in Holocaust Testimonies,
Langer gives great analyses of survivor testimonies and warns that “isolating gender as a separate part
of the holocaust may lead to the favoring of on groups suffering over another.” 4 Although his statement
holds some truth, when viewing women’s experiences in survival and adaptations we are not
researching to see who had is easier or harder in both sexes but rather to avoid categorizing experiences
as the same. Through such practice, the act of savagery the holocaust was is not diminished but rather
enhanced through such experiences, as stated earlier, through the lenses of not only both sexes but the
gypsies, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender), the handicapped, and so forth. Reading
Langer’s writing, we see that contradictory statement to his dilemma births when he acknowledges that
suffrage involved “all sorts of victims” but emphasizes that there is nothing “crueler or more callous that
the attempt to dredge up from this landscape of universal destruction a mythology of comparative
endurance that awards favor to one group over another” 5. In his analyses he focuses on the story of a
pregnant lady in a concentration camp or the experience of having to be married to a man and seeing
him after the war was over even after experiencing turmoil during separation in the Holocaust. Such
analyses only prove that separate studies need to be examined because men did not conceive and have
to bear the atrocities pregnant women went through when giving birth and having their child executed
in front of them or the mental trauma of what it means to lose your husband and find confinement in
your mother or your sister to try and survive emotionally. Men and women’s experiences in the
holocaust are clearly shown to be different and therefore in order to preserve the catalyst of the
holocaust, the event should be viewed by gender.

3
Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945. 1st ed. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
4
Joseph R. Mitchell, Holocaust: Readings and Interpretations (New York: Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 2001), 375.
5
Mitchell, Holocaust, 146.
Although the narrative of Langer’s argument really creates valuable argument, historiography for Jewish
women’s experience in the holocaust have become more substantial after the 1980’s. Various feminist
studies conducted by Marion Kaplan really highlight the Jewish Women Nazi experience in Germany
through their life and struggles. Kaplan shows that not only does the study of separate sexes provide
exceptional lenses for viewing the holocaust to emphasize the seriousness and reality of the event but
gives shocking information to view the character of Jewish woman as strong and adaptable to resistance
and holocaust living. In Kaplans Keeping Calm and Weathering the Storm: Jewish Women’s Responses to
Daily Life in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, “according to observers, women seemed more accommodating
and adaptable than men and they had fewer inhibitors” (paraphrased) 6. Such statement shows that
although Kaplan recognizes both sexes as contributors in the experiences of the Jewish people in the
holocaust to emphasize crucial realities of such horrific events, he observes in his studies that when the
difficult times of testing will and adaptability to overcome obstacles in your average Jewish family or
communities, women stood out in the wake of the storm due to their quick adaptability and
perseverance with calmness. Another observation is the treatment of both sexes and how the treatment
of women specifically aimed at targeting women’s identify with their punishment and treatments. As
Myrna Goldenberg states (another author that investigates gender punishment and treatments during
the holocaust) “Nazi policy… was not gender specific, Nazi practice was” 7. Additionally, Kaplan speaks
about the gender roles that were in place for traditional Jewish families and in order to highlight roles
reversals as a mean for not only survival as his main thesis but resistance.

Like Kaplan, identifying that resistance took place in many shapes and forms from a variety of groups
impacted by the holocaust, Dr. Anna Marie Anderson goes further beyond just the adaptations and
digests the forms of resistance in non-conventional forms that would define resistance today. Such acts
of resistance show the adaptability of woman to survive under their varying circumstances under Nazi
reign but also the ways, like Kaplan, to weather their storms. Specifically focusing on women, Anderson
emphasizes the roles of community and sisterhood in way to combat emotional and phycological
trauma but also mean of adaptability to combat various forms against women’s survival like hygiene,
famine, and violence8. Lastly, another historian that ties in both similar perspective into one by analyzing
camp survival in an all women death camp known as Ravensbruck and even Auschwitz is Myrna
Goldenberg. In her “Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women's Holocaust Narratives” the focus of
adaptability in relation to how men adapted really narrows in the focus of the community’s women
established and had to wait out condition in camps and society. Additionally, Goldenberg highlights how
women exploited social norms as they knew Nazi Ideology treated women differently from men due to
patriarchy and racism. such observations further the conversation even more on the importance of
separate gender studies to analyze the holocaust on a deeper perspective.

In all, when looking at deeper perspectives of the holocaust, gender studies is not only highly
recommended, but separate gender analyses is just as or even more important to captivate the true
reality of horrific acts that occurred through the lenses and hearts of those who were impacted.
Additionally, with analyzing adaptations and resistance we see a common perspective of traditional
Jewish women in the old era challenged and shifted. In this paper it will not be argued who suffered
more but rather how through each genders suffrage how this shaped the way they coped with he

6
Mitchell, Holocaust, 189.
7
Mitchell, Holocaust, 365.
8
Anderson, "Jewish Women in the Concentration Camps: Physical, Moral, and Psychological Resistance". 5-7.
holocaust. We will look at how Jewish women, with inhumane forms of separation and death,
treatment, life in their communities, transitions, and experiences in death camps, shaped their ways of
adaptations and resistance during a time of heavy oppression and anguish. Life in camps was different
for each gender as they were stripped of everything they had upon arrival and women, unlike the men,
underwent different experiences and yet adapted. Doing so, survival rates were higher for Jewish
women and old gender roles were reformed. But at what cost did adaptations and resistance come to
shape how identities as wife’s, daughters, and ‘ladies’ were now viewed? Were such non ‘lady’ like
actions inevitable? Why could men not do the same or better yet why did men and women’s
experiences though camps and transitions in social life differ so much? What advantage did women have
due to gender roles that men did not that added to advantage s in survival and resistance? Such
questions will be challenged, revised, and answered in this essay using a variety of credible sources to
ultimately show that this thesis goes beyond simple understanding and into better critical analyses of
the holocaust through separate sex experiences observations.