''House of Dolls'' is a 1953

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

Ka-tzetnik 135633 Yehiel De-Nur (; ''De-Nur'' means 'of the fire' in Aramaic; also Romanized ''Dinoor, Di-Nur''), also known by his pen name Ka-Tsetnik 135633, born Yehiel Feiner (16 May 1909 – 17 July 2001), was a Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, whose boo ...

. The novella describes "Joy Divisions", which were groups of

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish women in the

concentration camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

who were kept for the sexual pleasure of

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

soldiers.

Origins

Between 1942 and 1945,

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

and nine other

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

contained camp brothels (''Freudenabteilungen'' "Joy Divisions"), mainly used to reward cooperative non-Jewish inmates. In the documentary film ''Memory of the Camps'', a project supervised by the

British Ministry of Information The Ministry of Information (MOI), headed by the Minister of Information, was a United Kingdom government department created briefly at the end of the First World War and again during the Second World War. Located in Senate House at the Univer ...

and the American Office of War Information during the summer of 1945, camera crews filmed women who had been forced into sexual slavery for the use of guards and favoured prisoners. The film-makers stated that as the women died they were replaced by women from the concentration camp Ravensbrück.

Literature and scholarly references

In his essay "Narrative Perspectives on Holocaust Literature", Leon Yudkin uses ''House of Dolls'' as one of his key examples of the ways in which authors have approached the Holocaust, using the work as an example of "diaries (testimonies) that look like novels" due to its reliance on its author's own experiences.

Ronit Lentin Ronit Lentin ( he, רונית לנטין; born 25 October 1944) is an Israeli/Irish political sociologist and a writer of fiction and non-fiction books. Life Lentin was born in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, in 1944: she has lived in Ireland since ...

discusses ''House of Dolls'' in her work ''Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah''. In her book Lentin interviews a child of Holocaust survivors, who recalls ''House of Dolls'' as one of her first exposures to the Holocaust. Lentin notes that the "explicit, painful" story made a huge impact when published and states that "many children of holocaust survivors who write would agree . . . that ''House of Dolls'' represents violence and sexuality in a manner which borders on the pornographic". Na'ama Shik, researching at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

, the principal Jewish organization for the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, considers the book as fiction.
Israel’s Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial
',

Isabel Kershner Isabel Kershner is a British-born Israeli journalist and author, who began reporting from Jerusalem for ''The New York Times'' in 2007. Kershner had previously worked as senior Middle East editor for ''The Jerusalem Report'' magazine. She has al ...

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, September 6, 2007 Nonetheless it is part of the Israeli high school curriculum. The success of the book showed there was a market for

Nazi exploitation Nazi exploitation (also Nazisploitation) is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the women in prison formula, only re ...

popular literature, known in Israel as Stalags. However

Yechiel Szeintuch Yechiel ( he, יְחִיאֵל) is a Hebrew masculine given name meaning "May God live" or "God shall live". Several people in the Bible have this name. See Jehiel (biblical figure). Alternative spellings of Yechiel include Jehiel, Yehiel, Yec ...

from the

Hebrew University The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

rejects links between the smutty Stalags on the one hand, and Ka-Tzetnik's works, which he insists were based on reality, on the other.

In popular culture

Joy Division Joy Division were an English rock band formed in Salford in 1976. The group consisted of vocalist Ian Curtis, guitarist/keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris. Sumner and Hook formed the band after attend ...

was a British

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...

band from 1976 to 1980, who took their name from the reference in this book. One of their early songs, "No Love Lost", contains a short excerpt from the novella. ''

Love Camp 7 ''Love Camp 7'' is a 1969 American women-in-prison Nazisploitation B-movie directed by Lee Frost (credited as R.L. Frost) and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, the latter of whom also portrays a sadistic camp commandant. Plot Two American ...

'' (1968), considered to be the first

film, is set in a concentration camp "Joy Division".

References

External links

Full text in English at Archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:House of Dolls 1953 novels 20th-century Israeli novels Holocaust literature Wartime sexual violence in World War II Novels about prostitution Works about prostitution in Germany

Origins

Literature and scholarly references

In popular culture

See also

References

Further reading

External links