“Stories that are silenced for way too Long” Silence on sexual violence during the Holocaust and the importance of accurate depiction of it

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze the depiction of sexual violence during the Holocaust in scholarly research literature. Until recently, the topic of sexual violence during the Holocaust has been underrepresented or even silenced altogether. Although the Holocaust has been widely studied, due to the immense trauma and the stigmatization of sexual violence as a social taboo, sexual violence during the Holocaust has not been widely discussed, leaving a gap - sexual violence - in our collective memory of the Holocaust. This paper seeks to identify gaps in the representation of sexual violence in existing scholarship, explore the gendered experience of sexual violence by isolating its impact on women, men, and children, highlight the weaponization of sexual violence as both a means of dehumanization and survival, discuss the exaggeration, oversimplification, and stigma of sexual violence during the Holocaust in both various mediums (fiction, film, art and scholarship) and lastly, explore the generational trauma from sexual violence during this time and the impact of this experience on the collective memory. This thesis was inspired by the impact on society’s collective memory of the Holocaust and Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris, which tragically speaks to the forgotten trauma of sexual violence during the Holocaust.