Stalag ( he, סטאלג) was a short-lived genre of

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 r ...

Holocaust pornography in Israel that flourished in the 1950s and early 1960s, and stopped at the time of the Eichmann Trial, due to a ban by the Israeli government. These books were mainly about

female Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gamet ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Nazi officers sexually abusing their male camp prisoners, yet they did not include any

Jewish 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""The ...

names to avoid taboos. They are no longer available in traditional publication format, but with the advent of the Internet they have been circulating via

peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program tha ...

Premise

Purported to be translations of English-language books by prisoners in

concentration camp 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 ...

s, these books were highly

pornographic Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of Human sexual activity, sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

accounts of imprisonment, generally of Allied soldiers, sexual

brutalization In criminology, brutalization refers to a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship between executions and an increase in the homicide rate. This hypothesis proposes this relationship occurs because executions diminish the public's respect for life ...

by female SS guards (or in some cases by Imperial Japanese women), and the prisoners' eventual revenge, which usually consisted of the

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...

and

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

of their tormentors. The books, with titles like ''I Was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch'', were especially popular among adolescent boys, often the children of concentration camp survivors.

History

Groups of Israeli publishers began to publish

dime novel The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term ''dime novel'' has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, r ...

-format memoirs, describing abuse, particularly sexual abuse, in the concentration camps. Sold in magazine kiosks, the novels, ostensibly first-person memoirs, became best-sellers. According to filmmaker

Ari Libsker Ari Libsker ( he, ארי ליבסקר, born 1972 in Haifa), is an Israeli filmmaker and journalist. He has made several documentaries. His film '' Stalags'' (2008) featured in ''The New York Times'' and won several awards. In March 2012 he curate ...

, "the Holocaust pictures that I saw, as one who grew up here, were of naked women." They disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared. Within two years of the appearance of the first publication, the publishers were accused by an Israeli court of distributing pornography and the books were discontinued. Although still available underground, certain titles earned the ire of the establishment, and efforts were made to find and destroy them. The advent of the Internet has allowed for peer-to-peer

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

and thus made censorship attempts far harder. In 2003, the genre re-entered public debate in Israel with the research of popular culture analyst

Eli Eshed Eli Eshed is an Israeli researcher of popular culture. Literary criticism Eli Eshed writes about Israeli pulp magazines and paperbacks of the 1950s and 1960s with a special focus on the pirated Tarzan books popular among Israeli youth at the tim ...

. As a result of that research, Israeli filmmaker

featured the books in a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

, which was titled '' Stalags''.cinephil.co.il
/ref>

References

External links

* {{cite web, url=http://www.fr-online.de/in_und_ausland/kultur_und_medien/feuilleton/?em_cnt=1305201, title=Oberst Schultz und seine Hündin, publisher=Frankfurter Rundschau, author=Daniel Kothenschulte
Village Voice
Israeli literature Israeli pornography Holocaust literature Pulp fiction Nazi exploitation

Premise

History

See also

References

External links