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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 a great amount of 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 a new perspective to camp experiences from a mother’s, daughters, aunts, 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 in the shift of gender roles but also within resistance and

survival.

When this mass exodus took place, it impacted all sorts of groups of people in Germany,

the Jews respectively faced mass extinction through motivations fueled by anti-Semitism. With

1
Leitner, Isabella., and Leitner, Irving A. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. New York: Crowell, 1978.
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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 considered that assisted this

survival?

Examination of literatures point out that with persecutions, a unique genre arises in

regard to 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, 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 greatest 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

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

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.
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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 writing, 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

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.
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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.

Although the narrative of Langer’s argument creates a valid 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
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Mitchell, Holocaust, 146.
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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 identify with their punishment and

treatments. As Myrna Goldenberg states, “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

6
Mitchell, Holocaust, 189.
7
Mitchell, Holocaust, 365.
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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 Ravensbrück 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.

All in all, when looking at deeper perspectives of the holocaust, gender studies is not only

highly recommended, but separate gender analysis is just as 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 greater but rather how did each genders suffrage shape the way they coped with the

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 wives, daughters, and ‘ladies’ were
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Anderson, "Jewish Women in the Concentration Camps: Physical, Moral, and Psychological Resistance". 5-7.
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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 greatly? 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.