Se**xual Violence in the Holocaust: Perspectives from Ghettos and Camps in Ukraine

Se**xual Violence in the Holocaust: Perspectives from Ghettos and Camps in Ukraine

The experiences of women in the Second World War with se**xualised violence show that some suffering was gender-specific. According to the sources, se**xualised violence against Jewish women and girls was not a by-product of the war, but the war itself, organised and controlled by those who denied Jews their right to exist.



Many women suffered severe injuries as a result of se**xual violence. They had uterine and vaginal bleeding. Klara of the Yarun ghetto in Zhytomyr oblast recalled that women who resisted rape would have their stomachs stabbed with gun sticks.Some women were ki**lled afterwards.


Another outcome was unwanted pregnancy. There were women who carried them to term, while others tried to get an abortion, both options generating additional risks. Rape, medical experiments and sterilization had dramatic consequences in the long term, making many women unable to get pregnant in the future.


Women’s experiences of WWII prove that some suffering is indeed gendered, none more so than sexual violence. Nazi camps and ghettos in Ukraine were just some of the places in the topography of sexual terror against Jewish women and girls. But it was there, in the spaces of forced confinement and lack of freedom, where sexual violence was especially concentrated, widespread and brutal.


The available sources lead us to the conclusion that sexual violence against Jewish women and girls was not just a by-product of war; it was war itself, organized and controlled by those who denied the Jews their very right to existence. Se**xual violence was both a consequence of the dehumanization of Jews and a means of their dehumanization, designed to facilitate the process of killing and to absolve the Nazi murderers and their collaborators from guilt and regret.


A detailed study of every case of sexual violence during the Holocaust will help us to cast light on the gendered suffering experienced by numerous women, as well as to show how se**xual violence becomes not only a crime against human dignity but also a tool of genocide and war in itself.


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