The following came up on another list which has also brought up the
recent Ms. magazine article about women's holocaust experiences.  Thought
it might be of interest to those who brought up the topic here.
 
Debbie
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The USHMM does not, itis true, present the Shoah from a woman's
perspective, but Dworkin, I believe, misleads us in her Ms. article.
Women's experiences are NOT absent in the videos, the oral histories, and
the audio tapes.  They aren't invisible; there is simply a basic
insensitivity in seeing women qua women.  And there will probably be
correctives, eventually.
 
There are some good sources of material on women in the Holocaust that
Dworkin doesn't mention and, in her omission, she is again misleading.
Rittner and Roth's Different Voices, Heineman's Gender and Destiny, and
Laska's Women in the Resistance are all first rate.  There are hundreds
of survivor memoirs by women, many of which are carried in the Museum
bookstore.
 
We can't "excuse" the insensitivity to women, but with Sybil Milton, JOan
Ringelheim, and several men who support women's issues in the Research
Institute, it is unlikely that women's experiences will continue to be
lumped with the men's.  In fact, I recently lectured to Learning Center
staff and volunteers on Jewish women during the Holocaust and used some
of the Museum's oral histories to illustrate my remarks.  Last spring, I
lectured on lesbians in the Shoah (part of a week long program on gays
and lesbians during the Third Reich) -- to a diverse audience in the
Rubenstein Auditorium; the talk (and the whole week's program) was well
received.  There's quite a bit of talk about women's experiences among
the professional and volunteer staffs.
 
Just trying to balance this discussion.
 
Myrna Goldenberg     [log in to unmask]
Potomac, MD 20854
 
 
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