"Race and Rape in the Nazi-Occupied East"
Professional Background
Ms. Monika Flaschka earned Master’s degrees in anthropology and history from Kent State University, and a B.S. in psychology from the University of Arizona. During her fellowship at the Museum, she was a Ph.D. candidate in history at Kent State University. For her Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Ms. Flaschka conducted research on her project, “Race and Rape in the Nazi-Occupied East.”
Ms. Flaschka’s research focused on gender and the Holocaust, sexual assault during the Holocaust, Nazi racial ideology, comparative genocide, gender and genocide, and sexual violence and genocide. From her research interests have sprung various papers and publications. Ms. Flaschka has achieved academic excellence throughout her higher education career, including graduating cum laude from the University of Arizona, receiving the Graduate Student Senate Thesis Award from Kent State University, participating in Northwestern University’s Holocaust Educational Foundation 2005 summer institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization, and participating in a Yiddish for Holocaust research program sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University. During the fall of 2006 she was in Germany on a DAAD scholarship.
Fellowship Research
While in residence at the Center, Ms. Flaschka studied the gender ideology of Nazism by examining the rhetorical motivation for the rape of Jewish, Roma, Sinti, and Slavic women in the occupied East, in the ghettos, and in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. In addition she analyzed the significance of the brothels established in the concentration camps to investigate their contributions to interracial relations between German soldiers and “inferior races.”
Ms. Flaschka was in residence at the Mandel Center from January 1 to June 30, 2007.