Menstruation and the Holocaust: A Silent “Dirty” Part of History

Menstruation is a topic that doesn’t even come to mind when we talk about the Holocaust. Historians also avoid these issues in their research. It is still unfortunate because menstruation occupies an important place in women’s lives, so it is not even correct to keep it a secret, she writes historytoday.com.

Oral testimonies and memories show that most of the women who managed to survive the horrors of the concentration camps were embarrassed after talking about menstruation and the problems they faced. But some women raised the issue themselves, overcoming the stigma associated with it.

Menstruation has traditionally been viewed as a medical problem to be overcome, rather than as a natural phenomenon and part of life. Medical historians, for example, have studied experiments on forced sterilization at Auschwitz.

American doctor and historian Sabine Hildebrandt delved into the investigation of pathologist Hermann Stieves, who experimented with political prisoners awaiting execution at Extension Prison and then dissected their bodies after death in search of change. H.Stieve explained how stress affects the female reproductive system. The bodies of more than a dozen members of the ex-anti-Nazi clan who had been executed fell into his hands. Among them are the remains of Elfriede Scholz, the sister of the famous writer Erich Maria Remarque, who was assassinated in Plzen for criticizing the Nazi regime.

Czech historian Anna Hájková has written about a study of the Jewish ghetto in Terezin, Czech Republic by a prisoner and a gynecologist on amenorrhea, the menstrual disappearance caused by the prison shock. It should be noted that in his descriptions of his studies, he mentioned the process of ovulation (or the lack of it) more frequently, but not menstruation, although both are part of the same biological function.

Menstruation has affected the lives of Holocaust victims in several ways: For many, menstruation has been associated with the shame of public bleeding and problems with how to deal with it. Menstruation has also saved many women from sexual abuse. At the same time, amenorrhea may have been a cause for concern about loss of fertility, the impact on the afterlife if one managed to escape from camp, and the possibility of having children. The daily experience of a woman in a concentration camp could have been very different depending on her period.

Hannah Arendt, a researcher of totalitarianism, is often quoted as saying that concentration camps destroyed human solidarity. But, contrary to this claim, menstruation often became a factor in strengthening prisoners’ ties and solidarity: many older women began helping teenage girls experiencing their first menstrual period, who were left alone after they killed their families.

Who is a woman

After deportation to concentration camps and ghettos, many reproductive-age victims of the Holocaust broke their menstrual cycle due to malnutrition and shock. Many of them feared being infertile because their bodies had to undergo such marginal tests. The inner connection between menstruation and fertility has become one of the most important elements of life for them.

Gerda Weissman, originally from Bielsko-Poland, was 15 years old when she was imprisoned. He later recalled that the main reason he wanted to survive was because he wanted to have children. According to her, that desire seemed like a “mania”.

Charlotte Delbo, a French publicist, resistance fighter, and Auschwitz survivor prisoner, describes the following discussion in a women’s room:

It’s sad that those dirty periods are gone … You’re starting to feel like an old woman. The great Irena asked in horror: “What if they never come back after that?” With his words, a wave of horror washed over us. Catholics began to gnaw, others to quote Shema; each of us tried to abolish the curse the Germans sent us: sterility. How can you fall asleep after that?

This women’s reaction shows that, despite religious, national and cultural differences, this anxiety brought them all together. According to Lillian Kremer, a Holocaust literary historian, prisoners’ fear of becoming infertile and doubts about their return to fertility if they managed to survive were a form of psychological abuse of female identity.

The women who entered the camp were given shapeless clothing and their heads shaved. They lost weight, as well as in the hip and chest areas, places commonly associated with femininity. Verbal testimonies and memories show that these changes have led them to begin to question their identities. Remembering her time at Auschwitz when she was only seventeen years old, Polish Jewry Erna Rubinstein wrote in her memoirs: “Who is a woman without her pride on her head, without her hair? A woman who is not menstruating?

Gold rags

Due to the commercialization of natural body processes, we now have tools like sanitary pads or tampons to help alleviate the “discomfort” of menstruation. The term “hygiene measures” indicates that menstruation is considered a health and hygiene problem that needs to be addressed.

The reality of Conclager life was that menstruation was difficult to avoid or hide. The sudden onset of menstruation in public has left many women feeling left out. An additional problem was the lack of rags and the ability to wash. Trude Levi, a Jewish kindergarten teacher from Hungary who was 20 at the time, later recalled: “We didn’t have to shower, we didn’t have underwear. We couldn’t close anywhere. Everything clung to us and me It was probably the most dehumanizing experience of all. “

Many other women also talked about how bleeding during menstruation, without the necessary means, made them feel like animals. The specific “dirt” of menstruation, more than any other dirt, makes these women feel as though they are on the lowest rung of humanity.

The feeling of humiliation intensified when I had to find ways to make some rags. Seventeen-year-old gypsy Julia Lentini from Bydenkopf traveled the country in Germany during the summer months with her parents and 14 brothers and sisters. When she entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps and later Schlyben, she was assigned to work in the kitchen squad. In his testimony, he recounted what tricks women took when menstruating. “We took the underwear they gave us, we ripped off the small rags and stored them as if they were golden. We rinsed them a bit and put them under the mattresses to dry them, nobody could steal them there.” The rags were a gem and as a result they were stolen.

Some women tried to get involved in other ways. Gerda Weissman recalls: “It was difficult because, as you see, we did not have any tools. You had to find pieces of paper or even something similar in the places.”

