INTRODUCTION
The importance and role of women in the holocaust as research and written documents have shown have been erased or watered down from its history given that it is believed that wars and memories are owned by men (Kluger 18). This act is evident even in public spaces for the remembrance of Holocaust victims, a good example would be the Washington DC Holocaust Museum which I visited. At the Museum, women were rarely represented in the first set of images that show the damage of the Holocaust. You are presented with only male victims, creating the impression that the women were tucked away safely during the mass murders or were exempted from working on the slave camps, the gas chambers and other major activities. Other representations of women were images of women in the most dehumanizing form, stripped and unclad. The rationale behind this uneven representation may not be far-fetched given that some critics have argued against why the Holocaust should be viewed from a gendered perspective. Interestingly, women have posed the same questions (Kaplan 3), arguing that it waters down the overall impact of the Holocaust and irrespective of gender, the focus should be European Jewry.
Kaplan however argues, approaching the holocaust from a gendered lens allows us “to tell a fuller, more intimate, more nuanced story”, giving Jewish women “a voice long denied them and . . . a perspective long denied us.” (Kaplan 4). Given my experience at the Holocaust museum and from reading literatures like Art Spielgelman’s Maus I & II, discovering that Anja’s diary which detailed her experience and life during the Holocaust was destroyed by Vladek (Spielgeman 159) has become the driving force to insist on viewing the events of the Holocaust from a gendered particularly female perspective because asides their diaries being burned, their voices will never be heard Hirsch (10). For most Jewish women who were mainly housewives, in the wake of Nazism, there was a switch in their functions from caring for the home front to providing food and comfort for the home. When the extermination of European Jewry began, they had to take up crucial leadership positions to preserve lives and intellectual properties.
The focus of this essay is on re-echoing heroic yet silent female voices of the holocaust who under the Nazi regime went over and beyond even resulting in the loss of their lives for some, to ensure the safety and survival of European Jewry. This perspective is essentially key for us as those who bear witness to the memories of the murdered Jews of the Holocaust, to echo the silenced voices and re-echo the inaudible ones.
ONA SIMAITE
Ona Simaite, a Lithuanian Liberian at Vilna University, under the guise of recovering overdue library books, smuggled food, messages and other contraband into the Vilna ghetto. Through this access, Simaite smuggled out several Jewish children and also historical Jewish research materials for safekeeping. Simaite was red and about to be executed yet she refused to give up the names of her Jewish contacts. Samaite’s heroic act did not just preserve Jewish lives but also their intellectual property.
HANNAH SZENES
For 23-year-old Hungarian Jew, poet and parachutist, Hannah Szenes, risking her life to save others meant being among the Blessed. Szenes was recruited alongside two other parachutists from Palestine on rescue missions to Nazi-occupied Europe. Although the chance of success was small, she felt that the group would be an inspiring and morale raising symbol of hope for the Jews of Europe. Hannah was captured by the Nazis upon crossing the border into Hungary in 1944, tortured and later executed by firing squad.
HAIKA GROSSMAN
Haika Grossman was among a group of six women called “the anti-fascist committee.” She acted as a contact person with the Soviet partisan brigade in the forest while helping to acquire ammunition for the resistance.
ROZA ROBOTA
Roza Robota organized a group of rebel women of the Sonderkommando in 1944 that smuggled leftover gunpowder in tiny amounts into Auschwitz. She risked her life to supply explosives that were used to destroy Crematorium IV. She was hanged singing “Hatikvah”.
SOPHIE SCHOLL
Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were key members of Weiße Rose (White Rose) resistance group that distributed leaflets and used graffiti to decry Nazi crimes and the war. Sophie was beheaded for treason.
HAVIVAH REIK
Havivah Reik was a Parachutist and member of Palmah, a special force of the underground Haganah. In 1944, while volunteering for a secret mission to assist the British war effort and Jewish refugees in Europe. Reik was captured by the Nazis and murdered.
WORKS CITED
Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of PostMemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. 2012.
Kaplan, A, Marion. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Studies in Jewish History). Oxford University Press. 1998.
Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive. Feminist Press. 2001.
Jewish Women's Archive. The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/szenes-hannah. Accessed 15 October 2024.
Marc Record. Solidarity and silence: the story of Ona Šimaitė, librarian lifesaver. Libcom.org. https://libcom.org/article/solidarity-and-silence-story-ona-simaite-librarian-lifesaver-marc-record. Accessed 20 Oct.2024.
Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Women of Valor. Stories of Women Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust. https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/juszczykowska.asp 2024.
“Be Strong and Courageous”, Last Words of Roza Robota, Member of the Jewish Resistance in Auschwitz-Birkenau. International March of the Living. https://www.motl.org/be-strong-and-courageous-last-words-of-roza-robota-member-of-the-jewish-resistance-in-auschwitz-birkenau/. Accessed 20 Oct.2024.
The National WWII Museum. Sophie Scholl and the White Rose. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sophie-scholl-and-white-rose. Accessed 20 Oct.2024.
Sexuality, Gender, and Nazi Persecution. Experiencing History Holocaust Sources in Context. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/sexuality-gender-and-nazi-persecution
READ ALSO:
Kaplan, Marion. "Did Gender Matter during the Holocaust?" Vol 24 No 2, Jewish Social Studies, Indiana University Press. 2019, 37-56, https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.24.2.05. Accessed on 20 Oct.2024.
Women and the Holocaust: Courage and Compassion, edited by Kimberly Mann. United Nations. 2011.
Waxman, Zoë. Women in the Holocaust. A Feminist History. Oxford University Press. 2017.