'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

context has only become part of the historical record since 1975 and that, even then, it
remained marginalized. He states: “Even if one possessed a personal interest and an
analytical curiosity, one could not learn about or research women‟s history because of the
lack of models and materials” (49). 26 Such gender gaps also apply to the historiography
of the “Third Reich” and Holocaust. In an article entitled “Memory and the Holocaust:
Processing the Past Through a Gendered Lens,” Joyce Marie Mushaben argues that the
many roles of women in Nazi Germany have been rated as insignificant in configuring
the master narrative of history. She argues that women who made Hitler‟s rise to power
possible were dismissed as insignificant collaborators. She includes, among others,
Winifred Wagner, Eva Braun, Emmy Goering, Leni Riefenstahl, and Magda Goebbels
(154-155). She goes on to state that:
Few mainstream historical accounts suggest that these women contributed to
Hitler‟s power base in very influential ways. Nor do I recall any accounts of the
unique „survival strategies‟ employed by women in the concentration camps
during my personal visits to Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, and Birkenau in
the 1980s. The truth is: women are still not taken seriously as historical actors by
those composing the „master narrative‟ (155).
This silence regarding women‟s gendered experiences can also be seen in the area
of Holocaust studies. Joan Ringelheim, historian and Head of Oral History at the US
Holocaust Museum has expressed concern that gender issues have for the most part been
dismissed in historical discussions of the Holocaust. For example, at the 1993 opening
conference of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which had 18 panels and
80 participants, including 16 women, there was no specific lecture on women or gender.
There were, however, lectures which discussed the persecution of the disabled,
26 Although Borries is referring to his research on German women‟s history prior to the rise of German
fascism, his statement could be used to describe the difficulty faced by feminist scholars when confronted
with the sparse documentation of women‟s lives in general.
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