Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies

Collaborative Specialization

Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Supervisor

Knabe, Susan M.

Abstract

Drawing upon sixteen queer oral history interviews conducted with LGBTQ+ children of Holocaust survivors (COS) in Canada and the United States, this dissertation examines experiences and identities that meet at the intersection of intergenerational trauma and queerness. My project uses oral history to center LGBTQ+ COS’ voices, and to trace how queer sex, desire, and intimacy (SDI) are positioned throughout their narratives. Queer SDI come together with the legacies of the Holocaust in participants’ lives in many compelling and interesting ways. My first body chapter examines the ways sex is spoken about or surrounded by silence as participants narrate the development of their queer identities. Chapter 4 traces the development of LGBTQ+, Jewish, and child of survivor identities alongside feelings of (dis)connection. This chapter examines how queer SDI come together when reconciling multiple intersecting identities, when navigating homophobia and antisemitism, and in the formation of new communities. In Chapter 5, participants are confronted with the destruction of their queer communities with the onset of the AIDS epidemic. I trace how queer SDI are interwoven into their narratives and testimonies of the epidemic. Additionally, I examine how several participants utilized queer SDI as means to explain not having an AIDS narrative to share. Chapter 6 turns to the having and raising of children which I examine through the politics of reproductive futurism. This chapter explores how participants recognized and navigated the pressures that they experienced to have children to ensure the continuation of the Jewish people. Additionally, this chapter explores how queer forms of survival are mobilized as a means of altering how participants fulfilled the reproductive imperative. Chapter 7 examines how queer SDI become central to the narratives of two participants’ roots trip narratives. I examine how queer SDI are a means of finding connection, disrupting heteronormative spaces, and queering Holocaust memory. Overall, my dissertation makes significant contributions to our understandings of how queer SDI are central to the experiences of LGBTQ+ people experiencing intergenerational trauma, how they navigate through the world, and how they bear witness to their experiences.

Summary for Lay Audience

Drawing upon 16 queer oral history interviews with LGBTQ+ children of Holocaust survivors, this project examines how being LGBTQ+ and a child of survivors creates unique ways of being and moving through the world. This project explores how LGBTQ+ children of survivors came to understand themselves as LGBTQ+, and how being LGBTQ+ made them feel (dis)connected from non-LGBTQ+ Jews and children of survivors. I also look at how LGBTQ+ children of survivors experienced the AIDS epidemic, which took place when they were young adults and consider how my participants navigated their connection to two instances of mass death connected to their identities: the Holocaust and the AIDS epidemic. I also examine the pressures of having children. While everyone is pressured to have children to different extents, this pressure is heightened when a parent has survived a genocide and had their family murdered. Children become a means to ensure the family’s survival in the wake of genocide. Having children becomes an additional challenge for LGBTQ+ people as they do not have the same opportunities as straight people. I, therefore, examine whether LGBTQ+ children of survivors decided to have children or not, the effects of this decision, and how LGBTQ+ children of survivors created new and different kinds of families (with or without children). Finally, this project examines how LGBTQ+ children discuss their travels to Europe when tracing their parents’ Holocaust experiences. This chapter examines specifically how queer sex, desire, and intimacy may form a part of this story, or not. Overall, this project examines the ways that LGBTQ+ children of survivors experience intergenerational trauma differently because they are LGBTQ+.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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