Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust

Until now there has never been a systematic assessment of the "double jeopardy" of Jewish women in the Holocaust, because most of the chroniclers of this cruelest tragedy of modern history have been men. Yet for women, as scholar Myrna Goldenberg observes, "The hell was the same, but the horrors were different." Different Voices is the most thoroughgoing examination of women's experiences of the Holocaust ever compiled. It gathers together - for the first time in a single volume - the latest insights of scholars, the powerful testimonies of survivors, and the eloquent reflections of writers, theologians, and philosophers. Twenty-eight women in all speak of Hitler's "Final Solution," from the rising storm in prewar Germany to the terrors and privations of the camps, and of the everyday heroism that kept hope alive. Part One, "Voices of Experience," recounts the painful and poignant stories of survivors. We hear Olga Lengyel's anguish at discovering that she had unwittingly sent her mother and son to the gas chamber; on recalling the brutality of Irma Griese, a stunningly beautiful SS officer; on witnessing the unspeakable "medical experiments" the Nazis conducted on women. We share Livia F. Britton's memory of hunger and terrible vulnerability as a naked thirteen-year-old at Auschwitz. We learn of the horrific price that Dr. Gisela Perl was forced to pay to save women's lives. Part Two, "Voices of Interpretation," offers the new insights of women scholars of the Holocaust, including evidence that the Nazis specifically preyed on women as the propagators of the Jewish race. Marion A. Kaplan describes the lives of a generation of Jewish women who thought that they were assimilated into German society. Gisela Bok examines the Nazi's eugenics theories and sterilization programs, and Gitta Sereny questions Theresa Stangl, wife of the Kommandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, about her perceptions of the atrocities and of her moral responsibility. In Part Three, "Voices of Reflection," women artists and intellectuals contemplate the Holocaust. The poems of Irena Klepfisz decry the violent sexual persecutions of women, and a play by Ida Fink dramatizes the painful process of remembering. Mary Jo Leddy explores the ethics of power and powerlessness. Joan Ringelheim explains her pioneering recovery of women's stories of abuse, as well as her provocative statistics suggesting that more Jewish women than Jewish men actually perished in the Holocaust. Lyrical, vivid, and affecting, Different Voices is a powerful commemoration of the sufferings and of the courage of Jewish women during the darkest years of the twentieth century. Its stories, reflections, and scholarly interpretations recover a realm of memory that, until now, has been fragmentary, all but lost. It is a compelling - and essential - contribution to our knowledge of the Holocaust.