Double Victims: Fictional Representatives of Women in the Holocaust

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal Volume 4 Article 6 Fall 2003 Double Victims: Fictional Representatives of Women in the Holocaust Shauna Copeland University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/inquiry Part of the European History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Copeland, Shauna (2003) "Double Victims: Fictional Representatives of Women in the Holocaust," Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 4 , Article 6. Available at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/inquiry/vol4/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact , . Copeland: Double Victims: Fictional Representatives of Women in the Holocau 14 INQUIRY Volume 4 2003 DOUBLE VICTIMS: FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN THE HOLOCAUST By Shauna Copeland Department of English Faculty Mentor: Mark E. Cory Professor of German and Director of European Studies Abstract: Traditional Holocaust studies have largely overlooked women's unique voices, instead treating the eloquent and moving narratives ofsuch renowned authors as Elie Wiesel and Tadeusz Borowski as definitive sources on "the" Holocaust experience. Recently, scholars have addressed the absence of women's voices in Holocaust studies, arguing that women's experiences, and their reactions to those experiences, were in fact very differentfrom those ofmen. This topic is a controversial one, and some scholars argue that women's suffering should not be focused upon in the context of an event that sentenced all Jews to death. With such controversy surrounding this issue, the thesis of this paper is that works of imaginative literature and film offer a way to test whether women's experiences should truly be held as distinct from those of men and, if so, what these differences were and whether they caused a profoundly different effect on womensurvivors.Inshort, were women "double victims" because of their gender? Following the premise that women authors and directors might prove to be more likely to portray wom~n's unique experiences, this paper compares works ofHolocaust literature and film by female authors and directors with a like number of distinctly male voices. This study pays particular attention to portrayals of what could be termed as women's "double victimization, " such as the separation between mother and child, the mother's frequent inability to save her child, and sexual humiliation and rape. Because of the sensitive nature of the types of victimization many women endured, this study determines whether each author or director has portrayed women's double victimization sensitively, or whether it seems that women victims have been exploited for prurient interest. While it seems that women authors and directors might have proven to be more perceptive of women's double victimization, this paper reveals that some male authors and directors have proven remarkably adept at depicting women's experiences effectively, yet sensitively. However, previously Published by ScholarWorks@UARK, 2003 overlooked female authors like Charlotte Delbo and Cynthia Ozickcan contribute greatly to a better understanding ofwomen's double victimization, often revealing new insight into Holocaust experiences that have been so widely documented by men. This paper's conclusion supports the arguments ofscholars who claim that women's unique experiences during the Holocaust are deserving of more study, while proving that the traditional canon ofHolocaust literature andfilm cannot provide a complete understanding of the complex phenomena of victimization that occurred during the Holocaust. This study will become increasingly important as the literature andfilm ofthe Holocaust move farther into the domain of popular culture, challenging audiences and artists alike to develop an understanding of and sensitivity to the double victimization of women. Chapter One: Introduction: Double Victimization Although Anne Frank, clearly the best-known author ofthe Holocaust, was a young woman, the fact is that most of those who have influenced our perception of the Holocaust have been men. Despite the many women who have contributed to the growing body of fiction, memoirs, poems, plays, and films about this period, the 'inoving and eloquent testimonies of such men as Elie Wiesel and 'Tadeusz Borowski h!lve come to be regarded as encompassing what all victims suffered during the Holocaust, and most studies have treated their narratives as definitive sources on "the", Holocaust experience. This very influence, however, has tended to mute the less strident voices of women authors such as Charlotte Delbo and Nelly Sachs. Recently scholars have begun to address the absence of women's voices in Holocaust studies, arguing that women's experiences, and their reactions to those experiences, were in fact very different from those of men. Joy Miller is one scholar who believes that overlooking such distinctly feminine issues is to negate these women's unique experiences. She writes that, ''The thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of women in Auschwitz reveal distinctions unique only to females" (Miller 185). Myrna Goldenberg concurs with this statement, explaining that we must 1 Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal, Vol. 4 [2003], Art. 6 ENGLISH: Shauna Copeland. Double Victims closely examine the memoirs of women as well as men in order to represent the Holocaust more fully (327). The subject of gendered differences in the Holocaust is a controversial one. Lawrence Langer is one Holocaust scholar who disputes the importance of gender during the Holocaust: "It seems to me that nothing could be crueler or more callous than the attempt to dredge up from this landscape of universal destruction a mythology of comparative endurance that awards favor to one group of individuals over another" (Preempting 58). The aim of scholars such as Miller, however, is not to award favor to women at the expense of men, but rather to include the often-overlooked experiences of women in Holocaust studies that have overwhelmingly focused on men. There is no doubt that every victim of the Holocaust man, woman, Jew, or gentile- was subjected to dehumanizing physical and mental torture. Women survivors, however, have depicted very different experiences from men in their autobiographical testimonies. In the case of Jewish victims, Joy Miller attributes these differences to the fact that women faced a "double jeopardy" of being not only Jewish, but Jewish women, the child bearers who alone had the ability to carry on the Jewish "race." Daniel Patterson is another scholar who holds this opinion; he writes that one unique aspect of the (...truncated)