PROJECTS

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Current Projects

Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust
“The Untold Story of Mielec, Poland,” Yad Vashem Research Project
Brazilian Edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
Hebrew Edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
New Edition: Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story
The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp

Ongoing Research Project: Antisemitism and Sexism: Jewish Women Who Immigrated to Brazil

ANNOUNCING A GROUNDBREAKING BOOK

FORTHCOMING NOVEMBER 2010
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PRESS/UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND

SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST JEWISH WOMEN DURING THE HOLOCAUST

We are pleased to announce the November 2010 publication of
SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST JEWISH WOMEN DURING THE HOLOCAUST
Edited by Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel

 "The Holocaust horrors suffered by males and females alike have been rightly memorialized in histories and museums, but the sexual violence suffered by females has rarely been recorded. Perhaps we would have been better able to prevent the rapes in the former Yugoslavia and the Congo if we had not had to wait more than sixty years to hear the truths that are anthologized in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust by Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel. We owe them and the authors they assembled a debt of gratitude for a well-documented warning that sexual violence is a keystone of genocide."
—Gloria Steinem, Feminist writer and organizer, co-founder of the Women's Media Center

“Challenging conventional interpretations by highlighting evidence that has been ignored, downplayed, or even silenced, Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, a book as courageous as it is sensitive, significantly expands scholarship about the Holocaust’s extremity and intensifies imperatives to resist every kind of sexual abuse.”
—John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College.

“This book touches upon a deeply troubling and too long ignored topic. The Nazis used a wide variety of means to humiliate, degrade, and torture Jews. Rape and sexual abuse were among them. Sadly, it was not only the Nazis and their allies who abused Jewish women. Jews, non-Jewish prisoners, and even liberators did as well. The editors and contributors to this volume deserve great credit for addressing this painful topic.”
—Deborah E. Lipstadt,  Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Emory University

 
Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel. Photo: Jeff F. Segall

Featured in the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's Series on Jewish Women,
written with the support of Remember the Women Institute,
with sixteen chapters by a prestigious interdisciplinary and international group of scholars.

Table of Contents
Introduction
by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel
Part I: Aspects of Sexual Abuse
Chapter 1: Death and the Maidens: “Prostitution,” Rape, and Sexual Slavery during World War II
by Nomi Levenkron
Chapter 2: Sexualized Violence Against Women During Nazi “Racial” Persecution
by Brigitte Halbmayr
Chapter 3: Sexual Exploitation of Women in Nazi Concentration Camp Brothels
by Robert Sommer
Chapter 4: Schillinger and the Dancer: Representing Agency and Sexual Violence in Holocaust Testimonies
by Kirsty Chatwood
Part II: Rape of Jewish Women
Chapter 5: “Only Pretty Women were Raped:” The Effect of Sexual Violence on Gender Identities in the Concentration Camps
by Monika J. Flaschka
Chapter 6: The Tragic Fate of Ukrainian Jewish Women under Nazi occupation, 1941-1944
by Anatoly Podolsky
Chapter 7: The Rape of Jewish Women During the Holocaust
by Helene J. Sinnreich
Chapter 8: Rape and Sexual Abuse in Hiding
by Zoë Waxman
Part III: Assaults on Motherhood
Chapter 9: Reproduction Under the Swastika: The Other Side of the Glorification of Motherhood
by Helga Amesberger
Chapter 10: Forced Sterilization and Abortion as Sexual Abuse
by Ellen Ben-Sefer
Part IV: Sexual Violence in Literature and Cinema
Chapter 11: Sexual Abuse in Holocaust Literature: Memoir and Fiction
by S. Lillian Kremer
Chapter 12: Stoning the Messenger: Yehiel Dinur’s House of Dolls and Piepel
by Miryam Sivan
Chapter 13: Nava Semel's And the Rat Laughed: A Tale of Sexual Violation
by Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel
Chapter 14: “Public Property:” Sexual Abuse of Women and Girls in Cinematic Memory
by Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan
Part V: The Violated Self
Chapter 15: Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women during and after the Holocaust: A Psychological Perspective
by Eva Fogelman
Chapter 16: The Shame Is Always There
by Esther Dror and Ruth Linn
Notes on Contributors
Index

ISBN 9781584659051 (paperback), 320 pages, $35.00
For pre-orders and more information see  http://www.upne.com/1-58465-903-3.html

Contributors:

            Dr. Helga Amesberger, a social scientist, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna, with a focus on National Socialist persecution of women and oral history. She is the co-author of Sexualisierte Gewalt in NS-Konzentrationslagern (Sexualized Violence in National Socialist Concentration Camps).
            Dr. Ellen Ben-Sefer is a Senior Lecturer at Schoenborn Academic College of Nursing in Tel Aviv, dividing her research time between nursing research and such Holocaust-related issues as children, women, and transit camps. She has also developed a model program in Australia and Israel for teaching nursing students about relevant Holocaust issues.
            Kirsty Chatwood, an independent researcher who studies questions of gender, sexuality, rape and “resistance” in the context of genocide, has degrees from University of Alberta and University of Lethbridge in Canada. She is currently conducting research that includes studying the connections between sexual vulnerability and sex for survival in concentration camps.
            Esther Dror is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at University of Haifa, Israel. Her writings include “Unraveling the Curtain of Silence: Leading to Redefinition of the Survival of Women during the Holocaust,” presented at Women and the Holocaust, the Fourth International Conference in Israel in 2007.
           Dr. Monika J. Flashka received a PhD in Modern European History from Kent State University. Her dissertation, “Race, Rape and Gender in Nazi-Occupied Territories,” analyzes the intersection of gender and racial ideology in court-martial cases of rape, attempted rape, and child abuse committed by German soldiers and non-German men in the occupied territories.
            Dr. Eva Fogelman, a psychologist in private practice in New York City, is Co-Director of Psychotherapy, Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas and Child Development Research, Training Institute for Mental Health. The author of Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, she wrote and co-produced Breaking the Silence.  
            Dr. Brigitte Halbmayr, a social scientist and senior researcher at the Institute of Conflict Research, Vienna, focuses on racism, National Socialism, the Holocaust, and gender. She co-authored Das Privileg der Unsichtbarkeit. Rassismus unter dem Blickwinkel von Weißsein und Dominanzkultur (The Privilege of Invisibility. Racism--Being White in Dominant Culture).
            Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth is a full professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Middle Tennessee State University. In addition to German, she has taught extensively about the Holocaust, women's issues, and world literature. She has published a book on Else Lasker-Schüler, as well as co-edited a book on this famous German-Jewish writer.
            Dr. Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan teaches history and cinema at University of Haifa's Department of Cinema and Television, as well as Sapir College of the Negev and Kibbutzim College in Israel. She researches the cinema's influence on viewers' knowledge of history. She is the author of “Until you are Dead”: The Death Penalty in the USA: History, Law, and Cinema.       
            Dr. S. Lillian Kremer, University Distinguished Professor, Emerita, Kansas State University is the author of Witness Through the Imagination: The Holocaust in Jewish American Literature and Women's Holocaust Writing: Memory and Imagination, the editor of Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work, and the author ofmany critical essays.
            Nomi Levenkron, an Israeli attorney, headed the anti-trafficking department at the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Israel. She is currently Professional Director of “Matters” - The Law and Society Clinical Center, College of Management, Academic Studies, and Director of the Human Rights Clinic. She also teaches courses about prostitution and trafficking at Tel Aviv University.
            Prof. Ruth Linn, a former Dean of the Faculty of Education at University of Haifa, Israel, studies moral psychology and focuses on issues associated with resistance to authority. Among her four books is one about the suppressed story of Auschwitz escapees. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, University of Maryland, and University of British Columbia.
            Dr. Anatoly Podolsky, a historian, is the Director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in Kiev, Ukraine, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is the author of “A Reluctant look back: Jewry and the Holocaust in Ukraine,” as well as many published articles.      
            Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, a political scientist, is Director of Remember the Women Institute in New York City and a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Women and Gender, University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is the author of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and editor of Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story.                        
          Dr. Helene Sinnreich is the Director of the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies and Associate Professor of History at Youngstown State University. She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Jewish Identities and Executive Director of the Ohio Council for Holocaust Education. Her research focuses on victim experience during the Holocaust.
            Dr. Miriam Sivan, originally from New York City, teaches at University of Haifa and at the Emek Yizrael College. Her book, Belonging Too Well: Portraits of Identity in Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction, was published in 2009. Her novella, City of Refuge, was adapted for the stage at a theater conference in London in 2007. She has recently completed a novel, Make  it Concrete.
            Dr. Robert Sommer received his PhD from the Institute of Cultural Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2009. In 2006-2009, he organized an international conference, “Forced Prostitution and War in the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Century,” at the Ravensbrück Memorial, and also served as scientific project supervisor there for an exhibit on camp brothels.
            Dr. Zoë Waxman is a Research Fellow in History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation (Oxford University Press, 2006) and articles on the Holocaust and women's Holocaust experiences.

