ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1380813
Shoah Pornography: The Stalag Phenomenon in Israel in the 1960s
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
- 2University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 3University of Siegen, Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- 4Centre for Criminology, Wiesbaden, Germany
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The ‘Stalags’ (orig. ‘Stalagim’, Abbr. German = ‘Stammlager’) are softpornographic booklets portraying a sadomasochistic plot at the time of the Shoah. The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychological and sociocultural causes of this phenomenon in the 1960s in Israel. To this end, five expert interviews were conducted and evaluated by means of qualitative content analysis. In total, six categories were extracted and provide the basis for a discussion of the popularity and spread of the Stalags during the time of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel. First, reversal of hatred of antisemitic images of Jews; second, sexuality as a political category; third, defense of traumatic guilt by its sexualization; fourth, sexuality as a practical category with feelings of power leading to sexual arousal; fifth, reflection of the new idea of masculinity (‘The Sabra’) in society; and, sixth, the influence of US-American Hollywood cinema on aesthetics and plot. These categories will be enriched by means of psychoanalytic theory.
Keywords: Stalag, Shoah, Pornography, Trauma, Expert interviews
Received: 02 Feb 2024; Accepted: 05 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Spiegel, Dekker, Briken, Gomille and Rettenberger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jasmin Spiegel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
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