“I was a prisoner. Jew. Whore”: Inherited Sexualized Trauma in Sonia Pilcer’s The Holocaust Kid

Abstract

Abstract:Although there is a growing body of literature on sexualized violence during the Holocaust, little scholarship discusses the topic of second-generation inherited sexualized trauma. We explore the subject of inherited sexualized trauma because it is not uncommon to second-generation women, as evidenced by the multiple representations of daughters of survivors who engage in Holocaust-related eroticisms. To make use of a generative case study, we examine Sonia Pilcer’s The Holocaust Kid. The protagonist, Zosha Palovsky, engages in Nazi-Jewess erotic fantasy and role play as a way of addressing, albeit obliquely, her inherited sexualized trauma. Drawing upon the power dynamics described in dominant-submissive sexual fantasies and encounters within Bondage/Domination/Sado-Masochism (BDSM) theory, we suggest that Zosha, by willfully submitting and allowing herself to be sexually dominated by a “Nazi,” paradoxically is in control of the erotic encounter. This control enables her to vicariously assert a measure of agency on behalf of her mother who was stripped of bodily autonomy in Auschwitz. Her vicarious assertion of agency functions as a means of negotiating her postmemory of sexualized violence during the Shoah.