Doris Bergen told a crowd of 40 Thursday night in the Gould Auditorium that sexual violence against Holocaust victims is something that is too often overlooked and "sensationalized."
"Sometimes, we hide behind our own feelings of respect for the victims of the Holocaust, but I believe people have a duty to see the evidence and not overlook it as a larger part of war," Bergen said.
Though Bergen, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, focused on sexual violence in the Holocaust, she said the roots of her studies came from wars of the 1980s and 1990s, when sexual slavery and mass rape were used as weapons of war.
Although Nazis set up brothels within concentration camps across Germany, Bergen said acts of sexual violence were not limited merely to the confines of those camps.
Bergen told the crowd that in the winter of 1940, a German police officer forced two Polish citizens, one male and one female, to dig their own graves in preparation for their executions.
After beating both of them with a shovel and whipping them across the face with his leather gloves, Bergen said the police officer pushed the woman to the ground, exposing her blood-soaked undergarments to the crowd. According to an eyewitness account, Bergen said the police officer then told the crowd that "the girl is on the rag, so there'll be no f***ing."
That, Bergen said, was the kind of sexual violence used by Nazis throughout Europe's eastern front and in Germany itself.
"Sexual violence was one of the markers Nazis used to demarcate the division of target groups...Sexual violence served to enforce Nazi hierarchy in many ways," Bergen said.
In order to fully analyze the role of sexual violence in the Holocaust, Bergen said a broad definition of sexual violence is necessary.
"Sexual violence, in this case, is not limited to rape. It's violence that is focused on sexual organs and on acts that are generally considered sexual," Bergen said.
According to Bergen, it's equally important to group men and women together when exploring sexual violence in the Holocaust.
"When the topic of sexual violence is discussed, it's usually relegated to the subtopic of women's history, but it's important to include men and women together as victims of these attacks because it's an important way to avoid the danger of sensationalizing those acts," she said.
Though sexual violence was used by Nazis for many different reasons, including establishing power and humiliating victims, Bergen said it also had a simpler role.
"Nazis used sex in many ways to normalize the violence of the Holocaust...The acts of sexual violence in the Holocaust were quite typical but the patterns of those acts could be quite unique," Bergen said.
According to Bergen, dispelling the myth that sexual crimes were prohibited and never occurred in concentration camps is crucial to understanding the role of sexual violence.
"A lot of people mistake Nazi ideology for the reality...Nazis weren't anti-sex. They just used it to establish power and humiliate and dehumanize their victims," Bergen said.
Although exploring the role sexual violence played in the Holocaust can be disturbing and painful, Bergen said it serves an important purpose for historians and students alike.
"I would argue that sexual violence is one of the hallmarks of genocide and mass death and not unique to the Holocaust...Sexual violence also contributes to the understanding of how people can do such terrible things to one another," she said.
"The horrible history of sexual violence in the Holocaust serves to remind us how high the stakes could be if we forget the lessons of the Holocaust," Bergen said.
abenson@chronicle.utah.edu