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A Visit with Judy Chicago

	Co-editors Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel traveled to Belen, NM to meet with feminist artist Judy Chicago and discuss how images from her Holocaust Project relate to the anthology. She has been addressing the issues of rape and sexual abuse for decades in her art and writing, and through her not-for-profit organization, Through the Flower.
Rochelle Saidel, Sonja Hedgepeth, and Judy Chicago.

Through the Flower welcome sign, Belen, NM

BACKGROUND ON RAPE
Because of the difficulty of obtaining information from the victims, and the sensitivity of the subject, sexual abuse of women during the Holocaust has not yet received the academic attention that it deserves. The two main issues that require further research are rape and forced prostitution. Regarding rape, female survivors often mention in interviews that they know that their friend was raped, but they rarely put the discussion in the first person. Furthermore, this is not a situation where researchers can look for documentation, because there generally is none. Rape has to do with the aggressor's use of power via a sexual act to humiliate and abuse the victim. If this can happen to any woman anywhere, it surely happens when women (and sometimes men) in concentration camps are considered less then human by Nazi captors endowed with the power of life and death. Laws against Rassenschande, or racial impurity, did not apply for Nazis raping their Jewish prisoners. Besides, if there were no witnesses willing to testify, Nazi guards could rape with impunity. A victim would not dare to make an accusation or she would be murdered, and a rapist, even if accused, could simply deny his actions. (The situation of Soviet troops raping women as they conquered Nazi-held territory also needs to be explored.)


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Mielec, Poland: From Shtetl to Nazi Concentration Camp
to be Published by Gefen Publishing House

Book Based on Yad Vashem Research Project

Mielec, Poland: From Shtetl to Nazi Concentration Camp by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel will be published by Gefen Publishing Company

Most of the research for the book was carried out by Dr. Saidel when she served as a Research Fellow at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem during the Fall 2006 semester.

The untold story of Mielec, Poland includes the history of the town's pre-World War II Kehillah and the Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp, that operated there. Like hundreds of other shtetls and small towns in Poland, Mielec's Jewish community was destroyed during the Holocaust. The entire Jewish population was murdered, sent to slave labor, or deported en masse to the Lublin District on March 9, 1942. Mielec is unique because this was the first town that had its Jewish population deported in the context of the Final Solution. The decision to do so was made very early, in January 1942. Furthermore, after the deportation, the Mielec Jews were not murdered immediately. Nevertheless, histories of the Holocaust barely or never mention Mielec.

Located in the Rzeszow province in southern Poland, Mielec had a Jewish community that was first organized in the middle of the seventeenth century. Just prior to World War II, there were 3,000 to 4000 Jewish inhabitants (depending on source), about half of the town's population. Very few Jewish residents of Mielec survived the Holocaust. On September 13, 1939, erev Rosh Hashanah, the Nazis shot or burned alive at least 20 Jews in the synagogue-mikve-slaughterhouse complex.

