Holocaust survivor's daughter sues historian over claim of lesbian liaison with Nazi guard

I very much doubt such a relationship would have been voluntary on the prisoner's side. Also, what a homophobic lawsuit. What if it were true?

I'm going to sue the horrible Nicole Kidman and the American hack for stealing the life and reputation of British genius Virginia Woolf.

Interesting. No one, the daughter or the historian, can actually say what this relationship really was. However, I have a hard time ascribing a great romance to a situation such as this. Could a prisoner in a concentration camp say no to an SS guard and hope to survive? It's like the whole Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings "relationship".

My bad. I thought that pic was a bunch of Trump's female "He can grab my pussy anytime" fans.

I 'm going to see The New York Times for alleging everything they ever wrote about Eleanor Rooseveldt.

I'm going to sue Simon Schama for all his allegations. And the moronic Donald Spoto for all his moronic lies. And Eric Cervini for all that nonsense about the transvestites POCs on the front fine at Stonewall.

R1 you beat me to it. Although I sensed a tint of homophobia in this lawsuit I also considered the point about how consentual this relationship could have been. Even if the mother was having sexual relations with the guard she was doing it for survival. I think coercive relationships can't be viewed through the lens of sexuality.

[quote] to conclude that the two women might have had a lesbian relationship, either coercive or consensual.

Keyword: MIGHT

r5 - No - first off, the woman is not a celebrity or someone of note in history. She has a right to privacy. She's not Eleanor Roosevelt.

Second, the academic said she has no real proof - so is she just conjecturing to write something about? And when she contacted the daughter, the daughter told her it wasn't and she was doing what she had to do to survive.

Yet, this academic hack still goes forward with writing her theory. That's not responsible scholarship. I'm all on the side of the daughter.

Also, what is the dollar value of the reputation of a dead woman?

If the stalking guard was male, everyone would have seen how wrong, scary and coercive this was. Of course, with a woman, everyone is focusing on the homosexuality. Super backwards thinking.

Of course, these were human beings, so it is entirely possible that real feelings could have occurred. Life isn't as black and white as some like to portray it.

These kinds of relationships existed of course - genuine affection- both het and homo, and yes, this is a homophobic article. I'd need to read the witnesses' interviews before coming to a conclusion.

R10 - it doesn't give the right for an academic to speculate and make claims, particularly after she asked the daughter herself what the relationship was.

The Nazi guard was obsessed with her mother. This isn't a love story - it's another terror on top of being in a concentration camp.

The academic is putting her career and need to find these stories above the truth. Her mother should not be written down in history as a willing or coerced participant in some faux sex scandal just so the academic can fill pages in her book.

What truth? The daughter's? Please.

I want to see Ryan Murphy tackle this subject, but with guys

R12, we don't have enough information about the relationship to reach so many conclusions. It seems the initial verdict of everyone is based on preexisting ideas: Nazi guard=bad, violent; Prisoner=good, victim. Of course, more often than not, this was the case but a prejudice isn't enough to make a fair individual judgement.

R14 - the research she did led her to 'conclude' that their 'might' have been a lesbian relationship, but she acknowledged there was no definitive proof.

How can you 'conclude' that something 'might' have happened all the while saying there is no proof?

By having access to partial and not conclusive information, R15?

[quote]Warwick University

Is this the university which brought us those hot naked rowers?

Warwick University has now banned those naked rowers. They've been forced to use a new name.

Though I don't think Warwick and all the English universities have much of a reputation after being sullied by the Woke idiots who write this Guardian nonsense and also want to remove their benefactors' statues.

I'm a historian who worked on a controversial, mid-century subject. I was faced with dilemmas like this sometimes. Personally, I would not use the survivor's name because it reveals a history of sexual exploitation. I think it's pretty standard to avoid doing that in the US. Also, I don't see what relationships between prison guards and inmates tell you about the history of sexuality. This seems like a poorly designed and poorly supervised project and I am surprised a dissertation adviser signed off on it. Maybe one didn't, and that is why there is an investigation.

You can't consent in a situation like that so there was no "relationship". Now, she may have been abused and harassed by the guard but that a different thing and no one else's story to tell but the now deceased mother.

Yes one can consent. Not all guards were monsters. They too were victims of the Reich. For instance, this from Wiki:

"One apparent exception to the brutal female overseer prototype was Klara Kunig, a camp guard in 1944 who served at Ravensbruck and its subcamp at Dresden-Universelle. The head wardress at the camp pointed out that she was too polite and too kind towards the inmates, resulting in her subsequent dismissal from camp duty in January 1945. Her fate has been unknown since February 13, 1945, the date of the allied firebombing of Dresden".

Wonderful story and dramatization by Genet, directed by Fassbinder. I'd watch it.

^^^ marvelous

[quote] Yes one can consent. Not all guards were monsters.

Even if some guards were nice, and lost their jobs because they were nice, the inmates were still in prison. Consent has no meaning in a situation like this. There is no way to analyze consent when one person has the power of life and death over the other. This is the mistake that this idiot graduate student made.

The daughter has a problem with alleged lesbianism in these more enlightened times? A moron and a homophobe. She needs to do something more useful with her life and energy.

[Quote] I want to see Ryan Murphy tackle this subject, but with guys

I'd watch this too. You know you're trash, right r13?🌹

Lesbians are so obsessed with representation, that they can't accept gay men were the only homosexuals with visibility and a known history, even when it comes to something as dark as the Holocaust. So now they're inventing lesbian affairs in concentration camps to make up for their lack of historical visibility.

R27, I hope you're being sarcastic.

Post Mortem privacy rights? Is this a concept unique to Doitchland?

No, I actually recall a lesbian writer who seemed to be making excuses for the fact that that all (?) recorded homosexuals in concentration camps were male. She said something like, "If gay men were there, lesbians must, too". She sounded upset at the lack of lesbians, as if she couldn't understand the West doesn't treat gay men the same as lesbians, and that history doesn't bend to her needs for social representation.

Mom munched carpet for her life. Get over it.

R30, and I recall several high-profile Jewish lesbians who were detained in the camps, R30. They are well documented in Europe and I don't know why US scholars don't have access to that information.

It's a frivolous lawsuit.

r32 They were detained for being Jewish. Of course that lesbians were at risk if they belonged to some persecuted group, such as Jews and communists. But lesbianism, by itself, was not punished with imprisonment in the concentration camps, resulting in a very small number of lesbians there.

Germany has all kinds of ridiculous "insult" lawsuits.

There was also one notorious lesbian or bisexual camp guard, I can't recall her name. A sadist who collected human remains and had lampshades made from human skin. Very pretty. Anyone remember her?

[quote]If the stalking guard was male, everyone would have seen how wrong, scary and coercive this was.

This.

Source, R34?

"There was also one notorious lesbian or bisexual camp guard, I can't recall her name. A sadist who collected human remains and had lampshades made from human skin. Very pretty. Anyone remember her?"

This thread is useless without pictures.

I think the issue here is that her mother is accused of having consensual sex with a Nazi prison guard.

YES, R39!!

Ilse Koch, The Witch of Buchenwald

I've never heard that Ilse Koch was a lesbian.

Very beautiful? Ilse looks like a member of the Honey Boo-Boo clan.

I wouldn't assume that the lesbian aspect is what upsets the daughter. She would probably be just as angry if the accusations involved a male SS guard, particularly when there is really no proof that this ever happened. This sounds like the lurid type of stuff that someone looking to sell a book would spin.

R2 Don't forget what she did to Diane Arbus. Worst casting ever! They might as well have just cast Taylor Swift, she couldn't have been any worse.

That was a bad photo made in prison. Ilse was very swanky

R47, don't forget how horrible the script was. The entire movie was a piece of shit.

Ah the infinitely varied ways of humankind.