Women and Resistance during the Holocaust - January 2010

IntroductionThe story of the female couriers of Nazi-occupied Europe is a story of resistance that has largely remained in the shadows, or perhaps been overshadowed by the stories of armed resistance in the ghettos of Europe. Yet it is a story of incredible bravery exhibited by a group of Jewish girls – some as young as fifteen years old – and women in their late teens and early twenties. These girls braved danger and death in order to serve as the lifeline between Jewish communities throughout war-torn Europe. Disguised as non-Jews, they transported documents, papers, money and ultimately...

IntroductionIn defining resistance during the Holocaust, we see a wide range of acts that directly or indirectly defied Nazi laws, policies, or ideology. Such activities always endangered the lives of those engaged in it, and were taken by both non-Jews and Jews, by men and women. The Final Solution did not distinguish between men and women, however women experienced the degradation and humiliation differently, and are therefore worth studying as a separate group.Under Nazi domination, women sometimes benefited from the stereotypes perpetuated by Nazi ideology, which relegated women to the...

Grades: Middle and High School
Duration: Varies; about 20 minutes to discuss a single theme

This Teacher’s Guide opens up new avenues of approaching one of Pagis’s most well known poems. The themes suggested in the accompanying slideshow presentation (PDF) are based on an intimate linking of the four verses in Genesis that deal with Cain and Abel, and the poem itself. The teacher can choose to deal with as many or as few themes as suit the pupils and the teacher’s own objectives.

IntroductionThis article focuses on the shoe and mittens of the toddler Hinda Cohen, deported to Auschwitz in a children’s aktion (action, or round-up) that occurred in the Kovno Ghetto, on March 27, 1944. Hinda was murdered in Auschwitz.When Hinda was taken from her bed to be deported to Auschwitz, her shoe was left behind. Upon finding it, her father etched the date on the shoe’s sole. Her parents, Dov and Zipora Cohen, survived the war. They kept their daughter’s shoe, the pair of mittens that Zipora had sewn for her from scraps of material, and her birth certificate,...