In January 1942, a decision was made to deport the Mielec Jews, and on March 9, 1942, about 2000 to 3000 Jews or more (depending on source) were transferred to the Berdechow airport. Some sources claim a higher number, and the population had grown because Jews had fled to the town from other locations in Poland. Some were shot before arrival at the airport; the rest were herded into the hangar, where they were subject to a selection. After a group of young people (about 750) were chosen for slave labor in the Pustkow concentration camp or the local Heinkel aircraft factory, the rest were deported to Parchew, Wlodawa, Niedzyrzec, Dubienka and other towns in the Lublin district. Most of these deportees were women and children. They lived there in dire circumstances, awaiting ultimate transfer to the Belzec or Sobibor death camp and murder. During that time, the Mielec church organist hid some of their belongings. As the victims waited, they wrote to him asking that he sell certain items and send them money for necessities. He did so, always carefully recording the transactions.

About four months after the Jewish population was removed from Mielec, a forced labor camp was established there to produce airplanes for Heinkel. This later became a full-fledged concentration camp. Survivors of the Mielec concentration camp, mostly not natives of the town, gave testimonies that provided graphic details about their daily life. There were mostly men but also some women in the Mielec camp, which functioned for about two years. Some of the survivors provided testimony for trials against the various commandants of the camp. The last one who was captured, Josef Schwammberger, was finally tried in Germany in 1990, after escaping to Argentina and living there for 40 years.

The idea for this research project began because of a survivor living in Jerusalem, Moshe Borger. He has rare documentation about Mielec before, during, and after the Holocaust, which helps to tell the story of Mielec and appropriately place it within Holocaust history. Research in the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw have given the project added dimensions and information. Even though there are very few survivors who were natives of Mielec, there is a wealth of firsthand testimonies regarding the community and the concentration camp that was subsequently created there. These accounts about the pre-Holocaust community and the March 9, 1942 deportation are mostly from a few fortunate Jews who were able to escape into hiding. There are also testimonies by non-Jewish residents and Nazi documents that provide a time line and elaborate plans for the deportation.

This research project also uses as new primary source material Moshe Borger's rare photographs, letters, and documents that preserve the history of his community. These materials (typically unavailable for a destroyed community) tell the story of Mielec and its Jewish inhabitants. They also provide evidence that the Mielec church organist helped the deported Jews. (Mr. Borger owns the original materials, and some have been scanned by Yad Vashem's archives. Rochelle Saidel has Mr. Borger's permission to use them, as well as other materials in his Jerusalem home.)

Mr. Borger, then a teenager, was hidden near Mielec with the help of a school friend's family. His sisters, Sala and Feige, were deported to the Lublin district and murdered. (Testimony in the Mielec Yizkor Book describes how a friend tried to help them escape.) Mr. Borger has extraordinary correspondence between the deportees and the church organist, given to him after the war. His photographs include a variety of cultural, school, and youth group activities and people from Mielec before World War II, during the inter-war period. He also has photographs of post-war Mielec and correspondence with his Landsmannschaft and the organist. This is an unusual and rich collection. This previously unknown story of the organist helping deported members of the Jewish community, combined with other extant testimony and documentation from Nazi documents and Polish documents from post-war investigations will help to give Mielec its place in history.

The testimonies in the Yad Vashem archive and other archives are in Polish, Hebrew, German, and English. Those not in English have been translated by competent translators. Nazi documents have also been translated, in an effort to understand why Mielec was chosen for this experiment, and why it was not repeated. A preliminary field investigation in Poland was made in May 2005. More intensive field research continued in May 2007 in Mielec. In addition, several survivors of either the town or the concentration camp have published their memoirs and some have shared unpublished information. There is yet more background in a Yizkor book and in Pinkas Hakehillot (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities), as well as archives in Germany, Poland, Israel, and the United States.

Today the site of the former Nazi concentration camp and Heinkel aircraft factory is a Euro-Park, still producing aircraft.

