The Historiography of the Holocaust

372 Lisa Pine
which tend to homogenize women’s experiences and identities, are misleading. 52
Hardman suggests that Gurewitsch defines Jewish women as mothers, sisters
and nurturers, ‘with a very particular notion of what constitutes female behaviour’.
53 Horowitz also challenges the type of interpretation that ‘erases the
actual experiences of women and, to an extent, domesticates the events of the
Holocaust’. 54 Hardman cites examples of women fighting for their own existence
at the expense of others. 55 Yet, women who did not behave according to traditional
female gender norms are not discussed by historians, even though some
survivors have mentioned such women; there has been a taboo in treating
them. The same is true of references to lesbianism.
Zoë Waxman has also argued that assumptions that women had motherly
and care-giving roles only ‘obscure the diversity of women’s Holocaust experiences’.
56 She further argues that the valorizing of sacrifice also means that the
struggles surrounding temptation are ‘glossed over’. Waxman states that
because many people do not wish to confront the full horrors of the Holocaust,
the literature has tended to overlook the desperate actions undertaken by
victims in order to survive under the appalling conditions in which they found
themselves. Instead, the literature has projected Holocaust testimonies as ‘epics of
love and courage’ and, Waxman argues, can be ‘deeply misleading’ as a result. 57
Another area of recent concern is the question of what constitutes reliable
testimony. The nature of testimony is problematic in itself – do women’s (or
for that matter men’s) memories and presentations of themselves during the
Holocaust differ from reality? Is there an underlying reason for what they say?
Hardman uses the case study of the dispute between two survivors of the
women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Fania Fenelon and Anita Lasker-
Wallfisch, to emphasize both the subjectivity of survivors’ accounts and the
need for scholars ‘to negotiate more closely the relationship between the actuality
of the individual’s Holocaust experiences, and the ways in which they choose
to represent it’. 58 Both Hardman’s and Waxman’s challenges are interesting.
They both seek to change the nature of the debate on gender and the Holocaust.
Their work is also perhaps the obvious next step in the growth and development
of this comparatively recent field of research and points the way for further
advancement of the field in the future.
The paucity of research on the subject of children in the Holocaust makes
this an area for future investigation. 59 Children were the most vulnerable and
fragile of victims. Yet in some ways they exhibited great strength and
developed strategies of survival of their own. The experiences of children
during the first phase of social ostracism and pauperization matched those of
their parents. This meant restrictions of space when Jewish families were forced
to move out of their homes, limits on freedom of movement and restrictions
on the availability and variety of food. Just as Jewish adults were targeted in
the world of work, Jewish children were targeted at school. If they were unable