Gender Violence in Wendy Holden’s Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope

Wendy Holden traces the true life stories of three young Jewish mothers Priska, Rachel, and Anka who were sent to Auschwitz II –Birkenau by the Nazis in 1944. Concealing the fact that they were pregnant to Dr. Josef Mengele, the three young mothers were able to escape the selection process to gas chambers upon arrival. After undergoing severe trauma in slave labour camps, they did not give up their will to survive in that harsh condition because of the love towards their unborn children. Even in that hostile situation, the quality of motherhood did not fail and eventually helped them to give birth to malnourished infants in Mauthausen concentration camp. They and their newborn children escaped death narrowly, for the gas chambers had run out of Zyklon –B. By the providence of God, the concentration camp was liberated by the Americans and the children born to these three young Holocaust survivors became born survivors in 1945. This paper attempts to address the physical, psychological and sexual violence faced by these women on the basis of their ethnicity and gender during holocaust. It also highlights the identity crisis and the process of dehumanization. However, the courageous lives of the young Jewish mothers during holocaust stand as a testimony to the fact that mother’s love is superior to all other kinds of love in human relationships. Their motherhood magnifies the qualities of sacrificial and unconditional love in an impoverished atmosphere of cruelty and oppression.