The Grey Zone of Soviet Liberation: History and Memory of Sexual Violence

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Global memory approaches the liberation of the Holocaust survivors by the Red Army as an ultimate rescue from Nazi terror or as a "Hollywood-style happy ending." The happy ending survival myth has been routinely prioritized for educational purposes and is deliberately at the core of some important oral testimonies collections such as the VHA archive where oral testimonies collection focusing on the narrative of Holocaust survival canonizes those testimonies that are assessed as "exemplary," i.e. "most dramatically compelling.” (Jeges, 2020: 454) This panel demystifies and complicates the 1945 liberation of Jewish Holocaust survivors by bringing to the fore individual and local memory of liberation as embedded in the oral testimonies and memoirs of Holocaust survivors. In so doing, this panel focuses on the grey zone of liberation and scrutinizes the liberation through the context of mass rape inflicted by the Red Army as a means to subjugate, intimidate and control liberated territories. Questions explored during this roundtable ossify around history, trauma, and memory of sexual violence in times of liberation: What do we learn from available ego documents and recorded oral testimonies about Holocaust survivors’ liberation experience? How did the constant threat of sexual violence affect survivors’ experience of liberation? How did Holocaust survivors recollect traumatic experiences of sexual violence? How were Holocaust survivors’ experiences of sexual violence during liberation included and excluded from public memory and when and how did they become incorporated into collective memory?

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Nina Paulovicova, Athabasca U (Canada)

Roundtable Members

• Daina S. Eglitis, George Washington U

• Monika J. Flaschka, Independent Scholar

• Kateřina Králová, Institute of Ethnology CAS (Czech Republic)

• Andrea Peto, Central European U (Hungary)

• Monika Vrzgulova, Institute of Ethnology & Social Anthropology SAS (Slovakia)

Session Manager

• Leah Valtin-Erwin, Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies