How the women in nazi concentration camps coped with their periods.

[LarryGreysonsDoor]

A very interesting read.

www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/menstruation-and-holocaust

I was talking about serfs. Real bottom of the heap. Women too poor to have rags, which you're quite right, any woman who could afford a linen shift would use.

Incidentally, women in some places used a tall vase or pot full of water in the corner of their bedrooms in which they'd drop the bloody cloths until they washed the lot. This, it has been suggested, is where the famous murderer, Lizzie Borden, stashed the murder weapon as the men investigating the crimes wouldn't have dreamt of looking there.

What a heartbreaking read. I have never thought about it before. Thank you so much for posting OP.

This could be incredibly outing but I did my dissertation on sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust. I looked at how this particular experience was erased during the time period. The extra fear and vulnerability of these women added another layer to their trauma that was largely ignored as the primary oppression women were thought to face was their Jewishness.

Sadly the biggest threat to these women was often not the camp guards etc but some of the American liberation soldiers.

It’s also interesting to look at how these experiences, although few and far between have been represented in literature. In many cases it has been fetishised quite predictably by men. Case in point the fascinating but disturbing ‘The White Hotel’.

Off on a tangent but thought that extra insight in women’s experiences of the Holocaust may be of interest.

(Appalling grammar there but I am dreadfully underslept. Apologies.)

Thank you for posting that, OP, and also Thesepreciousthings .

Thanks for that.
When I was at school (the 80's) I asked this question in my history class and got detention

Cocolapew wtf?!

Interesting article, thank you.

One of my relations had her first period just as she became a prisoner of the Japanese in 1942. I don't think she had another until after the war. Although she married, she never had children, and I have always wondered if that was connected to the starvation and abuse she suffered in her teens.

Thank you. A truly moving article.

And thanks to Thesepreciousthings as well - I read The White Hotel at a particularly vulnerable point in late teens. It wasn’t good.

Thanks for the interesting article. So true that in our society men’s bodily functions are something to be proud of but women must feel shame at theirs. The sad thing is that so many women and girls still have no access to sanpro and are using rags or whatever they can to deal with their periods