Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463 – 473

www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Femina sacra: Gendered memory and political violence

Ronit Lentin
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Available online 30 August 2006

Synopsis

This article explores a specific form of state sanctioned violence enacted towards survivors of Transnistria, Ukraine, using
testimonies of women survivors of Transnistria. The article theorises the woman survivor of genocide as femina sacra — the
equivalent of Agamben's [Agamben, Giorgio (1995) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, Ca: Stanford
University Press.] homo sacer, she who can be killed without charge of homicide but who cannot be sacrificed, and who is always
at the mercy of sovereign power. The article then examines the politics of memory in relation to political violence and the concept
of postmemory, as developed by Marianne Hirsch [Hirsch, Marianne (1997) Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and
Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.], denoting a ‘vicarious past’ or ‘received history’, and the link between
feminism and ‘cultural memory’. It concludes by teasing out a series of interrelated questions about the role gender plays in the
interaction of genocide, gender and memory.
© 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Seeking to fathom the ‘unspeakability’ of Auschwitz,

Agamben suggests that the survivor bears witness on the
Examining the roots of testimony in relation to the basis of the impossibility of speaking and that his/her
extermination of European Jews by the Nazis, the Italian testimony cannot be denied. Primo Levi (1989) suggests
political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1999: 157) that the survivor speaks for the Muselmann who is ‘the
argues, after Primo Levi, that the only ‘complete whole witness’, articulating the possibility of speech
witness’ is s/he who cannot bear witness — the Mu- solely through impossibility. Therefore, Agamben
selmann. Although hardly mentioned in all the histories argues that testimony is non-language, and that our
of the destruction of European Jewry, the Muselmann, shame prevents us from being able to gaze upon those
according to Agamben, is becoming visible now, more who reached bottom, whose testimony remains inac-
than 50 years later, because Auschwitz, before being a cessible (Agamben, 1999:35–7).
death camp, Many survivors say that Auschwitz – the euphemis-
tic representation of 20th century genocide – has never
is the site of an experiment that remains unthought ceased to take place (as was argued so poignantly by
today, an experiment beyond life and death in which Charlotte Delbo, 1995). Elsewhere (Lentin, 2004) I
the Jew is transformed into a Muselmann and the argue that the discursive legacy of Auschwitz for present
human being into a non-human. And we will not day politics overshadows other genocides, and that the
understand what Auschwitz is if we do not first name ‘Auschwitz’ has become a metaphor, a ‘code’
understand who or what the Muselmann is — if we do (Zuckerman, 1993), invoked in relation to all ‘unspeak-
not learn to gaze with him upon the Gorgon. able’ catastrophes. I further argue that invoking this
(Agamben, 1999:52) ‘code’ does not help us remember the extermination and
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464 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473

its victims, but rather erases that memory, as do other out attempting a comparative analysis, I conclude the
representations, including photographs, but also history article by posing a series of tentative questions about the
itself (as argued, among others, by the Shoah historian intersection of gender and memory.
Saul Friedländer, 1982).
The fact that ‘we’1 are all implicated in ‘still being Homo sacer
here’ and in the shame of being a subject may perhaps
explain the proliferation of works – artistic, academic, Starting from Michel Foucault's (1978) theorisation
testimonial – dealing with this act of Western barbarity. of the modern nation-state as a ‘state of population’,
However, I want to suggest that ‘we’ are bound to return using a series of technologies to monitor and control the
to the genocidal repressed, while all the time evading the nation's biological life which becomes a problem of
gaze of the Muselmann, which makes the testimony of sovereign power, Agamben shifts the theorisation of
genocide hard to tell and harder to hear, even in our era's social life from the friend-versus-enemy categorical pair
‘confessional culture’, and despite the plethora of of western politics, to the ‘bare life’-versus-political
testimonial representations of genocide. In the din of sovereignty binary. Beyond Foucault's life (bios)
this testimonial abundance, not only does the ‘true’ becoming the principal object of the calculations of
survivor/victim remain voiceless, but, when the survivor state power (biopower), Agamben posits ‘bare life’ (zoe)
is a woman, her gender tends to remain either absent or as coinciding with the political realm, as signifying the
disproportionately exaggerated, because of the collecti- state of exception:
ve's investment in women as carrying the burden of its
At once excluding bare life and capturing it within the
representation and its honour and shame (Yuval-Davis,
political order, the state of exception actually con-
1997:45–6; Akpinar, 2003).
stituted, in its very separateness, the hidden foundation
In this article I want to start thinking theoretically
on which the entire political system rested (Agamben,
about testimony, memory and gender using my
1995:9)
empirical study of testimonies of women from Buko-
vina, northern Romania, who survived Transnistria as Bare life, which Agamben borrows from Roman law
young girls. I begin by positing the woman survivor of to name homo sacer, is the opposite of sovereign power,
genocide as femina sacra — the equivalent of standing at the point of indistinction between violence
Agamben's (1995) homo sacer, always at the mercy of and the law (Agamben, 1995:10). For Agamben, homo
sovereign power. I follow with a brief discussion of the sacer is the ideal-type of the excluded being, whose life
politics of memory of political violence, the concept of is devoid of value; therefore killing a homo sacer is not
postmemory (Hirsch, 1997), and the link between a punishable offence, but neither can the life of a homo
feminism and ‘cultural memory’ (Hirsch & Smith, sacer be used in religious sacrifice. Zygmunt Bauman
2002). I then discuss Transnistria itself, which I theorise, (2004a) uses this theorisation to think of modernity
again after Agamben (1995), as the ‘state of exception’ constructing some categories of people as human waste,
par excellence. The quotes from testimonies of women and argues that throughout modernity, the nation-state
survivors cited here are intended to give a specific ‘has claimed the right to preside over the distinction
flavour and context, even though they do not necessarily between order and chaos, law and lawlessness, citizen
illustrate the theoretical argument in any linear way. and homo sacer, belonging and exclusion, useful
The Hebrew word for memory – ‘zikaron’ – has the (= legitimate) product and waste’ (Bauman, 2004a:33).
same root as the word for male — ‘zakhar’. It has been Agamben's theorisation of bare life is becoming
argued that collective memory is often masculinised in increasingly useful in thinking about statelessness in the
the interest of the national or ethnic collective (see current age of population movements (see, e.g., Back,
Lentin, 2000). Needless to say, women too remember 2005; Bauman, 2004a). Similarly, his theorisation of the
catastrophe in a plethora of ways, including, though not (concentration) camp as the paradigm of modernity is
exclusively, in gendered ways. My study examines instructive in thinking about the hidden nomos of the
testimonies of women, not men, because I do not believe political sphere in which we are all still living. As
that in order to understand women we always need to products of the state of exception and martial law, the
also look at men (pace Yuval-Davis, 1997, whose def- Nazi camps were paradoxically based on protective
inition of gender as relational is ever relevant, though I custody, aiming to avoid ‘danger’ to the security of the
am increasingly interested in theorising gender as a state and its citizens. In the camp the temporary state of
‘floating signifier’, intersecting with, in this case, exception becomes a permanent and normal spatial
history, catastrophe, and the political). Therefore, with- arrangement. Whoever enters the camp moves in a zone
 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473 465

