Who was the SS camp whore? !!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Haaretz
By Tom Segev

19/07/2007

Press photographer Paul Goldman achieved fame because of two pictures: one of David Ben-Gurion doing a headstand, and one of a woman revealing an inscription in German tattooed on her chest - "camp whore" - along with a number. Evidently, she was a Jewish woman who was forced to serve the Nazis as a whore in Auschwitz. Her face is not visible in the photograph. For several years, some have claimed that the photo was staged, and the claim was recently raised again, on the London & Kirschenbaum news program. Na'ama Shik, of Yad Vashem's Institute for Holocaust Education, asserts on the basis of doctoral research that the Nazis did not employ Jewish prostitutes in the camp, and that at the time they used the series of numbers seen in the picture at Auschwitz, numbers were no longer etched on prisoners' chests, but only on their arms. There are other things that arouse suspicion, too.

Photographer and Israel Prize Laureate David Rubinger, who found Goldman's collection of negatives, saw to their restoration and oversees the showing of his pictures, admired Goldman and would like to believe that the photograph is not fabricated. Goldman's records indicate that the picture was taken in 1945 in Nahalal. It is possible that on the same occasion, Goldman also captured the visit of Chaim Weizmann.

This week, Rubinger returned to the negatives of the picture and noticed a stunning detail he had not been aware of before: There are three negatives of the photograph and they have been trimmed all around with scissors, apparently to conceal the identity of the woman in the picture. Goldman may have tampered with the negative in order to protect the woman; or he may have done so to protect himself.

The belief that the Nazis used Jewish women as prostitutes apparently became rooted in the Israeli memory of the Holocaust as a result of an article published by Yitzhak Sadeh in October 1945, entitled "My Sister on the Beach." It told of a female Holocaust survivor who arrives on an illegal immigrant ship and told Sadeh of her life as a whore in the service of the Nazis. According to Sadeh, the words "For officers only" were engraved on the woman's chest. The circumstances of this encounter are described in Sadeh's biography, which was written by Zvika Dror.

Holocaust writer Yehiel Dinur (also known as K. Zetnik) maintained that the woman was a relative of his. In his book "Beit Habubot" ("The House of Dolls"), he described a Jewish prostitute and said it was his sister. The covers of several editions of K. Zetnik's book feature a drawing and photograph that are very similar to Goldman's, but the number on the woman's chest is apparently different.

A possible solution to the mystery: Perhaps Goldman prepared the photograph to serve as the cover of K. Zetnik's book. It's doubtful whether the notation in his archive is correct: Weizmann visited Nahalal in December 1944, and at the time there were no female survivors from Auschwitz there.

At some point later on, four female Holocaust survivors did come to Nahalal. Yizraela Bloch, who oversees the local archive, said this week that she remembers them all: She lived with them in the same room. She says not one of them had a tattoo on her chest. David Rubinger is uncomfortable with the possibility that this is a fabricated picture, but as long as the mystery remains unsolved, he is not putting the picture away. This week it is on display in an exhibition in Singapore.



"The doll house" by author hiding under pseudonyme Ka-tzetnik 135633, based on supposedly true story of his sister, who while 14 was tatooed "field whore" and used in Wehrmacht brothels until she committed suicide.

[michael_ital]

WTF ???