Asking About the ‘Unspeakable’: Joan Ringelheim and Early Research on Sexual Violence and Same-Sex Practices among Women During the Holocaust

This article examines feminist scholar Joan Ringelheim's inquiry about sexual violence and same-sex practices among women during the Holocaust. Drawing on her unpublished manuscript, drafts of conference papers, correspondence, and grassroots oral history interviews in addition to her published work, this article examines how Ringelheim's analysis of these two topics changed over time. Between the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Ringelheim worked in a variety of professional roles as a philosophy professor, independent scholar, and an employee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In each of these positions, she initiated conversations with survivors, scholars, feminist activists, and museum workers, and contributed to innovative conceptual frameworks about these issues that influenced scholarship for decades. Her work was met with both support and considerable hostility. To understand why this was the case, this article historicizes Ringelheim's efforts within contemporary contexts, including American Jewish debates about the Jewish family, feminist debates about sexuality and women's history, and the rise of Holocaust consciousness in the United States. My contention is that as Ringelheim asked questions about sexuality during the Holocaust, she had to not only begin to disentangle decades of compounded silencing and mythologization, but she also needed to navigate various forms of pushback related to these debates.