Sisters and Resisters: Jewish women in the Holocaust
31st Annual Yom HaShoah/ Holocaust Memorial Day Exhibit
James P. Adams Library
April 22, 2022 - May 20, 2022
Faye Schulman at rifle practice in early 1943. As a professional photographer, her images of both resistance fighters and Holocaust victims and events are a powerful testimony to Jewish women in the Holocaust. In the mid-1990s she devoted time to public speaking to counter the misconception that Jews died in the Holocaust without fighting back. From ‘A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust’ by Faye Schulman.
https://www.ft.com/content/7761feef-cc7b-4d3c-91d6-ab889811347f
The theme of this year’s exhibit has allowed us to feature material from our collections that include historians’ analyses and personal memoirs of the many different circumstances - resistance fighters/partisans, members of the underground/black market, refugees in disguise or in hiding, concentration camp survivors and victims - in which Jewish women found themselves during the Holocaust.
The core of the exhibit focuses on the theme of women’s resistance during the Holocaust, a counter-weight to the widely held notion that Jews “surrendered” rather than fighting the Nazis.
This is a small selection of eBooks available at the Adams Library. All other texts are currently on display at the main entrance on Level 3.
Different Voices by
Different Voices is the most thoroughgoing examination of women's experiences of the Holocaust ever compiled. It gathers together-for the first time in a single volume-the latest insights of scholars, the powerful testimony of survivors, and the eloquent reflections of writers, theologians, and philosophers. Part One, "Voices of Experience," recounts the painful and poignant stories of survivors, stories of resistance, compliance, medical experiments, all kinds of horror, and total vulnerability. Part Two, "Voices of Interpretation," offers the new insights of women scholars of the Holocaust, including evidence that the Nazis specifically preyed on women as the propagators of the Jewish race. In Part Three, "Voices of Reflection," women artists and intellectuals contemplate the Holocaust, even to the point of suggesting, through painstaking statistical evidence, that more Jewish women than Jewish men actually perished in the Holocaust. Lyrical, vivid, and affecting, Different Voices is a powerful commemoration of the sufferings and of the courage of Jewish women during the darkest years of the twentieth century. It is a compelling-and essential-contribution to our knowledge of the Holocaust.
Holocaust Mothers and Daughters by
In this brave and original work, Federica Clementi focuses on the mother-daughter bond as depicted in six works by women who experienced the Holocaust, sometimes with their mothers, sometimes not. The daughters' memoirs, which record the "all-too-human" qualities of those who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, show that the Holocaust cannot be used to neatly segregate lives into the categories of before and after. Clementi's discussions of differences in social status, along with the persistence of antisemitism and patriarchal structures, support this point strongly, demonstrating the tenacity of trauma--individual, familial, and collective--among Jews in twentieth-century Europe.
Holocaust resistance in Europe and America : new aspects and dilemmas by 
Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust
Faced with infectious diseases, starvation, lack of medicines, lack of clean water, and safe sewage, Jewish physicians practiced medicine under severe conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Holocaust. Despite the odds against them, physicians managed to supply public health education, enforce hygiene protocols, inspect buildings and latrines, enact quarantine, and perform triage. Many gave their lives to help fellow prisoners. Based on archival materials and featuring memoirs of Holocaust survivors, this volume offers a rich array of both tragic and inspiring studies of the sanctification of life as practiced by Jewish medical professionals. More than simply a medical story, these histories represent the finest exemplification of a humanist moral imperative during a dark hour of recent history.
The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 by
Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.
Sisters in Sorrow : life histories of female Holocaust survivors from Hungary by
Sister in Sorrow offers a glimpse into the world of Hungarian Holocaust survivors through the stories of fifteen survivors, as told by thirteen women and two spouses presently living in Hungary and Israel. Analyzing the accounts as oral narratives, author Ilana Rosen uses contemporary folklore studies methodologies to explore the histories and the consciousness of the narrators as well as the difficulty for present-day audiences to fully grasp them. Rosen's research demonstrates not only the extreme personal horrors these women experienced but also the ways they cope with their memories. In four sections, Rosen interprets the life histories according to two major contemporary leading literary approaches: psychoanalysis and phenomenology. This reading encompasses both the life spans of the survivors and specific episodes or personal narratives relating to the women's identity and history. The psychoanalytic reading examines focal phases in the lives of the women, first in pre-war Europe, then in World War II and the Holocaust, and last as Holocaust survivors living in the shadow of loss and atrocity. The phenomenological examination traces the terms of perception and of the communication between the women and their different present-day non-survivor audiences. An appendix contains the complete life histories of the women, including their unique and affecting remembrances. Although Holocaust memory and narrative have figured at the center of academic, political, and moral debates in recent years, most works look at such stories from a social science perspective and attempt to extend the meaning of individual tales to larger communities. Although Rosen keeps the image of the general group-be it Jews, female Holocaust survivors, Israelis, or Hungarians-in mind throughout this volume, the focus of Sister in Sorrow is the ways the individual women experienced, told, and processed their harrowing experiences. Students of Holocaust studies and women's studies will be grateful for the specific and personal approach of Sister in Sorrow.
