Product Description

An insight into the different experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. This is Nechama Tec's fifth book on the Holocaust, and it features individual stories blended with detailed comparisons of the wartime experiences of women and men. The result is an account of how the coping strategies and the ultimate fate of each sex differed. Tec listens to the voices of the oppressed, voices that originated in wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, archival materials, and her own interviews with survivors and rescuers. Concentrating on life under extreme conditions, Tec's research uncovers the significance of mutual co-operation and compassion that operated across gender lines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1313141 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.75 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"I remember once she got hold of some mildewed flour. Mother baked rolls out of it. Everyone got one roll. And after I finished, I asked her, `Mom, maybe I could have another roll?' And she just started crying." It is details like this that make Tec's book both historically vital and emotionally unsettling. Drawing upon dozens of interviews with Holocaust survivors, Tec (who won a Christopher Award for her 1991 The Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen) has attempted to understand how gender influenced the experience of the Holocaust-a topic rarely treated in comprehensively before. This alone makes Tec's book almost unique, but her amazing skill as an interviewer and accomplished ability to analyze this raw material in a historical context makes this a significant addition to the field. Tec organizes a tremendous amount of personal and historical material succinctly-in such chapters as "Life in the Ghetto," "Leaving the Ghetto," "The Concentration Camps"-while making nuanced connections. She notes, for instance, that, in the early stages of Nazi control, the self-esteem of Jewish men was damaged by new laws forbidding them to work; in the camps men were "more affected by their prewar social standing than women." Often she comes up with surprising data, observing, for instance, that while women frequently and easily took on the "male role" when needed, when Jewish men did have more power (as among partisans in the forests), women were expected to return to their roles as caregivers and sexual partners. While this is a work of powerful emotionality, it is also a groundbreaking study of how gender is inexplicably bound to history and experience.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"This book is magnificent proof that a sensitive investigation of gender issues does not lead to trivialisation and distortion in the service of some presumed agenda but rather to a much deeper encounter with the lived experience of the victims - both men and women - of this devastating and catastrophic event." Christopher R. Browning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "This book is a remarkable achievement, based on a deep knowledge of the subject, profound sociological analysis, and convincing narrative style." Israel Gutman, professor emeritus, Hebrew University

About the Author
Nechama Tec, professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, was recently appointed to the President's Council for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. One of her books, In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen, received the 1991 Christopher Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.