Abstract

Concerning the female body, the term ‘menstruation’ is laden with a plethora of distorted religious and cultural implications. April Miller believes that menstrual cycle is synonymous with “shame, difference, castration, filth, reproductive power, disease and death to the Other.” Considering the Holocaust, menstruation seems to be a least discussed topic that worked on the lives of female prisoners in multiple ways. The shared experiences of periods bolster the female solidarity, and generate the ‘camp families’ in the concentration camps. Periods even protect women from being sexually abused. Anne Isaacs in her novel Torn Thread (2000), discusses about the female prisoners, in the concentration camp, who no longer deemed themselves to be ‘women’ because of amenorrhoea. The stereotypical femininity, which is associated with the motherhood, is deeply rooted in the female prisoners like Eva and Rachel of this novel. In Erna Rubinstein’s memoir The Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust (1986), she underscores the significance of menstruation, which sanctions the validity of a woman’s existence in the androcentric society. In an attempt to halt the menstrual blood of the female prisoners, the Nazi officers used to add something to the food. The Nazis, who represent the sovereign power, as Agamben points out in Homo Sacer (1995), usually exert their repressive agencies on the people in general by transmuting them into bare bodies. Hence, the present paper will try to focus on the hygiene, menstrual cycle, nutrition, and other health issues of the female prisoners during the Holocaust period as perpetuated in Torn Thread.