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New Portuguese Edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp by University of São Paulo Press

New Portuguese Edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Published by University of São Paulo Press
The new Brazilian edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel was published by University of SãoPaulo Press in July 2009. The official launch of the book takes place in SãoPaulo, Brazil on November 9, 2009 at 7:00 p.m., in commemoration of Kristallnacht. The event is sponsored by Livraria Cultura, Congregação Israelita Paulista and University of São Paulo Press, and takes place at Livraria Cultura, Villa-Lobos Shopping Center. The event includes a commemoration of Kristallnacht, a presentation by Dr. Saidel, and a book signing.

There are a number of connections between this concentration camp and Brazil: Olga Benario Prestes was deported from Brazil to Nazi Germany in 1936, and later sent to Ravensbrück and murdered. In addition, several survivors whose stories are told in the book settled in Brazil after World War II, and a child survivor has links to Brazil through her father. Besides these specific references to Brazil, the book is of interest to readers of Portuguese throughout the world who want to learn about Ravensbrück, the Holocaust, and women's history. This is the first book in Portuguese about Ravensbrück and about women during the Holocaust.

The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (Hebrew Edition)

October 31, 2007 marked the official date for the publication of the Hebrew edition of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp by Rochelle G. Saidel. The book, elegantly translated into Hebrew by Avri Fischer, is the first in Hebrew on this subject. The Ravensbrück book is published by Beyahad Publishers, the publishing division of Lohamei Hagetaot, The Ghetto Fighters' House and Museum, Israel, and distributed by Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial and museum of Israel, in Jerusalem. Professor Dalia Ofer, Max and Rita Haber Professor of Holocaust and Eastern Europe Studies, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote the foreword for the new Hebrew edition.

The book launch, co-sponsored by Remember the Women Institute, was a feature of the conference, Women and the Holocaust: Childhood and Youth under the Third Reich – A Gender Perspective, held October 29 -31, 2007 in Israel. The October 31 morning session inaugurating the book took place at the Ghetto Fighters' House and Museum, north of Haifa.

The publication of the book was made possible by generous grants to Lohamei Hagetaot by Lili Haber, Naomi Asai, the Crakowian Association in Israel and Moshe Borger; and to Remember the Women Institute by the Five Millers Family Foundation, the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, and the S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Family Foundation. For more information about the English edition of the book, please see below. For more information about the conference, please see Events.

The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp (English Edition)
by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel

Imprint: Terrace Books, University of Wisconsin Press,
Paperback edition, 2006, ISBN 0-299-19864-2, with new preface, $21.95.
Hardcover, 2004, ISBN 0-299-19860-X, $29.95, 336 pp. with 63 images. ORDER FORM (requires Adobe Reader).

See information about book launch of paperback edition and reader comments.

The hardback and/or paperback edition is now available throughout Israel via Yad Vashem by phoning (02) 644-3511. Also available in Jerusalem at M. Pomeranz Bookseller, Shmuel HaNagid Street 4. Telephone (02) 623-5559. E-mail: pomeranz@netmedia.net.il

And at Tamir Books, Rehov Emek Refaim, Jerusalem, as well as at selected Steimatzky bookstores.
Available in Brazil through the Livraria Cultura web site and retail store in Conjunto Nacional Av. Paulista, 2073, São Paulo, and in other cities in Brazil. São Paulo telephone (11) 3170-4033, fax (11) 3285-4457, and e-mail: livros@livrariacultura.com.br

This is the first book in English to recount the experiences of Jewish prisoners in Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, and to incorporate the camp into Holocaust memorialization. Based on the author’s interest in the camp and its victims, as well as her personal relationships with some of the survivors, the book was envisioned when she first visited the camp memorial (then in East Germany) in 1980. It includes narratives from interviews with some sixty survivors in the United States, Israel, Canada, Europe, and Brazil, as well as unpublished testimonies and documents. Some survivors shared a poem, diary excerpt, or unpublished memoir, which are incorporated into the book. There are also sixty-three graphic images, and an extensive bibliography.

