Women in European Holocaust Films

Perpetrators, Victims and Resisters

Ingrid Lewis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319650609
• eBook ISBN: 9783319650616
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Social Sciences

This book considers how women's experiences have been treated in films dealing with Nazi persecution. Focusing on fiction films made in Europe between 1945 and the present, this study explores dominant discourses on and cinematic representation of women as perpetrators, victims and resisters. Ingrid Lewis contends that European Holocaust Cinema underwent a rich and complex trajectory of change with regard to the representation of women. This change both reflects and responds to key socio-cultural developments in the intervening decades as well as to new directions in cinema, historical research and politics of remembrance. The book will appeal to international scholars, students and educators within the fields of Holocaust Studies, Film Studies, European Cinema and Women's Studies.

© The Author(s) 2017

Ingrid LewisWomen in European Holocaust Filmshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65061-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Ingrid Lewis¹

(1)

Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland

Ingrid Lewis

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Female characters and the plight of women have been a significant presence in European Holocaust cinema since its inception and throughout its seven decades of existence. From the aftermath of the war to the present day, women have been portrayed in a multitude of roles in cinematic narratives about the Holocaust: as victims in hiding, in ghettos and death camps; as wives, mothers, daughters or sisters of the persecuted; as women who perished engulfed by the tragedy or women who survived; as women who gave shelter to the persecuted or denounced them; as indifferent bystanders; as heroic women involved in the resistance; and also as persecutors. While none of the female characters featured in European films has succeeded in reaching the popularity of Anne Frank in the American production The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), their enduring presence has played an important role in shaping public images and understandings of gender in the Holocaust.

From The Last Stage (1948), one of the earliest films about the Holocaust, to contemporary productions such as The Birch-Tree Meadow (2003), Nina’s Journey (2005), Sarah’s Key (2010) and Remembrance (2011), there is a rich and complex trajectory of change and development with regard to the representation of women, which both reflects and responds to key socio-cultural developments in the intervening decades, as well as to new directions in cinema, historical research, politics of remembrance and memoir literature. Thus, for example, The Last Stage (1948), directed by Wanda Jakubowska , a Polish filmmaker and Auschwitz survivor, portrays a vast array of female prisoners from different backgrounds held in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau , as well as female perpetrators . The film focuses on brave women who gave their lives for the cause of the resistance, but also features women who complied with the system or even worked for the Nazis. Despite its realism in depicting the horrors of the Holocaust and its pioneering role in “creating an iconography for the camps” (Loewy 2004: 180), The Last Stage has significant flaws, derived mainly from the onus on narrative to suit the ideology of the post-war period (Haltof 2012: 37). As a result, the characters are flat and stereotyped, and their key purpose is to provide commentary on the bravery of the inmates or the inhumanity of the perpetrators, at the expense of more complex portrayals of women that would facilitate deeper insights into female experiences of the Holocaust (see Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Ideological depiction of Martha, a courageous Jewish resister, who delivers a passionate speech under the gallows prior to her death in Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (1948)

Six decades later, multiple developments—among them second-wave feminism , the incursion of female directors into the film industry, the rise of memoir literature and first-person accounts of history and the voice that these have given to women’s experiences—have resulted in more insightful and more theoretically and technically complex films. The Birch-Tree Meadow (2003) by Marceline Loridan-Ivens , Nina’s Journey (2005) by Lena Einhorn and Remembrance (2011) by Anna Justice are excellent examples of how contemporary filmmakers have addressed women’s stories and perspectives related to the Holocaust (see Fig. 1.2). They not only cast women in the protagonist roles, but offer a radically different portrayal in terms of visual point of view, narrative voiceover and the prioritisation of a female perspective on events. There has been a significant change, therefore, in the way that women’s experiences of the Holocaust are narrated in old versus new Holocaust films .

Fig. 1.2

Contemporary Holocaust cinema offers theoretically and technically complex films that prioritise women’s perspectives , such as Marceline Loridan-Ivens’ The Birch-Tree Meadow (2003)

The present monograph explores how European cinema has constructed particular sets of images of and discourses on women in the Holocaust over time. It focuses on three distinct categories: perpetrators, victims and resisters. The study examines how and why the portrayal of women in European Holocaust films has changed since the end of the war, and traces the various patterns that characterise women’s representation throughout the intervening decades. Working with a corpus of 310 films, this research presents an analysis of the dynamic relationship between gender, film, and the history and memory of the Holocaust .

