Internationalist Women against Nazi Atrocities in Occupied Europe, 1941–1947

Abstract:Historian Susan Zimmermann brought to scholars’ attention a 1942 protest statement issued by the Liaison Committee of Women’s International Organisations (LCWIO) in which they protested Nazi violence and abuses. Zimmermann characterized the protest statement as a “public and united stand” taken by the leading women’s organizations. The phrasing of the protest was unusual in its attention to the “extermination” and “spoliation” of the lives, culture, and property of those victimized. I analyze the significance of this women-authored anti-atrocities document in historical context using archival sources. I argue that two refugee women instigated this legally oriented protest statement and that the statement was part of a modestly larger pattern of anti-atrocities campaigns. Rather than being united, as women’s groups later claimed, evidence points to divisiveness, challenges building networks of allies to respond to war crimes, and difficulty in making themselves heard once they decided to act collectively on a gender-specific analysis of atrocities. This research bridges the fields of the history of feminism and Holocaust history.