Miscarriages of the Holocaust

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

I examine women’s experiences of miscarriages caused by the Holocaust. My findings will show that pregnancy loss was just as present during the initial times of persecution, through deportation in concentration camps, and after the Shoah for years, or even for decades. This proves that defined timelines of history do not necessarily align to the social reality of corporeal experiences. Exploring testimonies by Holocaust survivors is pivotal because other historical documents, due to the nature of the events of pregnancy loss, is yet rather unexplored. Moreover, sociological findings do not surface the existence of miscarriages, not only because demographics are typically concentrated on declining birth rates in Jewish social studies (e.g. Don, Pergola), but most importantly, because analyses divert attention from the female experiences and rather discuss structural changes (Karady). Therefore, I find it crucial to review the post-Holocaust birth rate numbers in order for them not to become decontextualized pieces of information (Hart) by complementing the analyses with the qualitative findings about the presumably common casualty of miscarriages.
In recent scholarship, gendering the Holocaust can be of controversy and might endure the negative interpretation of equality differences, namely, that highlighting female suffering takes attention away from male suffering, thus a unified Jewish suffering. Therefore, as a first step, I place my examination into context of the theoretical framework of Holocaust and gender studies by arguing that giving voice to unique gender-based experiences does not aim to exclude, but quite the opposite; it opens new perspectives of inquiry (Waxman, Peto et al.). Furthermore, I will discuss the interpretation models offered by leading scholars of Jewish and women’s studies in order to conform my findings about miscarriages. My case study concentrates on oral testimonies, which research I have conducted primarily through the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation so far. I will integrate the information obtained from Holocaust survivors with the theoretical models of female coping mechanisms to prove that the timeline of the Shoah in corporeal experiences did not necessarily end with liberation in 1945 and had a longer lasting effect on a larger scale in Jewish communities.

Author

• Alexandra M Szabo, Freelance