Making Love and Make-Belief: Male Sexual Barter in Dov Freiberg’s To Survive Sobibor

Abstract

After escaping the German mass killing facility in Sobibór on 14 October 1943, Dov Freiberg and Semyon Rozenfeld survived in hiding near Chelm until the arrival of the Red Army in July 1944. In 1945, Freiberg testified before the Central Jewish Historical Commission, and in 1988, he published his much more extensive memoirs To Survive Sobibor. Both texts cover the period of hiding, during which Freiberg, Rozenfeld and the brothers Dawid and Józef Serczuk were taken in by two women. The two sources reveal an episode of male sexual barter, as the male group established rational relationships with the two women in order to stabilize a precarious situation. By comparing both of Freiberg’s texts, it becomes clear that so-called late testimonies are rich and unjustly underrated source-material.

Keywords

• Sobibór
• Dov Freiberg
• Semyon Rozenfeld
• Dawid Serczuk
• Józef Serczuk
• sexuality and the Holocaust