SexViolHist Bib: Types: Sexual Violence during the Holocaust: Forced Abortion and Forced Sterilization

»Nazi eugenics is at the root of the classification of people based on race. The Nazi regime created persecutory policies which were based upon principles from eugenics. The movements belief systems were based on racial discrimination of traits that were said to be unfavorable. These arguments in regards to who was deemed valuable and who was not, was used as a way to explain eugenic sterilization of people with mental disabilities. These theories of racial hygiene, influenced Hitler's way of thinking and effected policy making. The primary victims of this way of thinking were people with disabilities. But, Jewish people were also heavily affected by eugenic sterilization. Hitler thought Jews were wrecking the German 'Aryan race', and that they should not be allowed to reproduce with Germans. Historical evidence have shown that there may have been mass sterilization of Jewish women in concentration camps, with the possibility of unknowingly administered exogenous hormones which resulted in 98% of women losing their ability to menstruate upon arriving at the camps. There was also similar evidence found in Hungarian camps where 94.8% of female camp prisoners lost their ability to menstruate upon entering the camp.« (Extract from: Wikipedia)

B i b l i o g r a p h y

I. Author Index

[Info] Amesberger, Helga. »Reproduction under the Swastica: The Other Side of the Nazi Glorification of Motherhood.« Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust. Edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth et al. Waltham 2010: 139-155.

[Info] Ben-Sefer, Ellen. »Forced sterilization and abortion as sexual abuse.« Sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust. Edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth et al. Waltham 2010.

[Info] Cooper, Tiarra. »Women's Experiences of Forcible Sterilization under the Nazi Regime, 1933–1945.« German Studies Review 46 (2023): 141-143.

[Info] Maznick, Tiarra. »Revisiting the Sterilizations at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp: A Victim-Based History.« Eastern European Holocaust Studies 3 (2025): 247-286.

[Info] Meier, Verena. »Forced sterilization of underage Sinti: (Non-)recognition as Victims of Fascism and their role in the judicial prosecution of medical professionals in East Germany after 1945.« I haven’t even told my mother: Children as victims of sexual and sexualised violence in the Second World War and its aftermath. Edited by Helga Amesberger et al. Salzburg 2025: 159–178.

[Info] Rauschenberger, Joey. »Forced sterilization of underage Sinti and the struggle for compensation.« I haven’t even told my mother: Children as victims of sexual and sexualised violence in the Second World War and its aftermath. Edited by Helga Amesberger et al. Salzburg 2025: 141-158.

II. Speaker Index

[Info] Jones, William. »Sexual(ized) Violence and the ‘Non-Absent’ Male Body: Castration and Sterilization in Auschwitz.« 56^th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. Virtual 2024.

[Info] Szabo, Alexandra M. »The Fading Voices of Sterilization and Castration Abuse.« 55^th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. San Francisco 2023.

[Info] Szabó, Alexandra M. »Sterilization and Castration Abuse: Coping with Holocaust Memories.« Lecture / USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Dornsife 2024.