If This Is A Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust Denisa Nestakova, Katja Grosse-Sommer, Borbala Klacsmann and Jakub Drabik

Abstract

This is a book to be welcomed by Holocaust scholars, particularly those interested in the World War II experiences of Jewish women in Eastern and East-Central Europe. In addition to survivor testimonies and the writings left by the murdered, the book draws upon articles written by historians from this region. If This Is A Women emerged from the “20th Century Conference: If This Is A Woman,” held at Comenius University in Bratislava in January 2019. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Institute of History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, and the French and Israeli Embassies in Slovakia. Andrea Peto sets the tone with a warning all too familiar to feminist historians: “historians working on gendering the Holocaust are also struggling not only [with] the remasculinization of their profession but also [with] the resistance of history writing against these epistemological challenges” (p. x). In their introduction, the editors point to the devaluation of “gendered” approaches and the delegitimization of gendered studies, “by disparaging discussions of specifically female historical questions” (p. xv). They also point to the “revitaliz[ation] [of] so-called traditional family values” in East-Central Europe (p. xv), which has influenced the humanities and social sciences. In other words, these attacks on gender studies, as seen in the current politics of Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, are a reaction to progressive ideas.