of indistinction between inside and outside, exception reasoning of Serb military policy of genocidal rape
and rule, licit and illicit, a space in which subjective operates at (the) intersection of power relations, gender
right and legal protection make no sense. And if s/he and national identities… gender was an important part of
was a Jew under Nazism, s/he had already been how nationalist forces understood and fought the war’
denationalised and deprived of the rights of citizenship, (Hague, 1997: 59; see also Lentin, 1999).
and wholly reduced to bare life. The camp is the very At the mercy of sovereign power, woman, due to
paradigm of political space at the point in which politics her function as a vehicle of ethnic cleansing, and to her
becomes biopolitics, and homo sacer is virtually sexual vulnerability, arguably becomes femina sacra at
confused with the citizen. Agamben further argues that the mercy of sovereign power: she who can be killed,
the birth of the camp in our times signals the political but also impregnated, yet who cannot be sacrificed due
space of modernity itself (Agamben, 1995:167–174). to her impurity. The body of woman creates and
What I want to turn to now is asking whether the contains birth-nations and demarcates territories, and is
category homo sacer has any gendered implications. Is therefore the basis of nation-states, as the following
there a female equivalent of bare life? Is there a femina discussion of the politics of memory and its gendering
sacra? illustrates.

Femina sacra? The (gendered) politics of memory

Based on the link Agamben makes between birth and Marianne Hirsch (1997:22) posits ‘postmemory’,
nation (deriving from nascere — to be born), Bauman mediated through photographs, films, books, testimo-
(2003: 128) reminds us that birth is the only ‘natural’, nies, and distinguished from memory by generational
no-questions-asked entry into the nation, and that the distance and from history by deep personal connection.
lives of humans who fall outside the limits set by James Young calls this type of memory ‘the afterlife of
sovereignty are ‘unworthy of being lived’, the Nazi memory represented in history's after-images: the
version of homo sacer. What we call camp – breaking impressions retained in the mind's eye of a vivid
the trinity state–nation (birth)–land – is this distinction, sensation long after the original, external cause has been
the hidden matrix of the politics in which we are still removed’ (Young, 2000:3–4).
living (Agamben, 1995:174–6). Postmemory can be one facet of ‘collective memory’,
In Hebrew and other scriptures women can be tem- theorised as different from ‘history’ in being shaped by
porarily banned as impure — after childbirth, or during society's changing needs, or, conversely, as shaping
menstruation, for example. Due to the link between birth both political life and history itself. The politics of
and nation, in genocidal acts, which combine state racism remembrance in the current ‘era of testimonies’ includes
and state sexism (c.f. Bock, 1993; Ringelheim, 1997), the trauma experienced by contemporary bystanders —
women are permanently banned as impure, but also as the often reluctantly forced to listen to the voices of victims
producers of future generations of the racially ‘inferior’. and survivors. It also entails collective forgetting, which
Sovereign power, which, in the case of Nazi Germany, ‘we’, who survive after the event of genocide, have to
constructed Jews and Roma as homines sacres, makes a struggle with in the face of our shame.
further exception in relation to women's bare life, and they Five years after she floated the potent concept of
are thus often abandoned because of their temporary- ‘postmemory’ (although it is fair to ask whether all
made-permanent ban. memory is but ‘postmemory’), Marianne Hirsch joins
The Nazis seemingly never thought to effect the Final Valerie Smith (Hirsch and Smith, 2002) in attempting to
Solution by mass impregnations of Jewish women, engender collective cultural memory, and re-define it by
mostly assumed to be ‘impure’ and therefore not feminist scholarship. According to them, feminist writ-
candidates for sexual relations (although this assump- ings on sexual abuse, violence against women, auto/
tion is beginning to be deconstructed by new research on biographical literature, migration and slavery assume
children born to Nazi soldiers in the East Occupied gender to be relevant to cultural memory, although
territories and in Scandinavia, see, e.g., Muelhaueser, scholars working on national memory, memorialisation,
2005). However, the rape camps in the former testimony and the memory and ‘postmemory’ of the
Yugoslavia dislocated populations and human lives Holocaust, have only recently begun to engage with
along entirely new, gendered, lines. Euan Hague (1997) feminist theoretical analyses.
argues that while rape is always structured by relations As Bauman argues, memory is a mixed blessing, in
of power and coercion, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ‘the that it selects and interprets, ‘and what is to be selected
466 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473

