Fertility in the Camps

This article carries out a comparative analysis of three Holocaust memoirs written by women who survived incarceration in the concentration camp system. It identifies and analyses female‐specific experiences, with a particular focus on experiences directly related to female fertility. Analysis of Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust by Livia Bitton‐Jackson, The Musicians of Auschwitz by Fania Fénelon, and Olga Lengyel's Five Chimneys shows that issues such as menstruation, amenorrhea, abortion, neonaticide, and motherhood were particular sources of danger and risk for concentration camp inmates. By revealing aspects of the concentrationary experience specific to women and demonstrating the impact of such issues on the memoirists, the validity of gender as a lens through which to analyse the Holocaust is confirmed. Moreover, the range of reactions which the authors cite demonstrates that gender is not an automatic unifier. Rather, scholarly attention must be paid to those aspects of female‐specific experiences, and the breadth of reactions to them, which have hitherto been marginalised

Abortion · Archaeology · Art history · Biology · Developmental psychology · Fertility · German · Gynecology · Memoir · Menstruation · Nazi concentration camps · Nazism · Pathology · Political science · Population · Pregnancy · Sociology · The Holocaust · Demography · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Medicine · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology