Intimacy as Survival: Ambiguous Gendered Strategies in Sereď Camp

Abstract This article explores how women’s ability to create, maintain, or avoid sexual encounters – both consensual and coerced – significantly influenced their survival and daily lives in the Sereď camp in Slovakia from autumn 1941 to March 1945. By focusing on Jewish women’s agency in forming connections, the study illustrates how interpersonal relationships provided emotional support, protection, and coping mechanisms amid pervasive violence and oppression, ultimately shaping their resilience and experiences in the camp. The article emphasises that forming intimate relationships was one of the few, albeit highly constrained, chances for survival for women in ghettos and camps. At the same time, it highlights that Jewish women entering sexual encounters under the perpetrator’s false promise of survival proved to be more illusion than strategy.