Jewish women in the Holocaust

Jewish women in the Holocaust refers to women who were Jewish and imprisoned in Europe in Nazi Concentration Camps or in hiding to prevent capture by the Nazis during the Holocaust between 1933 and 1945. Of the estimated six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust, 2 million of them were women. Besides the murders, women of the Holocaust were tortured in other ways such as rape, sexual harassment, getting beaten, being the center of Nazi human experimentations, etc.

Some scholars have argued that women were more inclined toward nurturing each other and that this might have posed an advantage to them. However, others have noted that men also created social support networks in the concentration camps. The more social women were with each other, the higher chance they had at survival. An interview (conducted to hear the reflections of women and the Holocaust) of a woman from the Holocaust named Rose described the bonds the women formed:

...[women were] picking each other like monkeys [for lice]…. Never remember seeing the men do it. The minute they had lice they just left it alone; the women have a different instinct. Housewives. We want to clean…. Somehow the men,… the [lice] ate them alive… [During roll call] the women holding each other and keeping each other warm…. Someone puts their arm around and you remember…. Can you imagine how much it meant to us over there! Men were crouching into themselves- maybe five feet apart [Rose demonstrated how the men she saw put their arms around their own bodies, rather than around the next person for warmth]…. I think more women survived…. As much as I saw in Auschwitz, the men were falling like flies. The woman was somehow stronger…. Woman friendship is different than man friendship you see…. We have these motherly instincts, friend instincts more…the men, no…the men didn’t do that. Men were friends there too. They talked to each other but they didn’t, wouldn’t, sell their bread for an apple for the other guy. They wouldn’t sacrifice nothing. See, that was the difference.

Being Jewish and female during the Holocaust doubled one's vulnerabilities. Women's reproductive abilities came under assault as a result of the genocidal conditions. For example, several women from the Holocaust who wrote memoirs noted that they developed amenorrhea which would ultimately reduce their chances of ever having children. One of the major disadvantages, which coincided with Jewish women’s vulnerabilities during the Holocaust, was the possibility of rape. Women were sometimes raped right before being murdered. One SS officer was reported to have, "had the custom of standing at the doorway… and feeling the private parts of the young women entering the gas bunker. There were also instances of SS men of all ranks pushing their fingers into the sexual organs of pretty young women."

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