The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

OMER BARTOV
long years next to one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. 34 The
extent to which these civilians were necessary for the daily maintenance of the
camp, and the manner in which they rationalized their complicity during the event
and repressed it after the war, sheds a horrifying light on the widespread
collaboration of large sectors of Europe’s population with the Nazis, as well as on
the suppression of this episode during the postwar period. This is a crucial and
highly neglected component of the Holocaust which is only now beginning to
receive appropriate scholarly attention. 35
During the 1980s and 1990s increasing numbers of memoirs by Holocaust
survivors have appeared. This is probably associated with their approaching
demise and the consequent urge to record their experiences both for the public at
large and especially for their own families, as well as with the passage of time that
has made articulating their recollections more bearable than in the past. Moreover,
the growing public preoccupation with the Holocaust may have also contributed
to the willingness of survivors to speak about their experiences, following a long
period during which their reluctance to talk was at least in part also a reflection of
the refusal of others to listen. Among such memoirs, some stand out due to their
striking literary quality, their keen insights into human psychology, the
extraordinary tales they recount, and at times the remarkable personality of the
writers. However, until a few years ago, very little attention was given to the often
striking differences between the accounts of male and female survivors. 36 While
the better known memoirs of the first couple of decades after the war were written
mainly by men (especially noteworthy are those by Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel and
Jean Améry), more recently many women have finally put pen to paper and
recounted their own experiences. 37 One distinct difference between those earlier
male accounts and those by women is that in the latter case there is much greater
talk of solidarity among female inmates, whereas in many male accounts we read
of an individual’s struggle to survive in constant conflict with his fellow inmates.
To be sure, some women survivors have also claimed that female SS personnel
behaved more sadistically toward them than the men; but by and large the
impression is that among women inmates of the camps a different dynamic of
human relations developed than was the case among the men. 38 Moreover, women’s
accounts also provide a very different perspective of the circumstances preceding
and following the Holocaust, as women often experienced them in radically different
ways from men, not least because they tended to be less involved with the “larger”
political issues of the day and much more with their disastrous effects on the
individual. This more intimate relationship with atrocity included, of course, care
for children and elderly people, and a struggle to keep, or rebuild, a sense of home
and family. 39 It is indeed no wonder that many of the greatest novels of the twentieth
century were written by women, who could perceive the fate of history’s victims
unencumbered by the distorting lens of ideological commitment, and portrayed
the horror of destroying a single, unique human being with much greater personal
involvement and sensitivity than even those “great” men with whom some of
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