and how it needs to be interpreted is a moot matter and an Romanians, as Nazi allies, for territories lost to Hungary,
object of contention’ (Bauman, 2004b:28, emphasis in the Bulgaria and the Soviet Union (Ofer, 2000:38).
original). Indeed, as Sara Horowitz (1998) argues, Unlike Nazi Germany, Romania was concerned ‘only’
women's Holocaust experiences are often refracted with deporting or killing the Jews in its own territory.
through men's testimonies that depict women as Significantly, Romania deported its Jewish citizens only
peripheral, helpless, fragile, morally defective or erotic after they were defined as Jews along Nuremberg Laws
in their victimisation, and often essentialise women's lines in April 1941 (Ancel, 2002:1389–90), that is,
experiences in terms of their sexuality, as biologically defined as homines sacres, positioned outside the law by
vulnerable to Nazi brutality or as predominantly ‘bond- Romanian sovereign power. Transnistria was set up under
ing’ or ‘nurturing’ even in the face of the worse atrocities Romanian government in August 1941.2
(c.f. Ringelheim, 1997). The categories ‘women’, or Described as the ‘largest killing field in the Holo-
‘women survivors’ are thus homogenised, even though, as caust’, Transnistria was where half of Romania's pre-war
Ruth Linden reminds us, the term ‘Holocaust survivor’ is Jewish population, mostly from the northern provinces
problematic in that no one survived the Holocaust per se, of Bessarabia and Bukovina, was deported between July
but rather ghettos, deportations, concentration camps, 1941 and January 1942. The deportees joined 300,000
hiding places, or resistance acts. A sociology of the local Jews, most of whom were murdered by the SS and
Holocaust must acknowledge the Jews in Nazi-occupied Einstazgruppen D (Ofer, 1999:176–7).
Europe as interacting, knowing subjects, yet the term In Transnistria, like in the Nazi lagers, the temporary
‘Holocaust survivor’ tends to reify their experiences state of exception became a permanent and normal
(Linden, 1993:86–7). spatial arrangement, illustrating Agamben's theorisation
Public media and official archives often tend to of the camp as the epitome of the ‘state of exception’,
memorialise only the traumatic experiences of the which ‘comes more and more to the foreground as the
powerful. However, I want to suggest that the feminist fundamental political structure and ultimately begins to
enterprise of recovering the ‘hidden’ voices of women become the rule’ (Agamben, 1995:20). The camp,
who survived camps, ghettos and hiding places by Agamben argues, unlike the prison (which is part of
creating alternative archives of visual images, music, the ‘ordinary’ penal system), is ruled by martial law and
ritual and performance, oral history and even silence, as the state of siege. In Transnistria – which consisted of
proposed by Hirsch and Smith (2002), is but part of the some 132 Ukrainian towns and villages, which became
solution to such public silencing. Merely recovering concentration, transit and labour camps – though not
women's traumatic experiences without contextualising under Nazi guards, and in closer contact with the local
them in the structural intersections of sexism and racism, population, deportees moved in a zone of indistinction,
covers up the question posed by Bauman about the what in which subjective right and legal protection made little
and the how of selecting what is to be remembered. And sense.
there is an extra danger, as Yizhak Laor's survivor
protagonist reminds us when he says, ‘What I want to Why Transnistria? Why now?
remember, I have to remember without words, other-
wise, it will be someone else's memory’ (Laor, 1993:37). I should have forgotten it all! I should have forgotten
Once communicated, women's Shoah memories are the nightmare! But it was not possible. It is beyond
often co-opted, nationalised, taken away, serving the my power to forget. During long sleepless nights,
purpose of the (patriarchal) collective. during warm afternoons when I just rest, the events
that took place during my fourteen months of exile
Transnistria to Transnistria are constantly resurfacing in my mind
like a movie (Palti, 1983:11).
The term ‘Transnistria’ – coined by Hitler – was the
name given to the 40,000 square kilometres between the Zygmunt Bauman (1989), who theorises the Shoah
River Dniester to the west, the River Bug to the east and as an outcome rather than aberration of modernity,
the Black Sea to the South, in the southernmost corner points to several silences about the Shoah in sociology
of Ukraine. Transnistria existed for two and a half years, and society. Despite the apparent plethora of discourses
between August 1941 and March 1944, and was given about the Shoah — historical, literary, cinematic,
by Hitler to the Romanian premier Ion Antonescu as a testimonial (see contributors to Lentin, 2004, for further
reward for Romania's part in the war against the Soviet discussion), there has arguably been a relative silence
Union (Ancel, 2002:757) and in order to compensate the about Jewish victimhood during the Shoah, due,
 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473 467

perhaps, as Agamben suggests, to the impossibility of but also researchers, with our own sexual vulnerability (or
testimony, and to our shame in the face of those who perhaps also shame, as Levi and Agamben suggest)
reached bottom. This relative silence has been lifting (Ringelheim, 1997:25). Although accounts of the pre-
gradually since the mid-1980s. However, in relation to deportation Romanian pogroms speak of widespread
Transnistria the silence has lasted longer, as argued, rapes of women and girls, little has been written about this
among others, by survivor Felicia Steigman Carmelly: in relation to Transnistria. In the Kishinev pogrom, while
this ‘blatant, but unintentional neglect is an additional male Jews were captured as slave labour, women were
source of pain in the web of trauma’ (Steigman- ‘dragged to satisfy the sexual lust of the (Romanian)
Carmelly, 1997:xix). “liberators”. On August 1, 1941, 450 Jews were pulled out
It is difficult to fathom this prolonged silence; my of the ghetto, mostly intellectuals and beautiful women…
research demonstrates that it had to do with the relative Some of the surviving women and girls were transported
lack of available archival material from the former to the Soroca military brothel’ (Steigman-Carmelly,
Soviet bloc, opened only in recent years, with active 1997:49). Yet little of this appears in recorded, written
Romanian Holocaust denial (Braham, 1997; Gallagher, or oral testimonies.
1995; Steigman-Carmelly, 1997:xxiv3), but also with I have chosen to research girl survivors because,
the survivors themselves. unlike Nazi concentration camps, 50% of the deportees
The prominence of the Nazi extermination camps, to Transnistria were children (Steigman-Carmelly,
and of the testimonies of survivors of these camps, 1997:119) — the ultimate ‘bare life’ due to their relative
resulted in Transnistria survivors' understandable re- powerlessness in the world of adults. (Steigman-
luctance to assume the survivor mantle for what were Carmelly, 1997:119) writes of thousands of children
‘only’ deaths by disease, hunger, cold and sporadic roaming the muddy roads from camp to camp. Separated
killings of a few hundred thousands, which, many felt, from their parents, many witnessed the death or murder
could not be compared with the millions exterminated in of their parents, eventually joining groups of wondering
the Nazi death camps. Thus, the 100,000 Romanian children, looking or begging for shelter and food. For
Jews who immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1949 some orphans, begging was the only way to survive. For
were trying to integrate and were reluctant to speak of others, it was shameful, as Klara Ostfeld writes:
their ordeal, of which no one in the young state wanted
I was nine years old, one gloomy afternoon, when I
to hear.4
left the room I shared with so many others. Without
Indeed, the women survivors I interviewed told me
telling anybody I went out into the street. I wandered
about silencing their Transnistria experienced in Israel.
about the narrow depressing roads of the Moghilev
Martha Ellenbogen: ‘To this day I have not given
ghetto. I saw other children my age wrapped in rags
testimony in Yad Vashem. It's difficult. I can understand
with newspapers around their feet… I found myself
that people did not believe us…’.5 Bertha Abrahami: ‘No
in the market. There were long benches piled high
one asked us anything… Nor was I interested in telling.
with enticing foods… My mouth was watering at the
Because no one can transmit the feelings…’ According
sight of these foods… I stared at them as my thoughts
to survivor Sonia Palti: ‘When I returned after 14 months
were wandering back into my life before deporta-
exile in Transnistria, I wanted to tell my friends about
tion. [A] voice rudely shocked me out of my reverie,
the extermination, about torture, about hunger, about
‘Aren't you ashamed to beg?’… I was flooded with
beatings, about exile, to tell what Transnistria was for
shame… When I left the market I no longer felt
us. I realised that no one wanted to hear. So as a child of
hunger, just shame and a deep emptiness. (Ostfeld,
15 I had a strange experience: I understood I had to keep
in Steigman-Carmelly, 1997:305–6).
quiet’ (in Simyonovics, 1999).
The pre deportation posgrom at Iasi, despite predict- Implemented by less technological means than in
ing the future massacres which were to annihilate six the Nazi-controlled territories, and unlike the system-
million Jews in the following three years, remained atically organised Nazi annihilation plan, where
unspoken at the time and for a long period afterwards arguably death was for the most part quick and
(Carp, 1946–48). ‘sanitary’, the Romanian methods were barbaric.
Women survivors face an extra layer of silence. According to Israeli novelist and child survivor of
Despite women's vulnerability to sexual exploitation, Transnistria Aharon Apelfeld, ‘They used old fashioned
researching women's sexual abuse during the Shoah is methods, not as in Auschwitz. This meant long and
extremely difficult, since it raises the possibility that they extended deaths, hunger, cold, illness. Or they would
traded their sexuality for survival, and confronts relatives, take people out and simply shoot them. But they saved
468 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473

