The gendercide against Jewish men
he gendercidal dimension of the holocaust against the Jews was evident during particular phases of the campaign of extermination. It nonetheless has its harbinger in the mass detentions of males during the earlier (1933-41) period of Nazi rule. As a campaign of full-blown mass execution, the gendercide against Jewish males marked an important, if temporary, "onset phase" of the holocaust in the occupied eastern territories (including, after August 1941, the Balkans). Gendercidal strategies against women were evident at later stages, both in mass executions and gassings, women-only death camps, and the forced marches that killed tens of thousands in the closing stages of the war. Again, it must be stressed that in both their male and female manifestations, the Jewish gendercides were subsidiary features and strategies of a campaign of "root-and-branch" extermination, in which gender was far from a dominant consideration overall.
Daniel Goldhagen points out in Hitler's Willing Executioners (pp. 149-50) how the"up-close," intimate killing of manifestly defenceless, screaming civilians on the eastern front -- killings which spattered blood and brain matter around the killing fields and over the killers -- was at first incrementally managed according to gender:
The Einsatzgruppen [death-squad] officers ... could habituate their men into their new vocation as genocidal executioners through a stepwise escalation of the killing. First, by shooting primarily teenage and adult Jewish males, they would be able to acclimate themselves to mass executions without the shock of killing women, young children, and the infirm. According to Alfred Filbert, the commander of Einsatzkommando 9, the [execution] order from [Reinhard] Heydrich "quite clearly" "included also women and children." Yet, "in the first instance, without a doubt, the executions were limited generally to Jewish males." By generally keeping units' initial massacres to smallish numbers (by German standards) of a
Daniel Goldhagen points out in Hitler's Willing Executioners (pp. 149-50) how the"up-close," intimate killing of manifestly defenceless, screaming civilians on the eastern front -- killings which spattered blood and brain matter around the killing fields and over the killers -- was at first incrementally managed according to gender:
The Einsatzgruppen [death-squad] officers ... could habituate their men into their new vocation as genocidal executioners through a stepwise escalation of the killing. First, by shooting primarily teenage and adult Jewish males, they would be able to acclimate themselves to mass executions without the shock of killing women, young children, and the infirm. According to Alfred Filbert, the commander of Einsatzkommando 9, the [execution] order from [Reinhard] Heydrich "quite clearly" "included also women and children." Yet, "in the first instance, without a doubt, the executions were limited generally to Jewish males." By generally keeping units' initial massacres to smallish numbers (by German standards) of a