House of Dolls. Ka-Tzetnik 135633

Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls (Simon and Schuster, 1955)
Paperback 224 pages Mayflower Books (1973)

It is said that many Jewish parents and teachers do not protect their young from stories that reflect the harsh events in the past and present such as the horrors during Expulsion from Spain. This directness and realism brings a strong element of strength and endurance to Jewish existence from young on.  Avarnu et par'o, na'avor gam et zeh... (We survived Pharaoh, we will survive also this). It is often in contrast with the softer protective cotton wrapping Western parents and schools try to give children censoring even some Biblical stories as too rough and violent.

The House of Dolls is a 1955 novella by Ka-tzetnik 135633. The novella describes "Joy Divisions", which were allegedly groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of Nazi soldiers.

The origin of Ka-tzetnik's story is not clear. Some say it is based on a diary kept by a young Jewish girl who was captured in Poland when she was fourteen years old and forced into sexual slavery in a Nazi labour camp. However, the diary itself has not been located or verified to exist. Others claim, and the author suggests as much in his later book Shivitti, that it is based on the actual history of Ka-tzetnik's younger sister (The House of Dolls is about the sister of Ka-tzetnik's protagonist, Harry Preleshnik). However, Ka-tzetnik did not have a sister in real life.
wikipedia

Having House of Dolls as recommended reading in high school curriculum in Israel fits this educational philosophy letting teenagers know how it really was. The approach certainly has its psychological merits in preparing for the adult life and giving personal strength.

Ka-Tzetnik 135633
The author of this totally unforgettable book, Yehiel Feiner (16 May 1909 – 17 July 2001), is better known as Ka-tzetnik 135633, which comes from comes from KZ Konzentrationslager.  He was for two years a prisoner in Auschwitz where the brothel existed.

In 1976, because of recurring nightmares and depression, he subjected himself to a form of psychedelic psychotherapy from Dr. Jan Bastiaans that included the use of LSD; the visions experienced during this therapy became the basis for his book, Shivitti.

The book's title is derived from David's Psalm 16, "תהילים טז: "שיויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד, more accurately translated in Acts 2:25: "I saw the Lord always before me", or "I was always beholding the Lord in my presence".

He died of cancer in Tel Aviv on 17 July 2001.
wikipedia

Fact or fiction?
There has been serious debate in Israel among historians whether the book is fact or fiction - or a mixture of the two. A general description of the conditions of imprisoned women in Auschwitz SS Female Overseers in Auschwitz provides background for understanding Ka-Tzetnik's book regardless of the accuracy of its contents.

For example, Na'ama Shik who is a researcher at Yad Vashem considers the book fictional. 

The Jerusalem Journal article yesterday, about the pornographic pocket books with Nazi themes that were circulated in Israel in the 1960s, misquoted Na’ama Shik, a researcher at Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, regarding the pocket book “Doll’s House,” about a Jewish woman serving in a notorious brothel called Block 24 in Auschwitz. She said the book — not Block 24 — was fictional.
New York Times 2007

 Author David Mikics has recently written about Ka-tzetnik in Tablet. A new read on Jewish life April 19, 2012

Of all the witnesses at the Eichmann trial, the event that gripped the Jewish world in 1961, he is the one the Israeli public would remember most vividly. Facing Eichmann in his glass booth, he spoke for a few minutes, in agonized, disconnected fashion, and then collapsed in a faint. A few minutes later he was carried off to a hospital, to be treated for a nervous breakdown.

His second book, House of Dolls (published in Israel in 1953) was a wild success and was translated into a dozen languages. House of Dolls is a meandering mess of a book; its real point is its explosive conclusion. In the last 50 pages, the hero’s sister Daniella becomes a prostitute in a women’s labor camp: She is forced to join the camp’s Freudenabteilung or “Joy Division,” which services German soldiers (yes, that’s where the pallid, death-obsessed British band got its name—from Ka-Tzetnik’s book). The girls selected for the Joy Division have Feld-Hure (military whore) tattooed between their breasts. (The tattooing really happened, although the brothel at Auschwitz was frequented only by Kapos and other privileged prisoners, not by the SS.) The girls suffer under an ardent and brutal lesbian boss named Elsa, who forces them to strip naked, then bends them over a chair and lashes them. [Actually they were clubbed to death in this position in front of the other inmates as a warning for them for getting three complaints from the clients...]
David Mikics
Read the entire article here 

David Mikics suggests that the House of Dolls does mix fact and fiction but exactly as such it is penetrating truthful description of the times.

I agree with Mikics and think this unpolished classic better than many more civilized Holocaust era books conveys the atmosphere of utter destruction of beauty and human life that was so rampant in Hitler's Third Reich. This is an unprecedented display of the banality of evil as it was called by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a  German theologian and himself a victim of Adolf Hitler.

The sad thing we realize from the enormous popularity of this novel is that it is not only the Nazis or "Germans" who are capable of imagining and realizing such horrific selfishness and enslaving others for their pleasure but we humans in general. The circumstances and Nazi ideology made it possible in Auschwitz but such acts of desire and death are also possible today if we do not prevent it. 

This haunted book by a haunted author is an unforgettable memorial to the Jewish women and to all women who were enslaved, humiliated and destroyed in Auschwitz Block 24 between 1942 and 1945.


Am Israel Hai
The pride of those Elsa's in Block 24 is no more - it is nothing but a cursed memory.

But the people of Israel live and prosper and "we passed also that..." Here is the Psalm 16 that the name of  Ka-Tzetnik's other book Shivitti refers to


A miktam of David.

Keep me safe, my God,
    for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
    “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
    I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
    or take up their names on my lips.

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand