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![was the zookeepers wife jewish was the zookeepers wife jewish](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/F0vWZV1s27W2HEVLhpTV1qwmD6o=/0x0:5760x3840/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:5760x3840)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8239815/zookeeper2.jpg)
Within this film, I would like to focus on how Urszula, a young girl from the Warsaw Ghetto who was brutally raped by Nazis prior to her rescue by the Żabiński family, broke through the film frame by not remaining a nameless, silent victim. A film called the Zookeeper’s Wife, with many central female characters, even reduces the strong female lead (Antonia Zabinska, played by Jessica Chastain) to simply the wife of a zookeeper. Certainly, not all of these forms of commemoration document true events with real characters, but the prevalence of male perspectives in these authentic or fictional stories truly dominate the genre. Rather, we see them as voiceless, or sometimes even sexualized, victims in the background of the main male character’s story. (Taken from a film review that I wrote on the Zookeeper’s Wife for a course on Digital Holocaust Memory) In more widely-circulated testimonies, books, memorials, monuments, graphic art, and movies about the Holocaust, rarely have women played the leading role. Jewish women during the Holocaust not only faced extermination due to the fact that they were Jewish, but they also endured dehumanization as women. The fact that I can reproduce from memory nearly every detail of the dehumanization process that these women testified to while the vast majority of Holocaust memory does not even mention it downright bothers me. How often do we commemorate or publicly recognize the heroes from the Holocaust who were women? Even less still.Īs a Research Department Intern at Yad Vashem, I have read countless testimonies written by women (originally in Polish) that recount how upon their arrival to Auschwitz from the Łódź Ghetto they were stripped naked in front of male Nazi soldiers, were forced to stand for long periods of time without access to clothing, had every part of their body shaved, and had to bear sexual harassment from Nazi soldiers, Kapos, and sometimes even from male prisoners. I am simply asking, how often do we hear about the Holocaust from a woman’s perspective? The first person we probably think of when asked that question is Anne Frank.
![was the zookeepers wife jewish was the zookeepers wife jewish](https://womenandhollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/1cKUf2eDWxTCLBYrJVfkO1Q.jpeg)
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not by any means trying to discredit these men nor dishonor their horrific lived experiences during the orchestrated genocide against European Jewry nor downplay their heroic acts.
![was the zookeepers wife jewish was the zookeepers wife jewish](https://ukjewishfilm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-Zookeeper’s-Wife-1-968x649.png)
Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Oskar Schindler, Marek Edelman, Janusz Korczak, Mordechaj Anielewicz, Emanuel Ringelblum, Władysław Szpilman, the list goes on. In light of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I can’t help but notice how often we associate the Holocaust with male voices or male heroes. (explicit description of sexual assault as portrayed in the film Zookeeper’s Wife)