Saskatoon-born historian returns to share research on gender and sexuality in the Holocaust. 

Doris Bergen is a Saskatchewan-born historian of the Holocaust, and is currently the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. She has led an illustrious career, with numerous publications and teaching positions at many prestigious universities, including the University of Warsaw and Notre Dame. Her research focuses on topics of religion, ethnicity, and gender and sexuality within the Holocaust and the Second World War. 

On March 6, 2023, Bergen will be giving a presentation surrounding the issues of gender and sexuality during the Holocaust from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Neatby-Timlin Theatre, located in Room 241 in the Arts Building. The title of her presentation is No Secret: Sex in Holocaust Survivor Accounts and Why It Matters. Any USask student is welcome to attend her lecture and learn more about this topic.

Speaking in an interview with the Sheaf, Bergen expressed a great deal of excitement at returning to Saskatoon and to the University of Saskatchewan, where she first earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in History. While in the city, she hopes to reconnect with many old friends and family members, and looks forward to the new connections she could make with USask faculty and students.

“That is very exciting to me, and [thinking about] speaking to a class, it really gives me a bit of the shivers,” Bergen said.

Bergen has many fond memories of her days at USask, including excellent experiences with staff and fellow students, as well as spending time reading the Sheaf. “[USask] didn’t feel like a big, anonymous institution,” she said. “It felt comfortable.” 

When she first began her studies at USask, Bergen said it was often difficult for her to tell if she was a good student or not. However, when the university began reaching out to her with invitations to major in various programs or to apply for certain scholarships, her confidence was given a “huge boost.”

“It completely changed my life,” Bergen said, reflecting on the Rotary Foundation Scholarship, which was particularly impactful in allowing her to study abroad for a year in Germany. “It made the career that I have possible, and never in a million years would it have occurred to me to apply for something like that … I didn’t have that confidence.”

Bergen is visiting this semester by invitation of Dr. Alessio Ponzio, a History professor at USask who is currently teaching a course on the history of the Holocaust, HIST 145. One of Bergen’s published works, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, is the central textbook of the course. Sexuality and gender studies, as well as studies of the Holocaust and World War II, are areas of interest in both Ponzio’s and Bergen’s research. 

Bergen explained that gender and sexuality are central to understanding many experiences and memories of the Holocaust, as well as to understanding the dynamics of extreme violence. By paying attention to issues of sex, sexual violence or abuse, and even sexual pleasure, it aids in humanizing the history of periods of extreme violence. Bergen explained that this leads us to think of the people who experienced these events as human beings with bodies, and that those bodies are gendered and experience pleasure and pain.

Additionally, Bergen described how studying human history is crucial for “connecting the Holocaust to other contexts and other cases of human suffering.” She gave the example of creating solidarity between survivors of the Holocaust and survivors of the Indigenous residential school system in Canada, many of whom had similar experiences of sexual abuse.

“[By] speaking about these issues, bringing them out into the light, you humanize the past and create bridges for people to connect with one another,” Bergen said.

She said that another important reason for studying sexuality or gender in these cases is because “it helps us understand certain kinds of dynamics of how situations of extreme violence work and function.” She gave the example of how the Nazis controlled sex and reproduction during the Holocaust, only allowing certain people to reproduce as part of their pseudoscientific eugenics program.

Through studying events like the Holocaust, we can learn about just how fragile human institutions are. These include systems of justice and education as well as various cultural institutions, and Bergen noted “how quickly they can be turned into a means of attacking, instead of protecting, vulnerable people.”

Bergen said that this type of study demonstrates how “societies can move step by step into situations of really increasing danger. And again, it’s the most vulnerable people, the people on the margins, who are always the first to bear the costs of that.”

In contrast to this, Bergen also talked about how important it is to see the love, loyalty and perseverance of people during these difficult times.

“It’s really impossible not to be in awe of the ways that people, even under the most terrible circumstances, help each other,” Bergen said. “Those flashes or moments of love and solidarity between people that persist even in the most terrible circumstances.”

Ponzio will be hosting another event that touches on these topics later in the semester, that will also be open to all USask students. This will be a screening of the play The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman. The play is based on a series of interviews between Anna Hájková, a professor at the University of Warwick, and Margaret Heuman, a lesbian survivor of the Holocaust. After the screening, Hájková and Erika Hughes, the co-writers of the play, will answer questions from the audience. The screening and question-and-answer period will take place on March 17 from 2:30-4:30 pm in room GB03 of the Health Sciences Building.

Hájková, a historian of the Holocaust, is also a former PhD student of Bergen’s. Bergen said that she is extremely proud of Hájková’s work, and was very excited to hear that Ponzio would be hosting this event as well. She described Hájková’s research as very interesting and recommended attending her event as well.