ONLINEShattered Liberation: Sexualized Violence Against Holocaust Survivors, 1943–1946

“Shattered Liberation: Sexualized Violence Against Holocaust Survivors, 1943–1946” challenges the notion of joyous liberation of Holocaust survivors by the Red Army by shining light on the sexualized violence that some Holocaust survivors, in this case, Jewish women, endured in the hands of the Soviet Army, partisans, rescuers, and army personnel during the liberation process.

The 12 contributors to this work explore a wide range of interactions through testimonies and memoirs, including sexual violence, rape, forced cohabitation, sex barter, aid, and romance, and in doing so, uncover a far more complicated, if not devastating, reality.

Joanna Beata Michlic, Ph.D., is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Education, Practice and Society, UCL and Affiliate Faculty in Gratz College’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Antisemitism Studies Departments.

A current HBI Research Associate, Michlic was founder of the HBI Project on Families, Children and the Holocaust, as well as a past visiting professor in Holocaust and contemporary history at Lund University. Her many books include “Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present” (University of Nebraska Press, 2008) and “Jewish Family 1939 –Present: History, Representation, and Memory” (Brandeis University Press, 2017, HBI Series on Jewish Women). Her forthcoming publication, “Through the Eyes of Jewish Child Survivors from Poland: Family, War, Identity and Nationhood” is expected in May 2026.

“Shattered Liberation,” co-edited by Joanna Michlic, Ph.D., Nina Paulovicova, Ph.D., and Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Ph.D., is available at Purdue University Press, Bookshop, Amazon, and your local bookseller. This is a companion event to HBI’s art exhibition, “Who Will Draw Our History? Women’s Graphic Narratives of the Holocaust, 1944-1949,” at the Kniznick Gallery from Jan. 27 to April 30.