Description
Book SynopsisA sympathetic history that focuses on the experiences of women and girls during the Holocaust and draws on new archival sources. Beginning in late 1940, over three thousand Jewish girls and young women were forced from their family homes in Sosnowiec, Poland, and its surrounding towns to worksites in Germany. Believing that they were helping their families to survive, these young people were thrust into a world where they labored at textile work for twelve hours a day, lived in barracks with little food, and received only periodic news of events back home. By late 1943, their barracks had been transformed into concentration camps, where they were held until liberation in 1945.
Using a fresh approach to testimony collections, Janine P. Holc reconstructs the forced labor experiences of young Jewish females, as told by the women who survived and shared their testimony. Incorporating new source material, the book carefully constructs survivors’ stories while also taking a theoretical approach, one alert to socially constructed, intersectional systems of exploitation and harm.
The Weavers of Trautenau elucidates the limits and possibilities of social relations inside camps and the challenges of moral and emotional repair in the face of indescribable loss during the Holocaust.
Trade Review“Holc has made the voices of testimony‑givers matter in wholly new ways.” -- Dagmar Herzog, City University of New York
Table of ContentsMaps
Introduction
Chapter One: Jewish Girlhood and Jewish Survival in Zaglebie
Chapter Two: The Local Logics of Labor Exploitation
Chapter Three: The Social World of Coerced Labor
Chapter Four: The Conflicted Pathway to Survival: A Study of Three Peripheral Camps
Chapter Five: Auschwitz Comes to the Camps in Trautenau
Chapter Six: Ethics of Care and Prisoner Society
Chapter Seven: Desire and Space in the Coerced Labor Experience
Chapter Eight: The Violence and Losses of Liberation
Chapter Nine: Conclusion and Coda
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
List of Testimony-givers
Archives
Bibliography
Index
