Barter, Prostitution, Abuse? Reframing Experiences of Sexual Exchange during the Holocaust

Early postwar narratives by Holocaust survivors contained many descriptions of sexual exchange, sexual coercion, and sexual violence. However, Holocaust scholars have hardly investigated these experiences until the mid-1990s. And although their inquiry has grown considerably since, the ways in which researchers deal with experiences of sexual exchange remain problematic. Well into the 1970s, sexual barter between women and men was generally thought of as either sexual promiscuity or as prostitution. To counter this, feminist scholars since the late 1980s have stressed the structural power imbalance present in such sexual exchanges. Yet while the assessment has shifted significantly, the issue remains complicated due to the often unclear and hierarchical nature of such transactional relationships, obscuring the line between sexual consent and coercion. This article discusses two challenges central for scholarship on sexual barter: how to conceive of consent and choice when survival is at stake, and how to reconcile divergent interpretations if the researcher's assessment differs from that of the survivor. It does so by examining sex and sexual exchange in the works of two female survivors – Olga Lengyel's Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz and Molly Applebaum's Buried Words. A consideration of sexual exchange in these two works and their respective reception, alongside scholarly work on sexual barter, allows for an analysis of the changes in the understanding of this subject and highlights the challenges that it continues to present.