bullets. They didn't shoot the children, they simply The narratives: ruptured childhood
threw them out’ (in Simyonovics, 1999).
When I lay on the ground a week after I witnessed my
Not trying to suggest that girls experienced greater
mother's death, hungry, broken, alone, an orphan,
oppression than boys in Transnistria, and without
between strangers, I thought, if I remain alive I will
constructing a comparative empirical frame, my study
tell the whole world what I experienced. And no one
focuses on the testimonies of girls, exploring whether
will believe me. (Esther Gelbelman, in Simyonovics,
girls have gender specific memories of their Transnistria
1999).
experiences.
If modernity is about constructing order, Bauman In all the testimonies I examine for this article, the
argues that the ‘prospect of order… draws out from its women depict the idyllic, protected childhoods of the
lair the ogre of chaos… Chaos reveals itself as a state of pampered daughters of the Jewish bourgeoisie which, in
chaos by allowing events that the order must already pre war Bukovina, had the economic and cultural
have prohibited… Chaos, disorder, lawlessness portends freedom to lead a well off, yet traditional Jewish ex-
the infinity of possibilities and the limitlessness of istence. This narrative device highlights the sharp
inclusion; … In an orderly (ordered) space, not every- rupture between idyllic childhood and what was to come.
thing may happen’ (Bauman, 2004a:30–1, emphasis in
Having been a sheltered child, the only granddaughter
the original).
to my grandparents… I was very naïve, pampered and
As the quotes from the testimonies below illustrate, a
completely unprepared for the perils facing me. After
recurring theme in the accounts of Transnistria
surviving the forced abandonment of my home and
survivors is chaos – ‘a condition in which something
birthplace and the atrocious deportation train, I no
is not in its proper place and does not perform its
longer felt like a child. My childhood was denied to
proper function’ (Bauman, 2004a:31) – even though in
me, it was robbed by evil people who had complete
effect, everyone, from the highest Romanian state
power over our lives… (Steigman-Carmelly, 1997:
authorities down to the most humble civil servant in the
233).
village offices, knew and agreed that the Jews had to be
killed or deported. This campaign was carried out in Ruth Glassberg-Gold describes the shock of the first
Romania before the extermination camps began to chaotic hours of the deportations which began in
function elsewhere in Europe. Despite the reported September 1941:
chaos, new archival materials demonstrate that the
November 1941… That morning the soldiers banged on
Romanians employed their own rationale for the
our door, cursing and swearing. They ordered us to
deportations including fear of the widespread typhus
leave the apartment. Carrying rucksacks and a few
epidemic of the 1941–2 winters, and the need to supply
packed things we left our house forever. Terrified, I
slave labour to build the Nazi Poland–Ukraine highway
looked silently at the chaos on the streets, familiar to
which explains the Trans-Bug Nazi-controlled labour
me since childhood and hitherto peaceful. There were
camps modelled on the Nazi camps in Poland. The
hordes of people, shoving and pushing mercilessly…
archives also demonstrate a clear command structure on
Before we could collect ourselves, we were swallowed
the Romanian side, leading Steigman-Carmelly to
in that chaotic deportation — people of all ages and
conclude that ‘while chaos and disorganisation other-
classes, women holding screaming babies in their arms,
wise prevailed, the persecution and extermination of the
sick people supported by children, old people bent
targeted Jewish population was executed with cruel
under their belongings… (Glassberg-Gold, 1999: 63).
determination’… so much so that by May 1942, a few
months after the deportations began, almost two third of The Romanians established several points along the
Transnistria's Jews were dead (Steigman-Carmelly, River Dniester, ordering the Jews to cross the river on
1997: 89). bridges or on overcrowded barges and rafts. The
Shoah historian Dalia Ofer (2000:39) argues that the crossings and the ensuing human convoys were overseen
history of Transnistria can be studied as a mini history of by Romanian soldiers, who shot Jews unable to keep up
the Holocaust. Even though Transnistria was also the pace because of weakness or illness. Deportees who
characterised by successful Jewish resistance strategies,6 died on those death convoys were left on the side of the
Transnistria, the territory, was ‘camp territory’ par excel- road to die from exhaustion, cold, hunger and illness
lence, where sovereign power turned young girl depor- before they reached the camps. Some, having exchanged
tees into femina sacra, as I now explore by reading their their clothes for food, walked naked in 40 degrees below
testimonies. zero (Ancel, 1997).
 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473 469

