Women in the Holocaust - May 2008

In her autobiography, Ruth Bondy, survivor of Aushwitz-Birkenau, wrote: “In one of the meetings with high school students on Kibbutz Dafna, four of us survivors sat around a table and asked the students what it was about the Holocaust that was most difficult for them to endure. Three male students simultaneously said, ‘the hunger.’ And I said, ‘the filth.’”As a child, psychologist Shlomo Breznitz was hidden in a monastery with his sister Judith, as his parents were sent to Auschwitz. At the conclusion of his autobiography, he writes, “When my mother...

”And with dream-awakened eyes, she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.”
–From “Life? Or Theatre?”, Charlotte Salomon, 1940-42Charlotte Salomon was born in 1917, to Albert Salomon, a surgeon, and Francisca Grunwald. The Salomon’s were a liberal family that defined themselves as “Germans of the Mosaic persuasion.” In 1939, after Kristallnacht, Charlotte was forced to leave her home...

IntroductionThis exclusive interview was published in our newsletter Teaching the Legacy (May, 2008). The original interview, conducted in Hebrew, first appeared in our Hebrew edition of October, 2007. While focusing on the touching wartime story of Hedi Solzbach, several issues arise which are intrinsically linked to the female experience in the Holocaust. Thus, for instance, we hear about the day-to-day banter in the women's block at Birkenau, the humiliation of nakedness and fear of bodily harm, use of margarine as an anti-wrinkle cream, "support groups" amongst the female...