“Going east”: colonial experiences and practices of violence among female and male Majdanek camp guards (1941–44)

typhus epidemic that broke out in the Giado concentration camp in Libya in December 1942 constituted the major cause of death among the hundreds of Jewish detainees. Seeking to prevent its spread, the camp guards shaved the heads of those who had lice in their hair. In interviews conducted between 2009 and 2017 with survivors of the camp who were children at that time, only the women mention the shaving of heads and their desperate attempt to evade this fate. This chapter relates the story of three women who, as children, were incarcerated in the camp. Their narratives, which move fluidly between their perceptions as children and their adult recollections, point to a gender-related phenomenon pertaining to the dread of being caught and subjected to a head-shaving, and the trauma associated with a girl’s being shorn of her hair.

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