| Book Review | Oral History Review, 31.1

BOOK REVIEWS

RESILIENCE AND COURAGE: MEN, WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST. By Nechama Tec. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 423 pp. Hardbound $35.00.

In the introduction to Nechama Tec's fifth book on the Holocaust, she refers to an issue that she encountered while writing her fourth book, a study of the Bielski partisan group. In that work she discovered that women were considered burdensome by partisans, both Jewish and non-Jewish. She also noted significant differences between the treatment of women in Jewish and non-Jewish groups. This finding aroused Tec's interest in how Jewish women fared in various circumstances during the Holocaust: in ghettos, camps, hiding, passing, and in the forests.

As in her previous work, Tec interviewed scores of survivors in several European countries as well as in the United States and Israel. Her own Holocaust experiences and her facility with several languages contributed to establishing trust with interviewees. Many years of experience with Holocaust oral history have also sensitized her to issues of memory and accuracy and why particular issues have become important at the present time. As she proceeded with interviews with women, she realized that the experiences of women and men were often intertwined and to study one without the other would be to lose a broader perspective. She expanded her study to include men as well as women, studying them in the context of similar experiences. The results are fascinating and illuminating, taking important strides beyond recent research into women's Holocaust experiences.

Tec begins her book with a description of how her research evolved, and her methodology for eliciting gender-based responses from Holocaust survivors, who were often resistant to gender issues. Fearful of obscuring the historical reality that the Nazis intended to murder all Jews, men, women, and children, many interviewees at first denied that there were differences in the experiences of men and women, even as their own descriptions were of differing coping strategies and perceptions. However, because Tec's methodology included multiple interview sessions with some respondents, she was able to point out inconsistencies in their own testimonies that "convinced them that the experiences and coping strategies of Jewish men and women were distinct," and they subsequently "offered a range of rich gender-specific comparisons that led to new understandings about the complex and vital relations of gender to class, power, cooperation, bonding, and much more" (17). This method goes beyond superficial memory, sometimes eliciting forgotten episodes, enriching the interview for researcher and interviewee alike.

Tec is careful to avoid creating a hierarchy of suffering. Her study is qualitative; there are no statistics. Exploring similar experiences for women and men, Tec used the same neutral questions for both genders. Mindful of the fragility of memory in very elderly interviewees, she was careful to compare their responses to those of earlier recorded interviews that she found in archives and to verify the information against primary historical sources. She lets the reader "hear" the survivors' voices in frequent quotes from their interviews, which capture the rhythm and poetry of their narratives.

The chapter titled "In the Beginning" discusses the initial disruption in Jewish life caused by Nazi domination and occupation. Men were often the first to be rounded up, killed, or deported. To escape this fate, many men ran away, abandoning their families. Others, deprived of livelihoods and professional work, were forced into demeaning roles and could not adequately provide for their families. As a result, women assumed male roles in the family and community. Becoming providers for their families, improvising and making do, they risked travel and engaged in forbidden economic activity.

By the middle of 1943 the Nazi annihilation plan was clear to those who were willing to believe reports by men and women who escaped the killing fields and the death camps. Tec finds that men and women were equally involved in efforts to escape. Women, it seems, were more likely to be part of small groups of family or friends, whereas men were more likely to be involved in a large scale effort.

Tec cites estimates that close to 90% of the Jews who reached the death camps were murdered upon arrival. For those selected for temporary life, the experience was one of dehumanization. Men and women were segregated. Women saw themselves as better able to cope, to improvise. "When something happens, the men fall apart right away. Women are strong and they stand on their feet ... but of course there are exceptions" (132). This quotation expresses the contrast between the prewar image of men as strong and self-sufficient and the reality of the concentration camp. Another issue that is relevant to gender is the use of sex as a commodity. Although opportunities for this were limited, it does figure as a means of obtaining food, better working conditions, or protection.

Tec tests the assumption that women in concentration camps were more likely to bond than men. She suggests that this may not be true and asserts that her interviews show that both men and women in concentration camps participated in family-like groups. Her examples of the camp-sister relationship are consistent with the literature already available, and she provides several interesting examples of men who bonded with male friends for the same purposes of protection, emotional support, and the defeat of powerlessness. This finding, particularly the testimony of one man who calls members of his group "Lager brothers," is especially interesting and demands further exploration.

Women in resistance groups were usually the couriers who transmitted funds, supplies, and information from one group or town to others. Less detectable, and not fitting the German stereotype of the homebound, subservient woman, they were more mobile than Jewish men. Regardless of the value of women's roles, men were almost always the leaders. Yet the women interviewed by Tec do not feel that their role was less important. This distinction also characterized the Jewish forest partisan groups. Most women had no weapons; men were the leaders and fighters. Jewish groups, with survival as their goal, tried to maintain Jewish identity and Jewish values. The prime example of this priority is the existence of Jewish family camps, which accommodated women, children, and the elderly in addition to the fighting cadres. In family camps, there was a distinct sense of the group as a Jewish community. Tasks were divided traditionally by gender, religious life existed, couples married if they wished, and children were schooled in addition to working for the common good.

Before the war, Jewish families were patriarchal; women nurtured husbands and children, while men were the breadwinners. But Nazi laws and occupation destroyed traditional gender roles. Tec concludes that women's resilience and courage led them to assume new roles and responsibilities. In concentration camps, both genders created surrogate family groups for mutual assistance and emotional support, but women, who drew on prewar domestic skills, seem to have coped better physically. Tec sees the Jewish Bielski partisan group as exemplifying the "universal need among people in extreme situations for cooperation and mutual care" (354).


Brana Gurewitsch
Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York City

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