DOC Jim Crow America: A Documentary History by From Brand: University of Arkansas Press in History

Description

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 intoGerman 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