''House of Dolls'' () is a 1953

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

by Ka-tzetnik 135633. The novella describes "Joy Divisions", which were groups of women imprisoned in the concentration camps during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

who were kept for the sexual pleasure of other inmates.

Origins

Between 1942 and 1945, Auschwitz and nine other

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

contained camp brothels (''Freudenabteilungen'', or "Joy Divisions"), mainly used to reward cooperative non-Jewish inmates. In the documentary film ''Memory of the Camps'', a project supervised by the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information during the summer of 1945, camera crews filmed women who had been forced into sexual slavery, reporting that " Dachau had its own brothel for the use of guards and favored prisoners." The filmmakers stated that as the women died they were replaced by fresh contingents from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. The novel tells the story of a Jewish woman named Daniella who is "forced to become a

prostitute Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-pe ...

for German soldiers ... in Block 24 of Auschwitz-Stammlager." However, while Block 24 really did house a brothel, in reality "it was a brothel for prisoners. Members of the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

and SS were not allowed to visit it. The forced prostitutes were mostly German or Polish — none of them were Jewish, neither was any of them called Daniella, as records of the Auschwitz administration show. A military brothel for German soldiers and SS guards also existed, but it was located outside of the camp, and all women there were German civilian prostitutes." While there certainly were reports by survivors of male German guards sexually abusing female Jewish inmates, "no archival evidence exists that points to the systematic rape of Jewish women in concentration camps or of their enslavement in Nazi brothels."

Literature and scholarly references

In his essay "Narrative Perspectives on Holocaust Literature", Leon Yudkin uses ''House of Dolls'' as one of his key examples of the ways in which authors have approached the Holocaust, using the work as an example of "diaries (testimonies) that look like novels" due to its reliance on its author's own experiences. Ronit Lentin discusses ''House of Dolls'' in her work ''Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah''. In her book Lentin interviews a child of Holocaust survivors, who recalls ''House of Dolls'' as one of her first exposures to the Holocaust. Lentin notes that the "explicit, painful" story made a huge impact when published and states that "many children of holocaust survivors who write would agree ... that ''House of Dolls'' represents violence and sexuality in a manner which borders on the pornographic". Na'ama Shik, researching at Yad Vashem, the principal Jewish organization for the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, considers the book as fiction.
Israel’s Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial
', Isabel Kershner,

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, September 6, 2007 Nonetheless it is part of the Israeli high school curriculum. The success of the book showed there was a market for Nazi exploitation popular literature, known in Israel as Stalags. However Yechiel Szeintuch from the Hebrew University rejects links between the smutty Stalags on the one hand, and Ka-Tzetnik's works, which he insists were based on reality, on the other.

In popular culture

British

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

band Joy Division took their name from the reference in this book. One of their early songs, "No Love Lost", also contains a short excerpt from the novella. '' Love Camp 7'' (1968), considered to be the first Nazi exploitation film, is set in a concentration camp "Joy Division".

References

External links

Full text in English at Archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:House of Dolls 1953 novels 20th-century Israeli novels Holocaust literature Sexual violence in Europe during World War II Novels about prostitution Works about prostitution in Germany Nazi exploitation Sexual violence during the Holocaust

Origins

Literature and scholarly references

In popular culture

See also

References

Further reading

External links