Lolita Wolf's Predictions & Predilections

I went to see Stalags on Wednesday night at the Film Forum. It is a documentary that explores the phenomenon of the fantasy porn books based on the Holocaust. These were hugely popular in Israel in the early 1960’s, the time of the Eichmann trial . It also tells about how some of that fantasy sexuality has crept into their history and is even part of the curriculum of the schools in Israel. Fantasy has been confused with reality.

I am a child of Holocaust Survivors. As much as my family would not talk about what happened, the Holocaust was in my face and hanging over my head all through my childhood. My parents had friends who had numbers tattooed on their arms. I knew what they were but it was wrong to talk about them. One friend of my mom’s would bring her mother with her. This woman was totally blind because the Nazis had experimented on her eyes.

The family and friends’ histories were always present but we were not to talk about it. We were taught to never forget, but also never to mention it. We were happy to be in America where we could be free and safe, but we tried to blend in. My mother did not want me to wear the Star of David necklace that my boyfriend had given me. “You don’t want everyone knowing that you are Jewish,” she scolded me.

I remember seeing the movie Let My People Go when I was very young. The images still haunt me. Piles of naked dead bodies, malnourished and frightened victims, people standing in front of graves and being shot so that they would fall in. It was horrible, but I was fascinated. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer and any other book I could find about the Holocaust.

Oddly, at some point I found much of this arousing. Horrendous, but I also had sexual fantasies around this. Naturally I felt guilty about this and did not admit it to anyone for a long time. I remember seeing Schindler’s List and I cried in that movie. It was tough to watch, but there was also the part with the SS-Officer and the housekeeper that I found extremely sexy. Yes, it aroused me and played into my own fantasies. Was that fucked up?

It was not until I got into the SM scene that I met people who had similar fantasies as mine. I also began to rationalize why we are affected in this way. I do think that we eroticize our traumas. By eroticizing our traumas in this manner, we are able to deal with them and be emotionally healthy. It is perhaps why the Stalag books were so popular.

It may also be why Max Mosley engaged in his Nazi SM roleplay (where he he played both top and bottom roles). He lived with the history of what his fascist father did during WWII. His SM scene has enraged people and they are asking for his resignation. Why? It is fantasy role play between consenting adults in private. Let’s not confuse fantasy with reality.