Daughter of Holocaust survivor sues to protect dead mother’s reputation over claims of lesbian affair

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A historian is being sued by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, who launched the legal battle to protect her late mother’s reputation from claims that she had a lesbian relationship with a Nazi guard.

Dr Anna Hájková, an associate professor of modern continental European history at Warwick University, publicly claimed that the survivor had a sexual relationship with the SS guard while imprisoned in concentration camps.

A German court ruled earlier this year that Dr Hájková violated the woman’s postmortem personality rights. The woman’s daughter is now suing the academic for €25,000 (approximately £23,800) for allegedly breaching the ruling.

She also filed a complaint with Warwick University, which launched an investigation into the academic’s conduct to determine if it fell short of the university’s ethical research standards, reported the Guardian.

Dr Hájková, who researches the queer history of the Holocaust, has denied breaching the ruling.

The legal battle is centred around a Jewish woman who died 10 years ago. Her daughter’s lawyer told the Frankfurt regional court that the woman met the Nazi guard after she was transferred to a concentration camp in Hamburg in 1944.

The guard fell in love with her and thought they might be able to have a future together after the war, the court heard. When the woman was moved to two other concentration camps, the guard followed her, with both ending up in Berger-Belsen.

The camp was liberated in 1945. The SS guard was arrested as she tried to hide among the prisoners and was sentenced to two years in prison by a British military court in 1946.

Dr Hájková said she concluded that the two women may have engaged in a lesbian relationship from testimonies by survivors of the camps and legal documents from the guard’s trial. She acknowledged she had no definite proof that the relationship had taken place.

The woman’s daughter, who is now an Australian citizen, said she told the academic when she was contacted in 2014 that her mother did not have a sexual relationship with the SS guard, but used the guard’s infatuation with her to help survive the camps.

She was quoted as saying: “Me and my sister both knew that she got special favours and that the guard liked her. But it wasn’t physical. She said specifically she was never sexually or physically abused.

“I think she got away with a lot because she was charming, beautiful and a bit cheeky. She said to the woman who was doing the number [tattoo] on her arm, ‘Do you mind making it a bit smaller so it looks okay with my evening dress?’”

Despite having no proof and being told by the woman’s daughter that it was not a sexual relationship, Dr Hájková named the two woman in promotional material announcing lectures in Germany and Austria about her research.

She said the two woman had a lesbian relationship and promoted one lecture on Twitter using a photo of the Jewish woman. In another online announcement, she stated in German that “the inmates of the… women’s satellite camp observed the relationship between the guard and the prisoner woman with fascination and loathing”.

When the Jewish woman’s daughter found out about the announcements, she took the academic to court in Germany, as her mother was a German citizen.

Under the German constitution, a person’s reputation is protected from harm after her death. The daughter’s lawyer argued that the claims made by Dr Hájková threatened to destroy her mother’s “lifetime image and achievements”.

Dr Hájková’s lawyer invoked her freedom of opinion and academic freedom in her defence. But in April, the court ruled that the historian’s claims infringed the deceased woman’s dignity, and that she must refrain from making the claims again.

The court also barred her from using the woman’s full name or photograph in the context of her claims without her daughter’s permission. Dr Hájková promised in 2014 that she would not use the woman’s full name in her work, but has said she “simply forgot” this pledge.

Warwick University’s preliminary recommendations in their investigation require Dr Hájková to undergo training to ensure she complies with the university’s research code of practice, but the Jewish woman’s daughter is not satisfied and wants the university to “take stronger disciplinary action” against Dr Hájková.

The daughter also said she wants compensation for the “extreme distressed” the case has caused her, adding: “I’ve told the [inquiry] panel I have been hysterically crying. I need this resolved so desperately.”

Speaking to the Guardian, Dr Hájková, who is also a descendant of Holocaust survivors, said she refers to the dead Jewish woman by using a pseudonym instead of an abbreviated name when referring to her alleged relationship.

She said her approach to “queer Holocaust history” revealed “a more complex, more human, and more real society beyond monsters and saints”, and added she would not comment on Warwick University’s investigation, which is ongoing.

A spokesperson for the university said it would not comment until its internal investigation and the new German trial were concluded.