Ruth Glassberg-Gold describes the death convoys death for the first time in their lives; having to part with
from a child's point of view: prized childhood possessions; being flee-ridden and
terrified of the typhus epidemic; being forcibly shaved
As we were advancing (on our death march) I noticed and deprived of their budding femininity; employing
a strange thing: on both sides of the road I saw tree complex barter systems and other resistance strategies;
stumps covered in snow, which looked like human and finally, having to live on with the memories, sup-
figures. Confused, I tried to understand what they pressed for many years.
were, but from the cart I could not decipher them… I The packed trains and lack of hygiene feature
asked the adults for an explanation, but they hesitated. prominently in the narratives, signalling another rupture
Only when I insisted they told me the shocking truth – with the narrators' bourgeois upbringing and warm
these were swollen, frozen human bodies from family relations.
previous deportations, people who were unable to
They sent us in cattle trains to Bessarabia; Merkulesti,
stand the march and stayed to die by the side of the
the last stop. A border station between Russia and
road forever… (The bodies) were everywhere – in the
Romania… It was there that I got the shock of my life.
barns, the cellars and inside the houses… they were
It was there I think that we lost our humanity. We got
abandoned like animals, nobody bothered to close
off the train, there were soldiers, Romanians, Ger-
their glassy eyes, which seemed to be imploring for
mans, dogs; and they all relieved themselves outside
rest (Ruth Glassberg-Gold, 1999: 75–6).
the train, without shame. We simply got off the train
and… men, women, children, everyone together. This
Martha Ellenbogen links private memories of
is a picture I shall never forget (Bertha Abrahami,
girlhood with accounts of the convoys:
Interview, Israel, 2000).
One place shocked me. Obadovka. I will never
Deportees were housed in pigsties, stables and
forgive myself. People died at the side of the road. It
cowsheds — sometimes with up to 1500 strangers to a
was the end of October. For the first time in my life I
shed. Martha Ellenbogen: ‘We arrived in Potshana, and
saw frozen people in the ditches by the side of the
put in a cowshed. There were troughs on both sides… the
road. I was very scared. I won't forgive myself for
cows were no longer there, we lived there instead of the
having made life difficult for my mother, because I
cows. We lay side by side, improvising with blankets,
didn't want to go to sleep. She didn't know what to
coats and straw. We stayed there with strangers, people
do… They opened the door and we saw naked people,
we had never met before’.
thin as skeletons…(Interview, Israel, 2000).
Having become immune to the pain, narrators tell of
The narrators, who were nine to eleven years old at the the death of loved ones flatly, recounting death as a
outbreak of war, speak of the changing relations with the ‘natural’ consequence of the horrors. This is particularly
local population, and seeing parents being humiliated by shocking when they talk of the death of mothers. Bertha
neighbours and customers who joined the Iron Guard. Abrahami: ‘We walked on, and my mother became ill.
Ruth Glassberg-Gold, who grew up in Milie, a Very ill. And died’. Martha Ellenbogen: ‘In the stable
picturesque village outside Czernowitz, describes her people became ill and began to die. Those who died
shock at hearing that the Jewish population of Milie was were placed in the aisle and the bodies were stacked up
massacred by its neighbours after she and her family had until the carts arrived… Meanwhile my mother became
fled to Czernowitz: ill with typhus. This couple we befriended came and saw
she was dying and said that if anything happened to
The carrier of the appalling news was my mother's Mother, I should say nothing and they would come to
cousin… He managed to shout in a choked voice see us in the morning… they were afraid that if the others
towards (our) fourth-floor window: ‘Anna! Anna! saw that she had died, they would take away my few
They have all been murdered!’… Later, when we remaining things. I lay beside Mother and warmed her
found out that all our friends and relatives had been with my body… in the morning they came, and mother
murdered, not by the soldiers but by their neighbours was no longer alive’.
with whom they had lived in harmony, our panic The prevalence of death meant that narrators were
increased (Glassberg-Gold, 1999: 54). often unsure as to their own continuing existence —
illustrating life in the twilight zone between inside and
Other themes unite the narratives: having to witness outside, exception and the law. Bertha Abrahami: ‘We
the death of loved ones; being faced with epidemics and walked and walked and arrived somewhere… On the
470 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473

