Hsiao-Lan Hu

“Where Are All the Women? Untold Experiences from the Holocaust”

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By Mohammedhassan Alsheraa
For International Women’s Day, Katie Chaka Parks gave a talk at the Zekelman Holocaust Center about the untold stories of women during the Holocaust and the importance of including the varied perspectives of women in history. Testimonies of the Holocaust are often told through the lens of men and their experiences, overshadowing the experiences of women. Even books about the foundational reflections on the Holocaust exclude women from the narrative. The question that Parks asks is: “Where are all the women?” She explains that so much of this question has guided a significant amount of her research and passion that she has for Holocaust Education.
Women experienced every facet of the Holocaust, from the laws that discriminated against Jewish people and kept them in the ghettos to having their abilities to reproduce forcibly taken from them. Women struggled to survive through the different means of resistance and endured the worst crimes against humanity in the concentration camps. However, some women were perpetrators of these crimes and took part of the Holocaust willingly. Parks believes that it is important not to look at history with a two-dimensional lens and to acknowledge that just as men were capable of aiding genocide, so were women.
In her talk, Parks examines four different case studies of women in the Holocaust and their different experiences to see what can be learned from their individual stories. Although learning about four specific women out of the thousands of stories out there cannot teach us everything about women’s experiences in the Holocaust, it can give us an intimate idea of the reality of genocide and its atrocities.
Ida Abraham was one of the women left behind when thirty thousand men were taken in Kristallnacht. She worked tirelessly to move her husband and brother from the concentration camps to Shanghai. She used her domestic talents of sewing to work and provide for her family and other people. Selma Van de Perre worked in the resistance movement and used her position as a woman to conduct her work for the resistance because the opposing Germans were far less suspicious of young women as they were of men. Irma Grese was a female camp guard who was notorious for being viciously brutal to the prisoners in the concentration camps. Her role in killing, torturing, and raping prisoners led historians to regard her as one of the cruelest women in all of the camp structures. This shows that women were a part of creating the culture for death and destruction and that they were integral in the Nazi killing machine just as their male counterparts were. Dr. Gisela Perl was a gynecologist who was imprisoned in Auschwitz and was compelled to secretly perform abortions and infanticide to prevent pregnant women from being killed. She was forced by her circumstances to use her abilities of delivering life into the world into ending the life of fetuses in order to protect the mothers so that they may live to hopefully have children in the future after the Holocaust was over. 
There are countless other stories about how women helped each other in the concentration camps and outside it, how they took care of each other and and risked their lives for each other. There are also stories about how women were actively complicit in propagating genocide and Nazi ideologies. History should not be a token nod to women. Women are an integral part of history and make up half of the story that is many times overlooked. If we leave out the stories of women, no matter how uncomfortable they may be to some people, we neglect half of the people who experienced it. Learning about the Holocaust not only teaches us about the past but helps us enact change in the present, to hopefully never experience something like this again.
This was the first in-person event that the Zekelman Holocaust Center hosted since the COVID-19 pandemic. The talk was followed by a reception and attended by around 400 people. The recording of the talk is now available at https://youtu.be/-X7eCr3Itkg

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Interview with Aasiyah Khan, graduating in May 2023

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What attracted you to the WGS minor?

As a woman, I am aware of my own experiences and difficulties that I face because of it. However, I was interested to learn about how gender plays a role in our society on a systemic level; furthermore, reflecting on how it intersects with my identity as a Muslim Indian-American. My WGS minor classes allowed me to explore this and learn more about the impact of women and gender on our society.

 

What has been most interesting about your experience with the Program so far?

The most interesting experience I’ve had in the WGS Program is hearing the  various ways people view gender and how these issues impact everyone differently. My favorite part of the program is getting the chance to hear these other perspectives, whether it be in my own classes or through WGS events such as the writing competition. Hearing other’s personal experiences with gender has opened my eyes to things I never thought about before. 

 

Have you found any aspect of your WGS studies surprising?

An aspect of my WGS studies that was surprising was how many different areas I was able to explore gender through. The WGS minor offers classes from many departments which has allowed me to learn about how gender has influenced literature, psychology, and religion. I was able to think of these subjects in a new light and furthered my understanding of gender studies.  

 

Has your work as a WGS minor impacted your other course work?

My work as a WGS minor has definitely impacted my other course work. Gender has influenced everything in our society even if we aren’t aware. For example, as a psychology major, I learn about a great deal of theories regarding human behavior. My WGS minor has impacted my psychology studies as I now analyze whether gender, sexuality, etc. has influenced these theories and studies. It was interesting to find out how any topic can be looked at within the lens of gender.

 

Have you seen any intersections between your work as a WGS minor and your experiences outside the classroom?

I have seen how my work as a WGS minor has intersected with my work in various student organizations. One example is through my presidency of Not My Fault, a sexual violence awareness group on campus. As a WGS minor, I have been able to learn about gender-based violence and have used that information to address this issue through advocacy and awareness. WGS has allowed me to expand my knowledge and use it to make an impact in the world. 

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Faculty Accomplishments and Current Projects 2022-2023

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Hsiao-Lan Hu (pronouns: ze/hir/hir), Director of the WGS Program and Professor of Religious Studies, led a committee of international scholars to evaluate and organize the program for the 18th Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women, to be held in Seoul, Korea in June 2023. Upon the request of a board director of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, ze is organizing a panel on “The Global Ethic and the Challenging Path to Full Ordination for Buddhist Women” for the 9th meeting of The Parliament of the World’s Religions, to be held in Chicago in August 2023, and is invited to be a panelist on “Multi-Religious Perspectives on the Parliament’s Global Ethic” at the same meeting. Dr. Hu was a roundtable panelist on “Transcending and Transforming Catastrophes: Women of Color and Strategies for Survival” at the American Academy of Religion 2022 Annual Meetings, and will present on the roundtable panel on “Indigenous Feminism between India and China” at the 2023 Annual Meetings. On campus, ze served as a panelist on “Faith, Hope, and Love: Faith Through the LGBTQ+ Lens—An Interfaith Panel Discussion of Faith and Identity.”

 

Allegra Pitera, Professor of Architecture and Community Development, will collaborate with retired WGS faculty Professor Libby Blume to research under-represented architects and designers, mostly focusing on women.

 

Gail Presbey, Professor of Philosophy, published “Gandhi’s Encounter with the British Suffrage Movement: Lessons Learned,” in Gandhi’s Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges, ed. Veena Howard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), 87-106, and “Wisdom from Women in Africa” and two of the appendices in Rethinking African Sage Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on and Beyond H. Odera Oruka, eds. Kai Kresse and Oriare Nyarwath (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), 99-122. She also published a blogpost “The Work of Brave Women at the El Paso-Juarez Border” on the Sisters of Mercy website on June 23, 2022.  Her journal article “How Nonviolent Movements in the Caribbean Influenced Pan-Africanism” will be published in Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research, 48/2 (2023). Professor Presbey presented a paper, “Catholics Supporting the Cuban Revolution: Dorothy Day in 1962, Betty Campbell and Peter Hinde in 1989” at a conference on “Construction of socialism in theory and practice” at Havana University Institute of Philosophy and Martin Luther King Center in Cuba in June 2022. She also organized the Bioneers conference hosted by Detroit Mercy in October 2022.

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