PAST PROJECTS

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Past Projects

Exhibition: Women of Ravensbrück: Portraits of Courage
Ongoing Research Project: Antisemitism and Sexism: Jewish Women Who Immigrated to Brazil

WOMEN OF RAVENSBRÜCK: PORTRAITS OF COURAGE
Pittsburgh Holocaust Center, Pittsburgh, PA. (October—December, 2002)
Florida Holocaust Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. (February—September, 2001)

An art and history exhibit from the Florida Holocaust Museum, Saint Petersburg, opened in October 2002 in the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh. Sponsored by the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation and the American Jewish Museum of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, the exhibit ran for two months. The exhibit, which originally opened at the Florida Holocaust Museum on February 10, 2001 and ran through September 9, 2001, was curated and produced by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, through the Remember the Women Institute. Entitled Women of Ravensbrück: Portraits of Courage, the exhibit is centered around seven large panels with mixed media and photo transfer images of Ravensbrück women, created by Florida artist Julia Terwilliger (detail pictured left and below). The artist also created a 10-foot memorial triangle and an “artifacts” installation. The original exhibit includes rare artifacts by inmates of the camp, such as a handmade recipe book.

To complete the exhibit, Dr. Saidel (pictured left) created seventeen panels on the history and background of this women’s concentration camp. In addition, she organized fourteen panels of photographs and texts about individual victims, to demonstrate the broad spectrum of women from 23 nations imprisoned in the camp.
This unique exhibit on Ravensbrück is designed to foster an understanding of why and how women experienced the Holocaust differently from men.

Julia Terwilliger was an artist who taught at the University of Central Florida. After her untimely death at the age of 50 in 1998, her husband, Bert Alan Terwilliger donated her artwork to the Florida Holocaust Museum.

Dr. Saidel was the keynote speaker for the opening event of the Pittsburgh exhibit on October 14, 2002 (pictured right).

The accompanying catalogue can be viewed online (courtesy Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota) or ordered directly from the
Florida Holocaust Museum
55 South Fifth Street
St. Petersburg, Florida 33701.

This exhibition is available for travel.

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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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