The way women in the Holocaust were treated has been overlooked and still is today. Horrible occurrences took place against women and their children. Gender played a big role in how someone would be treated. Women were subjected to discrimination and overall neglect. Doris Bergen, author of What Do Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Contribute, presents that “a collaborator grabs the child and throws him into the already burning building”. This happening is just one of the many tragedies that women faced. The Nazis had an effect on the Jews that took over their lives and they never went back to being the same. I will focus on what some people failed to notice about the Holocaust, and that is the treatment of women. The Holocaust took
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Once the 1930s came around, everything changed in Germany. Women had to cope with the abuse and had to turn it into their daily life and having to cope. Schools became an unsafe place for children to be because they were discriminated against, and stores did not want Jews anywhere near them. As Kaplan mentions, “victims…adapted to their roles by showing how abuse, insidiously and incrementally, became “normal” to some and familiar to all”. The Jews should have left sooner, but because they failed to do so women had to stay and staying was not pleasant in any way. Some had no hope. As being a women was not enough in these times, if a women were elderly they would kill them as well because this was known to be a “fatal combination”. The memoirs that the women wrote were about family and friends, and seemed to focus a lot on writing their children about the horrific time that they experienced. Although, times were not always told by victims, many stayed silent and did not want to recollect what happened to …show more content…
In the camp, women were sexually abused by guards and other prisoners. Often times women would take part in sexual activity for a way to stay alive. There is such an obvious power system in these types of camps, women are on the bottom and these Nazis were at the top. An interesting but not very pleasant statement by Bergen was that “prisoners who had survived a comparatively long time and had become camp veterans could engage in exploitation because of the relative power they accumulated”. Justifying sexual abuse with how long an individual has survived does not seem to be all that right. Even though nothing seemed to be fair with the Holocaust. Genocide is unmerited. During the Holocaust, and in the death camps especially, Nazis would target women in a way that it would effect their future. What is meant by that, is the Nazis would directly look to hurt pregnant women because if the babies were killed it would maybe reduce the amount of Jews in the future. “The SS appear to have reserved special tortures for pregnant women”, and that was to beat them and whip them, along with a lot of other tortures methods to make the women suffer (Joeden‐Forgey, 2012). As soon as the babies were born, they were immediately murdered with no hesitation. In my opinion, this was just to make the birth giver suffer and watch. Before the baby was born, the women would be beat badly and then cremated. These treatments are
Once the 1930s came around, everything changed in Germany. Women had to cope with the abuse and had to turn it into their daily life and having to cope. Schools became an unsafe place for children to be because they were discriminated against, and stores did not want Jews anywhere near them. As Kaplan mentions, “victims…adapted to their roles by showing how abuse, insidiously and incrementally, became “normal” to some and familiar to all”. The Jews should have left sooner, but because they failed to do so women had to stay and staying was not pleasant in any way. Some had no hope. As being a women was not enough in these times, if a women were elderly they would kill them as well because this was known to be a “fatal combination”. The memoirs that the women wrote were about family and friends, and seemed to focus a lot on writing their children about the horrific time that they experienced. Although, times were not always told by victims, many stayed silent and did not want to recollect what happened to …show more content…
In the camp, women were sexually abused by guards and other prisoners. Often times women would take part in sexual activity for a way to stay alive. There is such an obvious power system in these types of camps, women are on the bottom and these Nazis were at the top. An interesting but not very pleasant statement by Bergen was that “prisoners who had survived a comparatively long time and had become camp veterans could engage in exploitation because of the relative power they accumulated”. Justifying sexual abuse with how long an individual has survived does not seem to be all that right. Even though nothing seemed to be fair with the Holocaust. Genocide is unmerited. During the Holocaust, and in the death camps especially, Nazis would target women in a way that it would effect their future. What is meant by that, is the Nazis would directly look to hurt pregnant women because if the babies were killed it would maybe reduce the amount of Jews in the future. “The SS appear to have reserved special tortures for pregnant women”, and that was to beat them and whip them, along with a lot of other tortures methods to make the women suffer (Joeden‐Forgey, 2012). As soon as the babies were born, they were immediately murdered with no hesitation. In my opinion, this was just to make the birth giver suffer and watch. Before the baby was born, the women would be beat badly and then cremated. These treatments are