The journey that led me to this research is complex and sinuous. Although I cannot claim any personal connection with the Holocaust other than my passion for the topic, this study indirectly reflects my own experience of how the Holocaust is remembered and/or silenced in various societies. I grew up in Romania, geographically close to the traces of the Jewish persecution and yet, like most young Romanians born during Communism, I was completely oblivious to it. It was only while living abroad, when my Film Studies research intersected with the subject of the Holocaust, that I started to be aware of the tragedy that had unfolded in my own country, and also of the silence that still pervades Romanian society regarding the Holocaust (Glajar 2011: 3). Meeting Professor Ronit Lentin , daughter of Romanian-Jewish survivors and lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, was a crucial turning point not only in terms of determining the direction this research would take, but also with regard to developing a full understanding of my own personal motivation. Lentin’s inspirational writings about the Holocaust (Lentin 1989, 2000a, b, 2004) informed and enriched my research in refreshing and unexpected ways. Importantly, most of her studies are permeated with the topic of silence. Lentin (2000a: 693) claims that there is a “deafening silence ” that “envelops the link between gender and genocide in relation to the Shoah ”. ¹ Since this book is primarily concerned with discourses about women in relation to the Holocaust, the theme of silence is inevitably embedded in its structure and theoretical underpinnings. Indeed, the various ways in which women’s experiences are silenced in mainstream Holocaust history and representation became a key preoccupation of this monograph.

Significantly, the concept of silence points to the constructed nature of Holocaust memory and, more generally, to the constructedness of the Holocaust as a concept. This study addresses the Holocaust not merely as a historical event consigned to the past, but rather as a complex concept whose connotations are constantly revisited and challenged over time. While the preference for the term Holocaust over analogous ones such as Shoah and Judeocide is explained in detail at the end of this chapter (see “Notes on Terminology”), it demands elaboration at this juncture, as it is inextricably linked to the study’s epistemological approach. Joan Ringelheim (1990: 141) claims that “the Holocaust has been focused in our minds by the selectivity of many interested parties: scholars, survivors, politicians, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, perpetrators and revisionists”. What Ringelheim means here is that our knowledge about the Holocaust is not based on direct access to the past, but is rather filtered and shaped by a multitude of (f)actors and within a variety of contexts. By acknowledging the Holocaust as a construct, this study takes into account a twofold process: on the one hand, how various factors reshape and influence the Holocaust memory ; and on the other, the way in which collective memory interacts with other discourses within and beyond the subject of the Holocaust. Importantly, historian Zoë Waxman (2006: 152) states that “the concept of the Holocaust acts as an organiser of memory, not only for events contained within its own description – how it shapes, what it excludes, and the manner of its functioning – but also for memories of other events”.

The Holocaust is therefore a term and a concept that is both problematic and needs constantly to be problematized. According to Lentin (2004), there is a tendency to define all other contemporary catastrophes by comparison with the Holocaust. Lentin (ibid.: 5) claims that the recurring use of the Holocaust trope to describe other conflicts such as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has led to the transformation of the Holocaust into a “euphemism” and a “‘unique, epoch-making’ metaphor”. Thus, the growing identification of the Holocaust as a symbol for modern-day atrocity has “discursively overshadowed all other modern cataclysms”, while “populating our collective and individual imaginations with indelible images, which have impoverished our vocabulary so that every catastrophe becomes a holocaust” (2004: 6). According to Lentin (ibid.: 12):

Telling and re-telling the Shoah has been employed not only in order to construct a particular kind of memory, but also to justify certain acts, perhaps because no other lexicon is available to Western imagination to narrate catastrophe.

The universal metaphoric connotations embedded in the term Holocaust , therefore, lead not only to an “impoverishment” of the terminology available to narrate atrocity, but also to a homogenisation and politicisation of the knowledge about the Holocaust itself. As Lentin (2004: 11) states, “the Shoah is transformed into a political ideology, a code: the Shoah myth replaces the Shoah itself”. In the same vein, Waxman (2006: 186) argues, “although we now know much more about the events of the Holocaust, the outcome has been a diluted comprehension that accords with ‘official’ forms of Holocaust representation”.

This book is situated within the theoretical frameworks of both Holocaust Studies and Film Studies. It is therefore crucial to explore the interaction between the two, as well as the unique parameters that characterise Holo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Women and the Holocaust: The Silenced Gender?
• Part II. The Cinematic Representation of Women as Perpetrators and Accomplices of Nazism
• Part III. Female Victims in Holocaust Films: From Universalised Portrayals to Recovered Memory
• Part IV. Gendering Heroism: The Role of Women in Filmic Discourses About Resistance
• Part V. Towards a Conclusion: Researching the Representation of Women in European Holocaust Films
• Back Matter