Has anyone read this book?

[RR88]

Because it's Holocaust Remembrance Day and Free Jinger is a site filled with feminists (I would hope!), I was wondering if anyone has read the book discussed in this article. Are there any other books on the subject that I could find? http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/new ... e-1.350950

[ladypuglover]

No, I haven't and I doubt I will for awhile. I'm not in a place to read about subects that could trigger a massive depression and that is one of my subject triggers. I bet it is a good book though and would like to read it when I'm in a healthier place.

[RR88]

No, I haven't and I doubt I will for awhile. I'm not in a place to read about subects that could trigger a massive depression and that is one of my subject triggers. I bet it is a good book though and would like to read it when I'm in a healthier place.

It's apparently available as an e-book through my university library. If I get around to it, I'll read it and tell you what I think of it (without too many details).

[debrand]

I've always thought it was odd that the Nazis were willing to commit genocide but not rape. Somewhere I read that this was because there were laws against the German soldiers having sex with their Jewish victims.

Afterward, a few of the conference attendees, including a pre-eminent Holocaust scholar, said there was no evidence on this subject and questioned whether sexual violence had really occurred.

I'm not certain why there is a blindness in this area. It is almost like the scholar is saying that women's sufferings don't matter if it includes sexual abuse.

I'm glad that these stories are finally getting told, but I wish that the victims hadn't been shamed into silence for so long.

[ilovetchotchkes]

I've always thought it was odd that the Nazis were willing to commit genocide but not rape. Somewhere I read that this was because there were laws against the German soldiers having sex with their Jewish victims.

I'm not certain why there is a blindness in this area. It is almost like the scholar is saying that women's sufferings don't matter if it includes sexual abuse.

I'm glad that these stories are finally getting told, but I wish that the victims hadn't been shamed into silence for so long.

Yeah but with all the other atrocities that happened, all that was done... I'm sadly not surprised there was sexual abuse, not at ALL. Rules or no rules against it.

[samurai_sarah]

edited because scratch that, the two sources for reading lists I had contradicted one another. Sorry about that.

[27randomscribbles]

I haven't but I'm putting it on my list of books to read when the semester is over. I am currently reading a book called "A Woman in Berlin" by Anonymous. It is a journal written by a woman in Berlin during the Red Army occupation of Berlin...and she tells a lot about how the women were raped and how they coped with it. The book is not about the Holocaust specifically but since I'm currently reading it for a class I figured I'd bring it up.

Interesting to note: The book received a lot of backlash when it was first released and so they stopped publishing it and the author said upon her death it could be re-published. Much of the backlash came from people who called the women sluts for the way they coped with the constant rapes, or for not "fighting enough". Slut shaming is terrible...and causes women to keep their stories to themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_in_Berlin

I would put a rape trigger warning on the book, for the record.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Yeah but with all the other atrocities that happened, all that was done... I'm sadly not surprised there was sexual abuse, not at ALL. Rules or no rules against it.

This. I have to admit I have never really been asked about the subject of rape in the Holocaust in particular to think about it, but I would be surprised if there is not raping (in all variety of forms) going on in ANY such war situation. Goodness knows there was plenty of it all over the place elsewhere in the war.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Interesting to note: The book received a lot of backlash when it was first released and so they stopped publishing it and the author said upon her death it could be re-published. Much of the backlash came from people who called the women sluts for the way they coped with the constant rapes, or for not "fighting enough". Slut shaming is terrible...and causes women to keep their stories to themselves.

Interesting. There is a disturbing trend now decades after the war is over by some people who still want to defend some old "patriotism" or whatever or don't want to believe that people did terrible things, to say that any people who had ANY sort of "voluntary" participation in brothels (such as economic pressure of do this or starve, particularly now that all the former wage earners in your family are dead) are somehow to blame for all of their own suffering and should never claim that the wonderful invader army did anything to them at all, they were happy participants or worse yet greedy.

It's disgusting.

[RR88]

From what I've read, several Nazi concentration camps housed brothels filled with sex slaves who were fed more than the other prisoners.