The Historiography of the Holocaust

Gender and the Family 377
were separated and families torn apart. The camp inmates lived in barracks.
Dwork argues that ‘memory of family life was a source of strength and solace’. 80
Children separated from their parents and siblings remembered them as they
were at the time of parting. Throughout their ordeals they maintained the
hope that they would be reunited and that their former lives would be
restored. After the war, very few nuclear families were united completely and
no extended family emerged without losses. 81 In the transit camps, confinement,
hunger and illness led to a sense of shame and degradation among
parents and a grave deterioration in family structures. In the circumstances of
the camps, where adults were forced to obey orders and subjected to arbitrary
insult and assault without respite, traditional family relationships altered
dramatically. 82 The concept of parental power disappeared.
In Bergen-Belsen, parents were ‘nothing anymore’ in the sense that children
no longer respected them. 83 The radical change in children’s perception of
their parents resulted from the fact that camp inmates were in a situation of
absolute powerlessness. A father became ‘just another person’. 84 Hence parental
authority diminished and filial respect dwindled. Yet in some cases, parents
were still, in certain senses, able to provide emotional support and a semblance
of normality, especially for younger children who were less aware of the powerlessness
and debasement of their parents. Dwork has cited examples of children
who felt reassured by the presence of their parents. Esther Levi’s situation
in the transit camp ‘remained familiar’ because her mother was always there
and the pattern from home was preserved in this sense. 85 Even for older children
who recognized their parents’ lack of power, the very presence of one or
both parents, coupled with the fact that the family was still together, created a
feeling of comfort and, despite the hardships, love and tenderness remained a
part of life. Where possible, families ate together and tried to maintain some
semblance of normal life. Karl Ochsenmann describes his experiences at Westerbork
and Bergen-Belsen. At first, in Westerbork, families could eat together.
But later this changed and this led to increasing demoralization among the
inmates. 86 At Bergen-Belsen, ‘family units were destroyed.... After a whole day
at work...mothers and fathers came back to their barracks in the evenings
apathetic and full of despair.... The children loafed around, often unwashed
and uncombed, in shabby clothes with worn shoes.’ 87 The context of family
relationships was completely transformed in the concentration camps. As
Dwork argues: ‘The young people were no longer in a position to be the children
of their parents, and the adults were defeated in their attempts to protect
their progeny.’ 88 One former inmate of Belsen recalled that women there often
displayed a ‘practical and community minded attitude, chiefly for the sake of
their children’. 89
Inmates remained together with their families and friends for as long as possible.
But the splitting up of families was part of the Nazis’ attempt to sap any