Different Horrors, Same Hell: The Gendered Nature of Holocaust Suffering

While most Holocaust memoirs and stories considered canonical present mostly the male viewpoint on loss and traumatic experiences, a shade is cast over women’s representations of the horrors of the Shoah. Although the suffering and horror experienced by both men and women cannot be quantified, women were subject to different traumatic experiences, as they were objects of hatred not only for belonging to an “impure race”, but also for being mothers and “sexual beings.”