„VWI goes to … Research Center for the History of Transformation (RECET), University of Vienna“ (Web)

Time: Mi., 03.05.2023, 16:00-19:00
Venue: Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte, 1090 Wien

The Holocaust profoundly shaped the experiences of Jewish women, requiring them to respond to changing situations and threats, to make unusual choices, and to employ varying survival strategies. Lilia Tomchuk’s PhD project examines the facets of Jewish women’s agency in different contexts during the Holocaust in Transnistria, where Jews and Roma from Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported by Romanian authorities in 1941 and 1942 and where local Ukrainian Jews were brought from neighbouring localities. Prevailing research depicts Transnistria as a „dumping ground“ with widely varying and changing conditions. This presentation will focus on one aspect of Tomchuk’s research, namely the agency of Jewish women in medical settings. It will address typhus and (forced) labor in medical care inside and outside of camps and ghettos, the activities of female practitioners in the underground and in military service, and suicide decisions in medical context. Identifying and analysing women’s decisions and actions illuminate these Jewish women as historical subjects, shifting away from traditional narratives and allowing for a more human and subjective understanding of the Holocaust. Read more … (Web)

Commented by Magdalena Baran-Szołtys

Source: Newsletter des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte