In the first decades after World War II, there was scant research on the role of gender, or the differing experiences of men and women in the Holocaust. Women’s lives were perceived to be an integral part of men’s experiences and were researched as such. From the late 1970s onward however, gender-based studies dealing with women in the Holocaust began appearing more frequently. This line of research intensified from the 1980s onward.
Current research addressing gender perspectives in the Holocaust tends to take the position that women’s and men’s trajectories in death or survival were both similar and different, given female physical features and sociocultural norms. This change is also reflected in contemporary Israeli documentary cinema.
The case study of the talk is the Israeli documentary Oy Mama (Noa Maiman, 2010). The film turns the gender issue to its focus and broadens it beyond the topic of the Holocaust. Noa, a third generation Holocaust survivor tells the story of her grandmother Fira who was saved by a Polish woman named Stacha, during the Holocaust. The talk will analyze the way the director uses this story, to go beyond the topic of the Holocaust and represent a chain of female connections, solidarity and justice – The intense influence of Fira on her granddaughter, and the way Fira, who was saved by a Polish woman in the past, tries in present-day Israel, to save her Peruvian caregiver, Magna, and Magna’s five-year-old daughter, Firita, from deportation.