This exhibit explores the unique voice of Jewish women during the Holocaust. It focuses on examining the position of women during the Holocaust and the ways in which they coped with and responded to unforeseen situations. The Nazi ideology viewed women as agents of fertility. This ideology identified the Jewish woman as an element that must be exterminated to thwart the rise of future generations of Jews. For these reasons, the Nazis treated women as prime targets for annihilation. Jewish women inhabited a society that was conservative and patriarchal, with males as heads of household and women discharging traditional roles at home or helping to make a living. Accordingly, women did not participate in the leadership that was tasked with shepherding the Jewish public during the Holocaust. Instead, Jewish women assumed the main family role – the “affirmation of life”: the attempt to survive in any situation.  Women in the Holocaust applied their minds to a place that deprived them of their minds; brought strength to a place where they had no strength. And in a place where they and their families had no right to live, they marched all the way to death and invested every additional moment of life with meaning. It is these women’s voices that we wish to sound and whose stories to tell.

Our Education Department offers traveling exhibits that are recommended for commemoration programs, professional development workshops and classroom instruction. Each exhibit includes a presentation of an introduction to the specific theme of the exhibit, a narrative and explanation, and recommendations how to incorporate this resource into the classroom. Each exhibit is first showcased at the United Nations for annual Holocaust commemoration programs, remained in the US and is on loan through the American Society for Yad Vashem.

For more information contact Marlene W. Yahalom, PhD, Director of Education; education@yadvashemusa.org

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