Gender in the Holocaust
The Holocaust, a time of mass murder in the attempt to complete the goal of the “final solution” to the Jewish question, which called for the death of every woman, man, and child defined as a Jew; this was the aim of the Nazis, who were led by Adolf Hitler. While the Holocaust was focused on the extermination of the Jews as a whole, in order to understand the Holocaust more completely one must focus on gender. It is not to be said that the Holocaust can be understood; there was absolutely no reason for the death of the abundant Jews that were killed; the purpose for the events that occurred during the period are inexplicable, nonexistent, and unforgivable. To gain a better awareness of the Holocaust, though, one must be sure to give gender attention. ... Men and women went through many hardships during the Holocaust, some the same but many were not. ... The books, Women in the Holocaust, Women and the Holocaust, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, and Sisters in Sorrow: Voices of Care in the Holocaust, all explain various persecutions conducted by the Nazis on the two genders. ... While the different sources may contain different approaches to the subject concerning the persecution of the different genders in the Holocaust, the material in the books include evidence supporting various arguments that are brought about by the authors, which assist with their credibility. ... Weitzman are the editors of Women in the Holocaust. Ofer is a professor of Contemporary Jewry-Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ... Esther Fuchs is the author of Women and the Holocaust. ... Joan Ringelheim is the author of Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, and she is the director of oral history at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ... Plotkin are the authors of Sisters in Sorrow: Voices of Care in the Holocaust. ... Plotkin is a professor of world literature and Holocaust studies at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, Texas. She is on the Board of Directors for the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies. So, all the sources contain people who are professionally associated with the topic of the Holocaust, and they should be quite knowledgeable about the event. Three of the books, Women in the Holocaust, Women and the Holocaust, and Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research, all contain a very similar thesis: “So much work on women and the Holocaust remains to be done. ... These three works wish to exhibit the fact that men were not the only ones to go through the Holocaust, but that women were victims also, and for that they too should be recognized. They give detailed descriptions of suffering and persecution brought upon the Jews in the Holocaust, yet they lay an emphasis on the details regarding the women. The other work, Sisters in Sorrow: Voices of Care in the Holocaust, focuses more on recognizing the women who took care of the sick in the camps of Nazi Germany, which had been constructed for the sole purpose of human extermination. ... The authors wrote their works to make sure that nobody is to forget that, as well as men, women played a role in the Holocaust. Ringelheim is obviously upset that “Even a cursory look at studies about the Holocaust would indicate that the experiences and perceptions of Jewish women have been obscured or absorbed into descriptions of men’s lives,” (374). Women went through the same hell as the men, but they don’t get the same recognition; instead they are hidden behind the shadows of men’s horror stories and surviving stories about the Holocaust.