German Women's Life Writing and the Holocaust
Complicity and Gender in the Second World War

Examines women's life writing in order to shed light on female complicity in the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Elisabeth Krimmer (Author)

9781108472821, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 September 2018

292 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'Elisabeth Krimmer offers poised readings of a broad range of women's voices to promote a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship of gender, genocide, and female agency. In doing so, she both untangles and complicates narratives about the German past, corrects androcentric views, and brings a welcome and important addition to the field that will be of use to scholars and students in a variety of disciplinary frameworks.' Sandra Alfers, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

This important study examines women's life writing about the Second World War and the Holocaust, such as memoirs, diaries, docunovels, and autobiographically inspired fiction. Through a historical and literary study of the complex relationship between gender, genocide, and female agency, the analyzes correct androcentric views of the Second World War and seek to further our understanding of a group that, although crucial to the functioning of the National Socialist regime, has often been overlooked: that of the complicit bystander. Chapters on army auxiliaries, nurses, female refugees, rape victims, and Holocaust survivors analyze women's motivations for enlisting in the National Socialist cause, as well as for their continuing support for the regime and, in some cases, their growing estrangement from it. The readings allow insights into the nature of complicity itself, the emergence of violence in civil society, and the possibility of social justice.

1. Introduction: gender, war and the Holocaust
2. Ruptured narratives: German women and Hitler's army
3. Cropped vision: nursing in the Second World War
4. Interrupted silences: German victims of rape
5. Parallel stories: women refugees
6. A view from the outside in: Jewish women and German complicity
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Religious groups: social & cultural aspects [JFSR], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Second World War [HBWQ], The Holocaust [HBTZ1], Genocide & ethnic cleansing [HBTZ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary theory [DSA]