The Galician Borderlands and Gendered Violence During World War II | seminar

Galicia – the Kresy – this region has long stood as a borderland. Here, Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Russians, and Jews mixed, fought, and died. This was particularly true during World War II. Between 1939 and 1947, this region was heavily militarized; and as armies and partisans roved the land, women’s bodies became particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. In this piece, I argue that mass sexual violence was one outcome of the genocidal conflict visited upon Galicia during World War II. Using data collected from governmental organizations, oral histories, and Polish newspapers, I analyze the factors that facilitated militarized borderland rape, paying particular attention to the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. In so doing, this piece sheds light on the gendered dangers that lurk in borderlands during wartime.



Dr. Meghann Pytka, is an Instructional Specialist in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Assistant Director for the Program in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender and nationalism in modern Poland, and has been supported, in part, by the Polish-American Fulbright Commission, IREX, ACLS, the USHMM, and Yad Vashem.