Women+of+the+Holocaust

**Women of the Holocaust**
Shannon S

__Women in the Ghettos__ __Resistance__
 * ghettos much like forced labor camps
 * used to dehumanize Jews, however women organized "civilized" cultural activities and secret schools
 * women took care of families; sometimes gave family poison to escape ghettos
 * full of disease such as typhus and dysentery
 * women had constant fear of humiliation
 * often hanged young girls in front of forced audiences
 * struggles in ghettos tore families apart; women helped keep them strong
 * surrounded by murder/torture; underground organizations arose
 * pretended to be Aryan w/false documents; carried notes from ghetto to ghetto
 * usually only single women resisted
 * Palestinian Jewish women joined British Army; dropped into enemy territories by parachute
 * used seduction/beauty to their advantage

__Resistors__ [|Ona Simaite]
 * visited ghetto to deliver secret info and supplies
 * Yoheved
 * * Jewish girl who escaped from Bedzin ghetto; hid in "Aryan" part of town
 * * Sent by underground org. to be maid in Gestapo officer home
 * * spied; was caught, sent to Auschwitz, to be executed next day
 * * recognized by Yossel Rosensaft who collected enough valuables to bribe SS
 * *guards into sending her to a women's camp

__Luba Tryszynska__ [|Angel of Belsen]
 * 1944--deported to Belsen
 * saved children who were left to die

__Camps/In Camps__

camp
 * Arrival
 * separated from men
 * valuables taken, given clothes and tattoo number
 * w/ small children--sent to gas chambers together so as not to cause a scene
 * Rolls within camps[[image:forced_labor-women.GIF align="right"]]
 * may work in Kanada sorting goods confiscated from other Jews
 * outside work--mowing hay, cleaning ponds, moving rubble, picking crops
 * wanted to work in kitchen, or private factories where it was safer
 * Barracks
 * tried to make them feel like home
 * many women piled one on top of the other
 * called each other "sister", "mother", "aunt", "grandma"
 * [|Ravensbruck]
 * established in May 1939
 * between 1939 and 1945 over 130,000 women passed through the

__Medical Experiments/Death__ __Liberation__
 * Prof. Carl Clauberg--sterilization experiments
 * injected substance into them causing great pain
 * lived in fear of sterilization and other experiments
 * On last days of death marches--
 * drowned in rivers
 * killed in mass shootings
 * Nazis abandoned them, hoping they would die
 * often so sad about loss of family- couldn't be happy
 * when allied forces found them- like skeletonsin critical condition- taken to hospitals
 * many felt guilty that they had lived

__What Happened Next?__
 * roads of Europe filled with people going home
 * allied forces encouraged them to go back to homes
 * 3/4 of them returned to native countries
 * when returned home--homes filled w/ strangers
 * neighbors were hostile--some even killed returners
 * thought only safe place was Palestine
 * made new communities there

Aubrey Cassel
 * Women of the Holocaust**


 * Every women, man, and child defined as "[|Jew]" was to die or be killed.
 * Jewish women carried the extra burdens of sexual victimization, pregnancy, childbirth, rape, abortion, the killing of newborns, and often seperation from their children.
 * In Poland, it was a crime punishable by execution if you or anyone in your family was suspected of aiding a Jew.
 * A baby carriage was a good place to hide food, currency, and passports for Jews.
 * Many Jews thought that the Nazi's would mainly hurt men and spare women and children. Instead the Nazi's would go for the entire Jewish population.
 * The men did the jobs and women stayed at home. When men went to war, the women had to do the jobs.
 * The Nazi's targeted both men and women for persecution.
 * They had camps specifically for women.
 * Ravensbruek was the largest concentration camp for women.
 * In ghettos and camps, the Nazi's captured women for forced labor.
 * Nazi doctors often used Jewish and Gypsy women for sterilization experiments and other unethical humen experimentation.
 * Some women were leaders or members of ghetto resistance organizations.
 * Women, especially those with small children were often the first to be sent for gassing at extermination camps.

Cassie C.
 * Women of the Holocaust**

__Women in the Third Reich__


 * women played a very important role in Adolf Hitler's plan to create an ideal German community called Volksgemeinschaf
 * Hitler's belief was that a larger, racially purer population would enhance German's military strength
 * he wanted "racially pure" women to bear as many Aryan children as possible
 * a program was created called Lebensborn where every SS member should father four children, in or out of wedlock
 * this program was not promoted aggressively. instead the Nazi population policy concentrated on the family and marriage where there was increased punishments for "racially pure" women who had abortions

__Were women spared?__


 * neither women nor children were spared from Nazi mass murder operations.
 * women of all ages perished alongside men in German-occupied Soviet territories
 * women, especially those with small children, were often the first to be sent to extermination camps for gassing
 * women were not spared from beatings, rape, submitting to abortions, forced labor, sterilization experiments, etc.

__In the long run...__
 * millions of women were persecuted and murdered