Tommy Curry -- Thinking through the Silence: Theorizing the Rape of Jewish Males during the Holocaust through Survivor Testimonies

The Holocaust is one of the most horrific atrocities of the 20th century. The accounts of violence, death, and dehumanization by the Jewish people has forever stained the human record. Over the last several decades there has been an attempt to gender genocide and Holocaust studies by looking at sexual as well as lethal violence. While there have been tremendous consideration of women's experiences of rape and sexual abuse during the Holocaust, the rape of men have not been previously engaged as a matter of study or archival investigation before my discovery. This paper is the first to reveal the rape of Jewish men during the Holocaust and the implications this finding has for Holocaust and genocide studies more broadly.