Sexual Barter and Jewish Women’s Efforts to Save their Lives: Accounts from the Righteous Among the Nations Archives

Abstract

Abstract Using the files from the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem, this article explores how Jewish women in German-occupied Eastern Europe used sexual barter with Gentile men, both non-Germans and Germans, to try to survive. It proposes that sexual barter be recognized as an expression of agency. Yet sexual barter has been stigmatized and corresponding testimonies largely excluded from the archives. Indications that sexual barter had been a motivation for saving Jews were not included in submissions for the award of the status of Righteous because the criteria for that honour require that nothing can have been received in return for saving a Jew. This essay seeks to problematize this rule, which misunderstands what it was like to live in hiding for both the rescued and the rescuers.