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Hedgepeth, Sonja M, and Rochelle G Saidel. (Eds.). Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010.
In the final chapter of the edited collection, Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, authors Dror and Linn comment on a story interviewee Reuven tells about his mother; "There is the world of war, in which the willingness to do anything in order to survive one more day is an adaptive quality. And there is the free and comfortable world, which tests survival according to the criteria of values, culture, and self-respect" (p. 287). For many of the authors in this interdisciplinary anthology, the dichotomous relationship between the two worlds - during and after the war - is used to explain why survivors of sexual violence have kept their stories secret. "Choiceless choices," such as the exchange of sex for food, made by women to stay alive in concentration camps, ghettos or during transport became sources of personal shame and often community condemnation after the war. Likewise, stories of sexual abuse during the Holocaust have long been discredited, belittled and generally considered insignificant as compared to other atrocities that occurred. As such, each essay in the book offers an opportunity to rediscover and come to new understandings about the reality of women's experiences during and after the Holocaust. And because sexual violence is a reality of women's lives today as well as during the Holocaust, Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust is well suited for readers interested in deepening their understanding of women's experiences across time and place as well as those who crave a more precise understanding of the gendered realities of war.
Editors Hedgepeth and Saidel provide a pioneering overview of sexualized violence against Jewish and non-Jewish women during the Holocaust. The sixteen diverse essays contained in the volume unearth narratives about sexual abuse that survivors of the Holocaust have long hid and...