In chronicling his experiences of the German occupation of Poland, the Polish literary scholar Kazimierz Wyka observed how the wartime reality created by the Nazis led to the emergence of a new currency:
Speaking of currencies, another currency should be mentioned, as there is a guiding thread linking it to a common collective moral phenomenon of those years. For many reasons, women played the active role among civil servants, the intelligentsia, and business people. [. . .] A woman in this situation soon understands that she is bringing an additional currency into the business: her body. Even if she could find no work other than as a barmaid for the occupying forces, the urban woman would know that it was mainly thanks to her body that she had earned the onerous right to don her apron. (p. 78)
Wyka described a major inversion: German occupation reversed gender roles and yielded...
