Living While Circumcised: Jewish Resilience During the Shoah

The first extensive study of how living while circumcised affected the day-to-day efforts of Jewish men and women to survive the Shoah.During the Shoah a circumcised male Jew trying to pass was always at risk.Scenes of threatened exposure, efforts to avoid such situations, and responses when they were unavoidable play significant roles in survivor testimonies and memoirs.Most studies that explore these issues focus on the readily visible or audible stereotypes of Jewishness-such as dark, curly hair; dark eyes; a curved nose; accented speech; distinctive surnames-before noting the danger posed by this corporeal feature that would eliminate virtually all doubts of Jewish identity.However, how circumcision affected the everyday choices, experiences, feelings, gender- and self-identities of Jewish men-and women- has yet to be fully explored by scholars of the Shoah. Living While Circumcised addresses this gap by drawing on hundreds of survivor interviews, memoirs, diaries, and other writte