Exile, Gender, and Witness: Feminist Reframings of Holocaust Memory from Wartime Shanghai

Abstract: Traditional Holocaust scholarship has often viewed survivors' testimonies through a falsely universalizing lens, assuming shared experiences among Jewish men and women. Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have contested this perspective by emphasizing gender-specific trauma. Yet gender remains underexplored in global contexts, especially among Jewish refugees outside of Europe. Women's experiences in wartime Shanghai remain critically understudied, exposing enduring Eurocentric biases. This article addresses these gaps by analyzing two memoirs by Russian-Jewish émigré women in Shanghai: Rena Krasno's Strangers Always (1992) and Liliane Willens's Stateless in Shanghai (2010). Though neither author fled Nazi Germany directly, both narratives reveal how antisemitism, statelessness, and survival were shaped by gender, race, and colonial geopolitics. Drawing from feminist trauma theory and Michael Rothberg's concept of "multidirectional memory," this article shows how these testimonies reframe Holocaust historiography. Focusing on non-European female perspectives, it challenges dominant male-centered narratives and advocates for an intersectional, transnational approach to Holocaust remembrance. These memoirs ultimately expand our understanding of feminist witnessing, complicate conventional trauma narratives, and call for the inclusion of marginal voices in global Holocaust studies.