(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 19, 2017

(MAHWAH, N.J. – On May 17, The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in cooperation with and funding from the New Jersey State Commission on Holocaust Education sponsored a Gumpert Teachers’ Workshop, “The Exploitation of Women in Genocide: How to bring a Delicate Subject into the Classroom.” Held at Ramapo College, it was attended by 74 educators from throughout New Jersey.

Center Director Michael Riff noted in his welcoming remarks that in light of the many accounts of sexual vulnerability, abuse and rape that occurred during the genocides in Darfur, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, we have not only come to accept that sexual violence is an intrinsic feature of genocide, but also that the topic is  no longer taboo. Yet, according to Riff, discussing the subject with high school age students is still a matter that requires sensitivity and ample preparation. The workshop aimed to provide guidance for both.

The workshop could not have heard from a more expert keynote presenter than our speaker, Dr. Myrna Goldenberg, the editor with Amy H. Shapiro of the groundbreaking work, Different Horrors, Same Hell: Gender and the Holocaust, published by the University of Washington Press in 2013. From the outset, she made it clear that the Holocaust was not about gender, but about Jews, male and female. To ignore the issue of gender, she noted, suggests that women’s lives and suffering were less important than those of men. Nevertheless, her work and that of others aroused a backlash in which some authors claimed that focusing on women drew away attention from the persecution that all Jews experienced regardless of gender.

Despite the Nazi regime’s emphasis on sexuality, from the Nuremberg Laws to the numerous trials for racial defilement (relations between Jews and non-Jews) notwithstanding, according to Goldenberg, it would still be a mistake to regard the rape, abuse, and murder of Jewish women perpetrated by Nazi personnel as sexually motivated. It was rather a manifestation of unbridled aggression. Moreover, as has been shown more recently, violence against Jewish women was a much more widespread phenomenon than originally believed. Because perpetrators hid their crimes mostly by murdering their victims, few survivors lived to tell of the ordeals they experienced or witnessed. The few who were not murdered for the most part remained silent about what they suffered. While reticence also extended to witnesses,  survivor testimonies of one kind or another that, whether in ghettos, villages, or towns overrun during the invasion of the Soviet Union or even concentration camps, make it clear that Jewish women were fair game for Nazi aggression.

Goldenberg, who is Professor Emerita of Literature at Montgomery College of Maryland, also tackled the issue of bartering food for sex among Jews in ghettos and concentration camps. While Jewish women in such circumstances were clearly exploited, she refrained from equating such victimization on the part of Jewish men with the behavior of German rapists and murderers. It was rather, in her view, a form of abuse born of and mitigated by the circumstances of German oppression.

Jane Robins Denny, the Director of Education at Brookdale Community College’s Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education, provided an elaborate presentation on how to render suitable the delicate subject matter of the workshop for the classroom. Her approach was to let the factual and interpretative texts to speak for themselves, so as to remove the possibility of students approaching the subject of the exploitation of women in genocide from a voyeuristic or sensationalistic point of view.

During the lunchtime break, attendees viewed the documentary, Prisoner of Her Past, that tackles the issue of late-onset post-traumatic stress disorder among elderly Holocaust survivors. One particular case depicted the mother of a well-known Chicago journalist who, as a young girl, was in hiding in what is today the western Ukraine, but was Poland before 1939. She experiences a delusional break from which she does not emerge. Through her outbursts and comments, it can be deduced that she must have been exposed to some sort of sexual abuse while in hiding. Probably the most important message of the film highlights the need for early therapeutic intervention after any traumatic event. Attempts at burying the experience and moving on just appear not to always provide relief over the long term.

Concluding the workshop was a highly emotional and informative presentation by Consolee Nishimwe who provided a first-hand account of her ordeal in the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi of 1994, which she endured as a fourteen-year-old. Together with her parents and four siblings, she recounted how when the genocide her family of educators escaped their home in Rubengera, Kibuye and trekked through the bush and went into hiding with a friendly Hutu family. Although suffering physical torture and abuse during her three months in hiding, together with her mother and younger sister she miraculously survived, but her father and three young brothers along with many other close relatives did not.

Similar to past workshops, evaluations completed by participants revealed the particular impact of Consolee Nishimwe’s first-hand account of survival. Attendees also noted how informative and useful they found the presentations of Myrna Goldenberg and Jane Denny.

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