Women’s Experiences of Life Force Atrocities in the Baltic Ghettos, 1941–1944

Abstract

This article focuses on Jewish women in the Nazi ghettos of German-occupied Latvia and Lithuania. It uses testimonies and memoirs of survivors to develop a narrative about life force atrocities at these sites, highlighting ways in which being a Jewish woman shaped the experience of the ghettos, where gendered risks were ubiquitous. Being a woman in the ghettos meant being both exploited and undervalued as a source of physical labor, targeted as a potential or actual bearer of children, and violated as an object of racist and sexist ideology and rage. Life force atrocities have physical and symbolic dimensions, targeting bodies, bonds, and norms of the community. This work considers what women’s accounts tell us about the presence – or ubiquity – of life force atrocities in the Baltic ghettos. It draws on the concepts of the universe of obligation and social death to highlight key roots and consequences of these atrocities for women. In testimonies and memoirs, we encounter themes of pregnancy, forced abortion, the wrenching loss of loved ones, sexual violence, and decisions made in the desperate hope of saving oneself or another. Survivor accounts are key to revealing life force atrocities as defining features of the Nazi ghettos, and the gendered risks faced by women prisoners in Nazi-occupied Riga, Daugavpils, and Kaunas.