gen 8th, 2010 di Helga Schneider
LA BARACCA DEI TRISTI PIACERI
The hut of sad pleasures
HELGA SCHNEIDER
SALANI
TRADUZIONE DI MILIJANA PAVLOVIC
«She – the SS guard – stood there, with groomed blonde hair, lipstick on her stern mouth, impeccable uniform. She stood there and said wickedly: “I see in your file that you used to be a Jew’s whore. Resign yourself – from now on you will be everybody’s whore”».
This is what old Frau Kiesel tells the ambitious writer Sveva, revealing a tragedy too long unsaid – the tragedy of female prisoners who were selected for brothels inside concentration camps, with the false and hypocritical excuse of attempting to reduce homosexuality among the deportees. These women’s bodies were subject to sadistic abuse by SS soldiers and male prisoners who – despite being reduced to real human wrecks – still preferred to trade a piece of bread for a few minutes of sex. After the war, these women were so overwhelmed by humiliation and loneliness, that they did not even denounce the tragedy but tried to hide it instead, burying it inside themselves.
In this new chapter of individual and collective memory, Helga Schneider continues – lucidly and pitifully, but also with implacable judgement – to give testimony of these events so that a similar tragedy does not happen ever again. It is her tribute to all those women who – every day and everywhere – suffer violence from men, governments and History.