This crossover book is of interest to scholars as well as general readers of memoirs, women’s lives and history, and twentieth century and Holocaust-related history. Although it is written in a style that is engaging to general readers, it is thoroughly researched, documented, and footnoted. The book fills a gap, because the camp and the experiences of its female Jewish victims are virtually unknown to most English language readers. Even anthologies that study women during the Holocaust have either omitted the camp or included only superficial information.

Because Ravensbrück was created as a camp for female political prisoners, many of them Communists, and was located in East Germany, the Cold War interfered with information about and interest in it after World War II. Furthermore, because many prisoners were political rather than Jewish, the camp has until now been downplayed in most of the literature, historical accounts, museums, and memorials that recount Jewish Holocaust experiences. However, thousands of Jewish women were murdered by slave labor, torture, starvation, shooting, lethal injection, “medical” experiments, and gassing in this camp, which was located about 50 miles north of Berlin. Among the some 132,000 women who were in the camp, about twenty percent were Jewish. This innovative book aims at bringing to life the stories of the Jewish prisoners in the context of the camp, so that readers can better understand the despair in Ravensbrück and the ways that some of its victims managed to survive and rebuild their lives.

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Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story, The New Expanded Edition Book Published by Syracuse University Press in March 2007, with Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel as Editor. Now in its second printing!

Paperback $16.95 ISBN 978-0-8156-0861-5

Order though Syracuse University Press
See Press release
See reviewer comments about this new book.
See the New York Times comments

Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story, a new expanded edition of My Story, a memoir by Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, was published by Syracuse University Press in Spring 2007. Gemma was the sister of former New York City (1933-1944) Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and she was held as a political hostage in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel has edited Gluck's memoir, adding a prologue and epilogue. She also included an appendix with letters written between Gemma and Fiorello between 1945 and 1947, as well as visuals that trace Gemma's life story. The Remember the Women Institute and the Fiorello H. LaGuardia Foundation provided partial support for the publication.

Gemma La Guardia Gluck's original memoir, My Story, edited by S. L. Shneiderman and published in 1961, has long been out of print. While the focus is on Gemma's experience in Ravensbrück, it is much more than a Holocaust memoir. It begins with the great wave of immigration to the United States from Europe in the 1880s, and follows the family to army posts in Dakota Territory and Arizona. It also traces the family history of the La Guardias, including the background of Gemma and Fiorello’s Jewish mother, Irene Coen La Guardia.

Gemma and her family returned to Italy in the early twentieth century, when she was in her twenties. Fiorello went back to New York to learn a law degree and launch a political career, but Gemma remained in Europe and married a Hungarian Jewish man. Living in Budapest in 1944, she was arrested by the Nazis. In addition to her incarceration in Ravensbrück, Gemma details the often untold story of the extreme hardships of living as a displaced person in post-World War II Berlin. She also describes how her daughter and infant grandson were reunited with her as she was sent out of the concentration camp, and how the three of them struggled for two years to immigrate to the United States.

Gemma's memoir is a story of a wise and strong woman who remained optimistic and resourceful, even when life was much less than fair. For related lectures, see 2007 EVENTS. Read a summary of a lecture related to this book.


The old, 1961 edition of My Story, edited by S. L. Shneiderman (out of print).

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ANTISEMITISM AND SEXISM: JEWISH WOMEN WHO IMMIGRATED TO BRAZIL

This ongoing project is analyzing the experiences of the Jewish immigrant women who came to São Paulo because of persecution in Europe during the German Third Reich. Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, some 25 women’s stories are included in the study.

The project’s purpose is to develop an understanding that Jewish women had to face certain issues not only because of their religion. The theoretical assumption is that within the universal suffering of all of the victims of the Holocaust and the general problems faced by all new immigrants, men’s and women's experiences were different. The study analyzes the specific issues of gender that made the female experience different from that of the male, examining both positive and negative gender-related aspects. Results of the study are projected to be published in both English and Portuguese, and will be made available to educational and cultural institutions. Interviews were done in conjunction with the Center for the Study of Women and Gender (NEMGE in Portuguese), University of São Paulo.

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