Women in the Holocaust International Study Center (WHISC), and the Center for Jewish Studies (Web)

Time: 24.-25.02.2025 and 04.-06.05.2025
Venue: virtual space and Univ. of Graz
Proposals by: 15.12.2024

Women’s – Jewish and non-Jewish – spaces of existence and/or survival in the Holocaust existed in different forms, including areas in and adjacent to concentration camps. As Christa Paul demonstrates, women in concentration camps could „earn“ „privileged“ spaces working as forced prostitutes, for example, which could enable them to survive (Paul 1994). Other spaces of survival were located closer to or in the environment experienced as belonging to the everyday before National Socialist persecution: Politically and/or racially persecuted women could survive outside the camps in privileged „mixed marriages“, in hiding and protected by contacts, or in hope of surviving by constantly fleeing.
There is no need to emphasize that the Holocaust and research on the Holocaust are decisively determined by gender and are equally biased in this respect. Research on the Holocaust has started to increasingly focus on gender-specific work, fostering studies on (Jewish) men and masculinity, and gradually also women, sexuality, and queerness. These important approaches made us learn that gender played a decisive role in camps and ghettos (Goldenberg, Shapiro 2012; Háková 2020, 59) and the few studies that exist to date also indicate that gender could be central to survival outside the camps (Kosmala 2013). Yet, with the exception of a few works (Rittner, 1993, Bergen, Hájková, Löw 2013), this gender turn in Holocaust studies has still paid little attention to everyday history – the history of a forced everyday life emerging from radical experiences of violence – in spaces outside the camps, although early works by Carol Rittner, John K. Roth eds. (1993), and Marion Kaplan show the determining role played by women in the exceptional situation of „everyday life“ in persecution (Kaplan 1998)as well as Anna Háková also impressively demonstrates the importance of everyday perspectives on the Holocaust and especially for research into women’s experiences during the Holocaust (Hájková; Bergen, Hájková, Löw 2013).
WHISC together with the Center for Jewish Studies at the Univ. of Graz seeks to remedy this gap. The organisers aim to stimulate new research by investigating women’s spaces of survival outside the camps as well by researching everyday experiences associated with these survival scenarios. They envision hosting a workshop in two parts: the first an online meeting and the second an in-person meeting in Graz. Between the two parts of workshop, participants will … read more and source … (Web)