“There’s No End to Worse”: Child Sexual Abuse in Nazi-Occupied Territories

Abstract This article analyzes the events and recollections of child sexual abuse in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War and the Holocaust. Using testimonies of Jewish survivors from the Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, this research first examines the difficulty in defining the category of ‘child,’ and then provides an explanation of what constitutes child sexual abuse. The testimonies are then analyzed to determine common themes in the testimonies of men and women, and from survivors of sexual abuse in different contexts, such as in hiding or in camps, for example. Finally, this research investigates the ways in which survivors understood the sexual abuse at the time it occurred, how they articulated it as adults, and what the effects of such sexual abuse were throughout their lives.