Listen: Anna Hájková - Between Love and Coercion: Sexuality in the Holocaust

Dr Anna Hájková is Associate Professor of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick. Her work examines concentration camps, issues of nationalism and ethnicity, gender and sexuality and her research interests include Nazi Germany and the history of genocides. Her publications include: The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (Oxford University Press).

On 6 October 2022 Dr. Hájková came to UCD to give a lecture jointly organised by University College Dublin Centre for War Studies, Holocaust Education Ireland and the UCD History Seminar Series in Gender History.

In her talk she explored the intersection of queer and Holocaust history through the example of an enforced relationship between two women, a guard and a Jewish woman, in a concentration camp in winter 1945. This coerced relationship raises issues of sexual violence, sexual barter, and homophobia. Based on survivors’ testimonies, postwar trials, and reparation files, Anna Hájková shows how a queer history of the Holocaust allows us to address agency and powerlessness of Holocaust victims.

Dr. Anna Hájková’s lecture – ‘Between Love and Coercion: Sexuality in the Holocaust’ – was recorded and is now available as a podcast.