Voices on Antisemitism - Nechama Tec - Professor Emerita of Sociology, UConn

 

Nechama Tec 

A sociologist and survivors view of the Holocaust  

I thought it was very important to look at women because I realized that they experienced the Holocaust and reacted to the Holocaust in different ways from men. So I decided I am going to look at women in the forest, the ghettos, the concentration camps, and all these contexts in terms of which we examine the Holocaust—I looked at the women, what happened to them in each.

The German nation was a patriarchal system, like most European countries at that time. So this was true also for the Jewish families, you know, that the man was really in charge. So by the patterns of relationships that they had, the demand was much greater upon women to be flexible—they had to be submissive to the father, then to the husband. That doesn't mean that every woman behaves this way under all circumstances. But the women have a history of accommodation and this history of accommodation creates flexibility.

If we take, for instance, the situation in the ghetto. Much of my evidence comes from direct interviews. What happened to the men that were brought into the ghetto? If they survived, they lost their jobs, they lost their status, they became a nobody. Because in a patriarchal system, the whole selfhood for a man comes from his achievements: can he be a protector of the family? Can he be a supporter of the family? And all this was thrown out. They were humiliated, terribly, on purpose. But the woman's domain—to feed the family—was still there. So therefore a woman, while she lost a lot, it did not destroy her selfhood.

What do we want when we start looking at the Holocaust? We want to learn, to get insights. And the more ways you consider when you examine different groups, the better the outcome, I think. Because one story doesn't give you the answer.