The Misrepresentation of Violated Women Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Fiction Films

• In Event: New Approaches to Gender in Holocaust Studies

Abstract

This talk analyzes the problematic sexual image of women Holocaust survivors in Israeli fiction films. It discusses the false stereotype that appeared in the Jewish Yishuv in the aftermath of WWII, which implied that if a woman survived (and was not one of the ghetto fighters or partisans), she probably forcibly or consensually performed sexual acts with the perpetrators. This stereotype was translated into cinematic representations as of the 1940s. The talk will show that, surprisingly, this type of depiction has not disappeared from contemporary fiction films and is sometimes even exacerbated. The case studies of the talk are the films "My Father’s House" (Herbert Klein, 1947) and "Tel-Aviv – Berlin" (Tzipi Trope, 1987). By analyzing "My Father’s House" I show that women Holocaust survivors were incorrectly portrayed in Israeli fiction films in the 1940s and 1950s as having been forced into prostitution or using their sexuality to survive, and then were transformed in these films from “indecent” Jewish women to virtuous Israeli mothers. I argue that even when Holocaust awareness in Israel had changed considerably as of the 1980s, this negative cinematic sexual stereotype was at times even reinforced. By analyzing "Tel-Aviv – Berlin" I show how the film falsely claims that all women survived Auschwitz because they were prostitutes and adds another negative false angle: as opposed to the earlier films, the women in this film do not undergo a Zionist transformation and some women even maintain their seductive and/or sexually destructive personality in the Israeli sphere.

Author

• Liat Steir-Livny, Sapir Academic College; The Open University, Israel