A kind of rag microeconomics had developed in the claggers. They were not only stolen, but also donated, loaned, and marketed. Elizabeth Feldman de Jong’s testimony shows the importance of rags. Soon after reaching Auschwitz, her menstruation stopped. However, her sisters continued to have menstrual periods every month.

Sterilization experiments were carried out in the cluster, during which the selected prisoners were injected into the uterus. However, if the woman was bleeding due to menstruation at the time, the doctors would release her. One day Elizabeth was invited to receive an injection. She dressed in her sister’s underwear and, upon arrival, told the doctor that she was menstruating. Dr. Elizabeth released her and the girl realized that she could take advantage of her sister’s menstruation in the future to avoid the experiment. The same way of preventing injections worked three times more in the future.

Shame and salvation

Livia Jackson, who had just reached the age of menstruation, was disgusted when she saw blood flow down another girl’s legs during training: “I’d rather die than blood flow down my legs.” Their reaction illustrates the general approach: Although women prisoners were not to blame for the lack of measures to stop and control menstrual bleeding, many of them still felt ashamed.

Breanne Fahs, a professor of gender and women’s studies at Arizona State University, says women’s bodies are viewed as “fluid-free and trouble-making,” and their bodily functions are uncomfortable, tasteless, and unhygienic. On the contrary, men, due to their secretion, gain acceptance: urine, flatulence and semen can be seen through a humorous or even sexual prism.

Still, realizing that menstruation is repulsive could have saved more than one woman from rape. Canadian Holocaust historian Doris Bergen gave an illustrative example of two Polish Jews attacked by Wehrmacht soldiers:

On February 18, 1940, in Petrikau, two guards seized a Jew from Machmanowic (eighteen years old) and Santowska (seventeen years old) from his parents’ house with a gun. The soldiers took the girls to a Polish cemetery; there they raped one of them. Others were menstruating at the time. The men told him to return a few days later and promised him five zlotys.

In her memoirs, a young German Jewess, Lucille Eichengreen, recalled being imprisoned in one of the Nojengam concentration camp satellite camps in the winter of 1944-1945, and she found joy: She planned to cover her frozen shaved head. Fearing that she might be punished for possession of the prohibited item, she hid the scarf in her crotch. Later, one of the German guards took her to a remote location and tried to rape and felt the scarf between her legs. The guard started yelling, “You useless dirty bitch! I was! You’re bleeding! This guard’s mistake saved Lucille from rape.

These stories could be seen ironically: it is rape that should be seen as an unpleasant act, and menstruation as a natural and acceptable process.

Conclager families

Some adolescents experienced their first menstrual concentration camps alone, separated from their families or orphans. In such cases, the older prisoners assisted and counseled them. Ukrainian Tania Kaupila was thirteen years old in the Muldorf concentration camp, which marked the beginning of her first menstrual period. She did not understand what had happened and was full of tears. The girl was afraid of dying and did not know what to do.

The adult women explained to her and other girls of similar age what was happening and taught her how to deal with the flowing blood. It was a different teaching process than it would have been at home. “We tried to steal a piece of brown paper, well, you know, from bags or something,” recalled T. Kauppa.

This story is repeated in many oral testimonies. Many of the orphaned prisoners in the youth concentration camps referred to the help of older women who tried to help the girls as mothers or sisters before they also suffered amenorrhea; In older women, menstruation generally stops during the first two to three months of incarceration.

Holocaust historian Sybile Milton has noted that this is how “concentration camp families” were formed in the camps. And surprisingly, menstruation has not been sufficiently investigated and described until now. As J. Lentini already mentioned, if a girl started menstruating and didn’t know who to talk to about it, an older woman “explained everything very simply to her.”

In the cruel and ruthless reality of concentration camps, older women wanted to help and teach younger girls without expecting any reward for it.

Vera Federman, twenty, from Hungary, was imprisoned at Auschwitz and Alendorf. She and a friend were able to get a job in the kitchen. Extremely valuable work. Here they were lucky enough to eat some extra potatoes. As the diet improved, her menstruation returned. Then both girls stole rags from the female guards. Of course, this theft was a very risky idea (the threat of losing a job is not even worth mentioning), but V. Ferman emphasized how strong the sense of solidarity bound her to a friend when they tried to help each other.

Gender-based social networks have been formed in concentration camps. Arendt wrote that “the camps were designed not only to destroy and humiliate people, but also to serve a brutal experiment aimed at eliminating spontaneity as an expression of human behavior under scientifically controlled conditions.” However, the solidarity of women brought about by the common experience of menstruation tells a different story.

After liberation, many of those who experienced amenorrhea in the concentration camps began menstruating again over time. The return of the menstrual period was a joyous event for many.

Born in London, Amy Zahl Gottlieb was 24 years old and the youngest member of the Jewish Aid Department sent abroad for the first time. In an interview with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum about working with released prisoners in concentration camps, Gottlieb recalled how women began menstruating again when they began to live normal lives. They were eager to become fertile and be able to have children again. Menstruation became a symbol of her freedom. A surviving woman described it as: “My femininity is coming back.”

Menstrual studies, a subject that until now was considered inappropriate or even unpleasant, gives us a much broader picture of women’s experiences during the Holocaust. We can see how the concepts of menstruation, rape, sterility and brotherhood have changed in the camps. It also appears that the long-stigmatized theme of menstruation has been universally accepted and unified for women in camps in just a few months.

With changes in cultural history, the history of feelings, and the history of corporeality, menstruation should be included in the list of significant experiences of Holocaust victims, as this is the only way to see these important everyday aspects of the tragedy that they have been silent or unnoticed for various reasons.