Language:
Italian
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Quaderni Storici
Angaben zur Quelle:
138 (2011) 797-811
Keywords:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
;
Body image
;
Jews Identity
;
Jewish women in the Holocaust
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
Discusses memoirs and diaries published in Italy between 1945-end of the 1990s, written by Italian women (Jews and non-Jews) who survived the Nazi concentration camps. These women remember suffering terrible pain, along with their lost femininity. They experienced unimaginable violence and loss of privacy (e.g. nakedness, open toilet facilities, etc.). They were victims not only of the antisemitism of the Nazis, but also of the anti-feminist nature of Nazi ideology. The testimonies show that a new language and new semantic fields were needed to represent and convey their experiences, a language of death, which would include terms such as "selektzia", "ramp", "Muselmann", "Capo" etc. Many ordinary terms acquired a double meaning. Concludes that by reconstructing these semantic fields it is possible to reconstruct a consciousness of the camp experience, and disagrees with views which deny the possibility of translating the experience of the camp into words.
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