way there I had already had fever… we were no longer homogenising or essentialising women's stories, I
clean. I remember father held me in his arms and there would tentatively suggest that in contrast to men's
was a table, and father asked the people to allow him to linear chronologies, women's tales are often multiple,
put the child on the table because she had fever. I lay on ambivalent and recursive. If men's stories follow the
the table and I remember thinking that we were in a main traits of idealised auto/biographies, women's
train, or something, I don't know. Every morning they stories are often deviant, subverting the collective's
got the dead out. I remember that I didn't know whether story.
I was alive or dead, if they were taking me out or not’. The narratives of Israeli women Shoah survivors
Strategies of survival improvised by the deportees often deviate from the arguably male linear Shoah
included selling their remaining valuables, bartering narrative, the trajectory of which begins prior to the
with local Ukrainian peasants, knitting, collecting and Shoah, and continues via Shoah (and often gevurah —
selling scraps of timber. Ruth Glassberg-Gold learnt a acts of heroic resistance) to tekumah (redemption) in the
bitter lesson about the value of things: ‘A blouse was state of Israel. Although some of the narratives by
worth an onion, a coat a loaf of bread, and so on. women who survived Transnistria have such a linear
Naturally people who had more valuable things, chronicity, they can also be read, precisely because of
jewellery for instance, could do better deals and this the long silence about Transnistria, as disrupting the
gave them a better chance of survival. These were hard linearity of Israeli Shoah narratives.7
lessons in the facts of life’ (Glassberg-Gold, 1999:76). Therefore, I want to ask whether women's memory
Ruth Glassberg-Gold was relieved when her long of violence is always scripted by the collective, and is
braids were cut off, but when told she would have to always someone else's memory. Is it possible to re-
shave her hair completely in order to stop the lice member gender through the positioning of women's
infestation, ‘I looked desperately at my beautiful hair bodies at the intersection of birth–nation–territory? Or
falling on the ground and felt naked and ashamed. I was is gender – often conceived as pertaining to the private
hurt not only because I was no longer beautiful, but sphere – therefore one of the signifiers of a new type of
because I no longer looked like a girl. My identity was forgetting?
robbed and I felt humiliated. My only consolation was Theorising the inability of Shoah survivors to proceed
that older girls too had to bear this humiliation, and after from past to present, Lawrence Langer juxtaposes
our heads were shaved we all looked alike, women and ‘common memory’, which ‘urges us to regard the
men, strange, grotesque’ (Glassberg-Gold, 1999:77–8). Auschwitz ordeal as part of a chronology, (freeing) us
from the pain of remembering the unthinkable’, and
Conclusion: the gender of memory, the memory of ‘deep memory’ which ‘reminds us that the Auschwitz
gender past is not really past and never will be’ (Langer, 1995:
xi). I want to suggest that for many Jewish women from
I want to suggest that these gendered testimonies of Bukovina who survived Transnistria as girls, whose
Transnistria raise important questions about the link idyllic girlhoods were cruelly ruptured, later memories
between gender and memory, particularly due to the of rescue and redemption, in the state of Israel or
long silence which preceded them. elsewhere, were the common memory covering up the
While it is clearly impossible to make cross-cultural deep memory of violence of the girls they once were,
gender differentiations, Zvi Dror, who collected and whose past Transnistria ‘selves’ are not really past and
recorded many Shoah testimonies of Israeli survivors, never will be.
says that while the male survivors he interviewed gave The fact that, despite the chaos and the inhuman
general, factual testimonies in the spirit of Israeli conditions, 40% of the deportees survived (Ofer,
hegemonic masculinity, the women testified more 1999:49) may be why Transnistria has been considered
emotionally concentrating on the personal rather than until quite recently as a ‘lesser’ Shoah experience.
the public or political (personal communication, De- Memories of redemption are sanctioned by the Zionist
cember 1992). Gergen and Gergen (1993:195–6) further collective, yet, because of the multi-layered silences
suggest that male auto/biographies tend to follow the covering the Transnistria ‘forgotten Holocaust’, the
classical lines of fundamental Western ‘monomyths’ — narrators' private testimonies can be read as counter
the sagas of a hero who triumphs over many obstacles, narratives, subverting the accepted Transnistria story.
which do not fit the lives of most women, whose lives The accounts of women who survived as girls in
are characterised by multiple and parallel trajectories, Transnistria may help shed light on the impossibility of
affected by their mothering and nurturing roles. Without forgetting violent childhood trauma and on the price of
 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473 471

survival. Langer argues that ultimately, Shoah testimo- Yet women remember too. Fathoming what is
nies are united by the ‘unintended, unexpected, but gendered about memory, we probably need to go
invariably unavoidable failure’ to link survivors' Shoah beyond women's different experiences and their greater
experiences with the rest of their lives (Langer, 1991:2– vulnerability to sexual exploitation. We who live on
3). Shoah survival is often valorised at the expense of have an investment in remembering the victims of
morality (Bauman, 2000), and recovering women's genocide as valorised and pure. However, since women
gendered experiences of violent victimisation, outside are strategically positioned as carriers of the collective's
the context of state racism and sexism, assumes women honour and shame (as argued by Akpinar, 2003, in
as permanent victims. Joan Ringelheim (1997) criticises relation to Turkish migrant women in diaspora situa-
such uncontextualised rendering which conveys re- tions), women survivors embody and symbolise the
deeming messages about women's ability to survive by collective and carry greater responsibility for transgres-
constructing alternative family structures and therefore sing group boundaries, both symbolically and material-
reverting to traditional gender roles and alternative ly. The investment of the collective in women's bodies
morality. as demarcating its boundaries begs the question of
Often breaking the silence about Transnistria for the whether the ‘true (gendered) witness’ is she who was
first time ever, the narratives of these girl survivors tell sexually violated, but who cannot tell the story of her
of rupture, violence and death, confusion, precarious- sexual exploitation because of her symbolic positioning.
ness, of Jews as ‘bare life’, prey to Nazi, Romanian and According to Ringelheim, the split between Holocaust
Ukrainian sovereign power, but also of the gendered and gender is ‘a line (that) divides what is considered
pains of early adolescence, of budding womanhood peculiar or specific to women from what has been
humiliated and of femininity erased. designated as the proper collective memory of, or
As Liz Stanley (1992:8) argues, the assumption of narratives about, the Holocaust’ (Ringelheim, 1998:344).
traditional biography ‘that there is a coherent, essentially Woman carries the principle and practice of birth in
unchanging and unitary self which can be referentially her body, and, as femina sacra at the mercy of sovereign
captured’ is no longer tenable. For some survivors of power, both demarcates the collective, and signifies the
political violence, broken or ambiguous identity may be indistinction between violence and the law, inside and
a painful problem, for others it can be an opportunity, a outside, at its most extreme. If gender remembers
special creative space. Since, as Linden (1993:43) says, through women's different experiences, then memory
‘we all must remember so as to carry on, to resist, to is gendered through the collective's investment in
survive’, a woman's gendered experience under Nazi women's symbolic representation. The memory of
occupation is a central building block of her gendered Transnistria – not quite ‘Auschwitz’ and having a high
survivor identity. survival rate – fits uneasily the ways the Shoah has been
The Transnistria testimonies I am studying are remembered and nationalised in the memory bank of the
recursive, hesitant, incomplete narratives that Gergen Jewish people. The question is whether ‘we’ – this time
and Gergen (1993) describe as ‘deviant’, and as more meaning both feminist researchers, and gendered sub-
commonly told by women, rather than men, whose jects implicated in ‘still being here’ – can bear to gaze
narratives of violence tend to correspond with collective upon the Gorgon. Can our shame allow us to absorb
memory and its nationalised constructions. However, victimised womanhood so as to open up new avenues to
what has unproblematically been referred to as narra- researching gendered memory in times of political
tives of the private sphere, signify, for the survivor, a violence?
broken or ambiguous identity, notionally replacing the
story of the collective with a gendered, individuated Endnotes
survivor identity. Understanding these narratives as
gendered constructs memory in terms of women's 1
Of course ‘we’ is far from a universal concept. I use it here in
different experiences and voices, yet challenges neither inverted commas to indicate the problematic use of the term, which
sovereign power, nor structural racism and sexism. relates, at best, to those members of a western world who claim the
Rachel Adler suggests that in a (Jewish) patriarchy, Shoah as part of their legacy.
the only memory is male memory because ‘the only
2
All the rules governing the region were based on Antonescu's
Decree no. 1 for the Governing of Transnistria. Antonescu established
members are male members. They are the rememberers
in Bucharest, as part of the Prime Minister's office, the civil–military
and the remembered, the recipients and the transmitters cabinet for the governing of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria,
of tradition, law, ritual, story and experience’ (Adler, headed by the region's civil governor, Prof. G. Alexianu (Ancel,
1991:45). 2002:760). Lya Benjamin highlights the regime's complex and
472 R. Lentin / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 463–473

