User reviews

A documentary of two halves. In the first about thirty minutes it chronicles the "Stalags", Israeli pulp fiction from the 1960s which dealt with Allied soldiers being captured by the Nazis, then sent to prison camps run by foxy female SS guards, where various sexual escapades would ensue -- usually the prisoners would first be tormented by the "she wolves", then they would get even by abusing and raping them in turn. Creepy, maybe, but let me say for those books that they had fantastic artwork on their covers! Interestingly, considering those exploitation stories appeared in Israel, the stories did not deal with Jewish prisoners and concentration camps.

In its second half the movie it changes tack and deals with the larger issue of exploitative and sexualised descriptions of the Holocaust, in particular with Ka-Tzetnik's questionable House Of Dolls. Frankly I didn't know about this issue and consequently was somewhat overwhelmed. Apparently Ka-Tzetnik, the pseudonym of a Auschwitz survivor turned prolific author on the Holocaust and witness at the Eichmann trial, wrote a bestseller about Jewesses being held by the Nazis as prostitutes for their soldiers (the so-called "Feld-Huren"). This second half was interesting, but dealt too much with Israeli "inside" politics and culture and was consequently too much for me to chew.

Far less garish than its marketing and worth watching if you're interested in Israeli popular culture.