Helga Schneider's Shack of Sad Pleasures (TEALibri) is one of those books there, the ones that put humiliation on paper.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himAbuse, violence, rape, which only a few were able to "dribble" thanks to menstruation - for example - and those rags they put between their legs. Women in the Shoah had to undergo the total emptying of their bodies, say goodbye for weeks and years to their dignity. A story told, with a faint voice, but told.
Helga Schneider's Shack of Sad Pleasures (TEALibri) is one of those books there, the ones that put humiliation, deprivation, dehumanization on paper. One of the most heartbreaking phenomena linked to the Shoah that is told by the elderly Frau Kiesel to Sveva, a young aspiring writer. You analyze how the brothels were built inside the concentration camps, with the excuse of wanting to avoid the spread of homosexuality among the inmates. And how, in reality, abuse and rape were perpetuated.
Read also: The doll's house: the horror of girls forced into prostitution in concentration camps
There she was, the SS torturer, blond and manicured hair, lipstick on her hard mouth, the impeccable uniform ... She stood there and said with sordid malice: 'I read on your file that you were a Jewish whore. You better resign yourself: from now on you will be a whore for dogs and pigs.
This is how the now elderly Frau Kiesel describes, giving voice to a long-silent drama: that of the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps selected for the brothels built within the concentration camps themselves.
Women whose bodies were exposed to the terrible abuses of the SS and male prisoners who in spite of everything preferred to give up a piece of bread to exchange it for a few minutes of sex. Women who at the end of the war, crushed by humiliation and loneliness, instead of denouncing that tragedy, did everything to hide and bury it within themselves. Just as they did on several other events, carrying within the weight of a shame that was not a shame. Certainly not theirs.
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Read also:
- Having your period in a concentration camp: menstruation in concentration camps, the story of a humiliation passed over in silence
- 10 films and books to explain the Holocaust to children and teenagers
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