contradictory anti-Jewish policy which included the Romanisation of the Shoah for the 21st Century (pp. 25−40). Oxford: Berghahn
Jewish property, ethnic cleansing, deportation to Transnistria and the Books.
Nazi death camps, discriminatory measures (such as the wearing of Benjamin, Lya (1997). Anti-Semitism as reflected in the records of the
the distinctive mark, the ban on conversion, supply restrictions), and Council of Ministers, 1940–1944: An analytical overview. In
the way emigration was organised (Benjamin, 1997:3–18). Anti- Randolph L. Braham (Ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and
semitism was central to Iron Guard doctrines: ‘the Jew was the mortal Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era. (The Rosenthal Institute
enemy of Romania because of his identification with the debased for Holocaust Studies, City University of New York) (pp. 1−18). New
products of the west — anti-Christian communism as well as liberal York: Columbia University Press.
democracy’ (Fischer-Galati, 1993: 53–4, cited by Gallagher, 1995). Bock, Gisela (1993). Racism and sexism in Nazi Germany:
3
The pressures to rehabilitate Antonescu are ongoing. In 1991 Motherhood, compulsory sterilisation and the state. In Carol
Romania's President Illiescu, opposing extreme right antisemitism, Rittner & John Roth (Eds.), Different Voices: Women and the
rejected growing pressure to rehabilitate Antonescu, by Romanians Holocaust (pp. 161−186). New York: Paragon House.
seeking a strong ruler who would sweep away internal tensions, put Braham, Randolph L. (Ed.) (1997). The Destruction of Romanian and
an end to foreign meddling and make Romania ‘great again’. In July Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era. (The Rosenthal
1991 he declared that he ‘did not share the opinion of those who Institute for Holocaust Studies, City University of New York).
wished to rehabilitate him, keeping silent on the negative aspects of New York: Columbia University Press.
his activity’, describing Antonescu as ‘Hitler's ally (who) pushed the Carp, Matatias (1946–48). Cartea Neagra (The Black Book).
country into war’ (Gallagher, 1995:115). Bucharest: Atelierele Grafice Socec and Co.
4
Personal communication, Yitzhak Arzi, Tel Aviv, Summer 2000. Delbo, Charlotte (1995). Auschwitz and after. New Haven: Yale
5
Quotes from Bertha Abrahami and Martha Ellenbogen are taken University Press.
from interviews I conducted with them in Israel in Spring 2000. Fischer-Galati, Stephen (1993). 20th Century Romania. New York:
6
The very disorganisation and lack of systematic annihilation plan, Columbia University Press.
as well as the normative use of bribery of Romanian officials enabled Foucault, Michel (1978). The history of sexuality, volume I: An
the Jewish leadership to formulate strategies of assistance and relief introduction. New York: Random House.
since spring 1942. Despite its lateness and inadequacy, the relief Friedländer, Saul (1982). Kitsch U'Mavet: Al Hishtakfut HaNazism
contributed to survival: ‘no other Jewish community in Nazi Europe (Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death). Jerusalem:
received such massive assistance’ (Ofer, 2000:39). Keter.
7
See Lentin (2000) for a discussion of second generation Shoah Gallagher, Tom (1995). Romania after Ceausescu: The politics of
narratives as gendered counter narratives. intolerance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gergen, Mary M., & Gergen, Ken J. (1993). Narratives of the gendered
body in popular autobiography. In Ruthellen Josselson & Amia
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