Impaired providers and weakened protectors: negotiating Jewish masculinities in occupied Warsaw (1939–1942)

Abstract This article explores the experiences of Polish Jewish men during the German occupation of Warsaw, focusing on the period prior to the mass deportations of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto in summer 1942. It demonstrates that local male gender identities balanced between continuity and deconstruction in the face of increasing persecution. The policies of the occupation authorities—to an unprecedented degree—restricted Jewish men's agency and constrained their ability to perform what they saw as normative gender roles, such as breadwinning and protecting the family, which were essential to maintaining their sense of respectability as men. Initially, the gender dynamics that shaped prewar masculine or feminine roles remained in effect following the outbreak of the Second World War; however, as the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi administration intensified and targeted men specifically, some Jewish men collapsed under the new burdens and could barely function, and some engaged in compensatory practices (including alternative employment or the use of violence) that partially restored their sense of masculine normativity. Hunger, roundups, and forced labor compelled men and women to rethink masculine gender identity. Exploring Holocaust memoirs and diaries, in addition to documents from the Oneg Shabbat archive, this article highlights the gendered experiences of the majority of Jewish men who did not participate in the resistance and expands our understanding of gender-sensitive Holocaust scholarship by including male voices.