Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism

Women's Holocaust Narratives

Bibliographic Data

ID9751509
AuthorsMyrna Goldenberg (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume548
Issue1
Pages78-93
Publication date1996-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716296548001006
OpenAlexW2164973978
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited6

Memoirs written by women survivors of the Holocaust share certain characteristics with those written by men, such as a narrative structure that begins with belonging and then moves to humiliation, isolation, deprivation, and finally annihilation. Men and women survivors both describe gratuitous and deliberate violence by Kapos and SS. However, women's memoirs also share strikingly similar characteristics with each other that differ from men's memoirs and that stem from their experiences as women and as Jews— thus as double victims—in a misogynistic, racist totalitarian society. Women's memoirs yield anecdotes that demonstrate women's resourcefulness in the hells of the ghettos and camps. Thus women's narratives are rich sources of the characteristics of an alternative social structure based on traditional feminine values. The experience of women during the Holocaust shows that traditionally feminist values of cooperating and caring are important conditions for the perpetuation of civilization, irrespective of religious, ethnic, or nationalist identification

Abandonment (legal · Art · Art history · Civilization · Humiliation · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · The Holocaust · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Social Psychology

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