Why Did Men Rape? Masculinity, Sexual Violence, and the Holocaust
With Marta Havryshko
Marta Havryshko holds PhD. in history. She is an Associate Researcher at the Department of Contemporary History at the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. She is a Babyn Yar interdisciplinary studies Institute director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (Kyiv). Her research interests primarily focus on gender, sexuality, and violence during World War II and the Holocaust in Ukraine, feminism, nationalism, and militarism. Currently, she is developing her book project on sexual violence during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Havryshko was a recipient of a number of fellowships and grants.
Sexual violence during the Holocaust had an explicit gendered nature: most of the victims/survivors were Jewish women and girls, and this violence was overwhelmingly perpetrated by males – Germans, their allies, local collaborators in the Nazi-occupied territories, partisans, and civilian men. The presentation focus on the motivation of men involved in sexually violent behavior. It explores the following questions: How did the age, ethnic and religious identity, combatant status, and power position of men contribute to sexual violence perpetration? How did cultural ideas and discourses of masculinity/femininity and gender roles influence perpetrators’ motivations and strategies for sexual violence? What what the role of militarized masculinity in the sexual victimization of Jewish women and girls? How Nazi genocidal policy enable men to assert power over women?
