In this exhibition we attempt to reveal the human story behind the historical narrative. Within this story, we chose to create space for the unique voice of the Jewish women among the victims of the Holocaust.
A Build-It-Yourself Exhibition designed to promote dialogue about the Holocaust, offered to the general public in an accessible print and display format recommended for community centers, work places and public spaces.
The future historian will have to dedicate a page to the Jewish woman in the war. She will fill an important page in Jewish history for her courage and resilience. Thanks to her, thousands of families managed to survive the horror of those days...
Emanuel Ringelblum, June 1942
Spotlight
Central Trends in Gender-Oriented Historiography of the Holocaust
What constitutes the study of women and the Holocaust? Can such a study be seen as a separate entity when researching the Holocaust? What makes it important? What can we gain from studying it? Following early research that began in the mid-1980s, such questions were often raised – mostly by male researchers – and are still heard today.
Online Exhibitions
Stories of women who rescued Jews during the Holocaust
Artworks created by Jewish women during the Holocaust
1,300 Women. 500 Miles. 106 Days
Educational Materials
This lesson aims to present the unique difficulties that mothers in the ghetto experienced and the ways in which they dealt with them, as well as further discussion on the question of what strengths mothers needed in order to contend with hardships in the ghetto.
This ceremony explores the female experience at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp as expressed by women who were inmates there in 1944.
Featured Figures
(1923-2011)
Human rights activist in the former Soviet Union and wife of the physicist Andrei Sakharov
(1897-1944)
Leader of the Women's International Zionist Organization and the Working Group
During the Holocaust, Küchler-Silberman lost her own daughter, but managed to save many other children from death.
Art and the Holocaust
On the Holocaust – a Yad Vashem Podcast
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was one of the most horrific places ever conceived of by man – a place of constant torture. The experience was uniquely terrible for women, who were forced into some of the most unimaginable of circumstances.
On 7 July 1944, hours before the liquidation of the Będzin ghetto and the murder of all the Jews imprisoned in it, Sarah and Yehiel Gerlitz wrote a farewell letter to their six-year-old daughter, Dita.
For years, the story of Regina Jonas was lost to the world. Then, in the '90s, scholars began to discover this woman of extraordinary talent and ambition. Her life was taken in Auschwitz, but her place in Jewish history is no longer forgotten.
"I would like also to say to people not to take for granted – not freedom, not justice. You have to stand up for it... Not to be passive when things are going on around you. Not to be indifferent. To be a participant in life, and to defend the rights of humanity."
Digital Collections
From the Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Online Store
Isabelle Choko; Frances Irwin; Lotti Kahana-Aufleger; Margit Raab Kalina; Jane Lipski
In these memoirs, each woman tells the story of her own survival and the fate of her family. Together, their individual stories form a profound source of inspiration.
Chajka Klinger | Editor: Avihu Ronen
Chajka Klingers’ diaries from Będzin, 1943. Her son, Prof. Avihu Ronen, edited the volume and provided an introduction and annotations that shed light on the circumstances under which she wrote.
Mirjam Bolle
The book presents a series of letters – unique in their historical interest and extremely moving in their human dimension – forming a personal diary in real time.
Ruth Leimenzon Engles | Edited by Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky
"At last, I have gotten a notebook in which to write. I have a pencil. I will try. Maybe it will make it easier to push through the days. It’s hard for me. As soon as dawn breaks, my first thought is: how does one endure until the end of the day."
Safira Rapoport
Rutka Laskier | Editor: Daniella Zaidman-Mauer
Bella Gutterman
Sabina Rachel Kałowska
Narcisa Lengel-Krizman
Ages 15+
This guide highlights four works by well-known female authors who survived the Holocaust and explores the ways Jewish women coped with horror and endured pain during the Holocaust.