This excellent multi-disciplinary anthology presents a selection of essays, all from a feminist perspective, concerning women in the Holocaust. For professionals in Holocaust studies, the volume provides a thorough overview of the field and its controversies; for the newcomer to feminist studies of the Holocaust, it provides lively essays in clear, accessible language. At the heart of Experience and Expression is an interest in tackling theoretical issues, particularly the questions of why studies of women in the Holocaust are necessary and what gendered approaches to the Holocaust studies can teach us.

The introduction provides a 13-page history of "gendered approaches" to the Holocaust, while Part I presents a pair of essays suggesting a theoretical framework for gendered study. John K. Roth's essay defends the inclusion of women in Holocaust studies against those who, like Gabriel Schoenfeld, find gender studies "witless and malicious" (p. 6). [End Page 144] Roth argues that since good teaching and research about the Holocaust demand "particularity"—a close attention to details—then a study of women's lives during the Holocaust is both "legitimate and necessary" (p. 6). Pascale Rachel Bos addresses the question of how to address gender in Holocaust literature. She posits that men and women "experience, remember, and recount events differently" (p. 33). Bos's categories become the basis for the sectional divisions of the book.

Part II, "Women' Experiences: Gender, the Nazis, and the Holocaust," focuses exclusively on non-Jewish women, both victims and perpetrators. Four essays address Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) women, Polish slave laborers in Germany, German nurses involved with the Nazi euthanasia program, and a postwar nurses's trial at Hadamar. Part III, "Gender and Memory: The Uses of Memoirs," includes four essays on French resistance, gendered responses to hunger, Tikkun Atzmi (mending of the self), and Anne Frank as inspirational victim. Despite the title's emphasis on memoirs, the essays in this section go beyond memoirs strictly defined to include diaries, fictional autobiographies, and personal interviews. Part IV, "Women's Expressions: Postwar Reflections in Art, Fiction, and Film," offers three essays on art installations, gendered coping strategies in American fiction, and sexuality in literature and film of the Holocaust. This section reinforces themes and topics also covered earlier in the anthology, such as food fantasies, resistance, and the diary of Anne Frank.

Berlin, Gail Ivy. "Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 23.2 (2005): 144-147.

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