From Publishers Weekly
This muddled examination of women's experiences in the Holocaust bases itself upon the psychologist Carol Gilligan's view that "women not only define themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care"Abut it fails to make a convincing case that women experienced the Holocaust differently than men. After a fascinating first chapter titled "Medical Paradox" that touches on some of the issues that doctors and nurses in the camps and ghettos faced, the book tells its story through the voices of the women themselves. Readers who make their way through a narrative that was questionably cobbled togetherAeach chapter is a first-person account that the authors wove together out of multiple interviews with a subjectAwill learn more about the harrowing texture of everyday life during the attempted Nazi genocide of the Jews. In at least one camp, for example, doctors simply performed an abortion on every woman who came in pregnant. The ingenuity of some of the female physicians and nurses recorded here is impressive, but the book all too often veers away from the experiences of female "caregivers" to detail camp and ghetto experiences that are similar to what has been written about before. This book hints at an interesting subject that deserves more thorough treatment. 14 b&w photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the Nazi labor and death camps, Jewish women health workers were used to provide rudimentary medical care. The contradictions of their labors were all too apparent: people they might save from death still faced death. Yet camp inmates knew that if they couldn't work they would be put to death immediately, and the health workers did what they could to tend wounds, ward off epidemics, and, surreptitiously if grimly, abort fetuses so that the mothers might live. The health workers often functioned without the basic implements of medical care, deceiving their Nazi overseers whenever possible to get supplies. Compiled by Ritvo (Auburn Univ.) and Plotkin (Brookhaven Coll.), this important book lends an immediacy to this story by offering individual testimonies from these courageous people. It helps fill the gap in books on women in the Holocaust and is accessible to lay readers. Recommended for larger Holocaust study collections.APaul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist., Lib., IL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
