Holocaust and Gender Research at HBI
Throughout its history, HBI has remained steadily committed to research about gender and the Holocaust, with the premise that women experienced the Holocaust differently from men, and that women responded differently, using the limited forms of agency available to them. HBI supports important elements of this work through scholarship, film, books, and art about this era. Closely linked to women’s experiences is the emergence of discourse on children's experiences during the Holocaust. Starting in 2008, HBI hosted the research project, “Families, Children and the Holocaust,” directed by Dr. Joanna Michlic, which filled a gap in historical knowledge about Jewish families and children in Europe, and led to the publication of Jewish Families in Europe: History, Representation, and Memory (2017) edited by Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic.
In addition to Michlic’s Jewish Families in Europe and projects previously mentioned in this anniversary countdown, HBI, through the Brandeis University Press HBI Series on Jewish Women, has published important contributions to the field. These include Dr. Sonja M. Hedegepeth and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel’s, Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During The Holocaust (2013), which broke the silence about widespread sexual abuse of women, Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma by Dr. Federica K. Clementi, and The Weavers of Trautenau: Jewish Female Forced Labor in the Holocaust (2023) by Dr. Janine P. Holc.
HBI also granted Judy Batalion with several research and translation awards in support of her groundbreaking The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos - optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture and excerpted in the New York Times, Opinion section, The Nazi-Fighting Women of the Jewish Resistance - and in 2023, HBI hosted the art exhibition, Lives Eliminated: Dreams Illuminated (LEDI) by painter Lauren Bergman and composer Ella Milch-Sheriff. This multimedia exhibition drew attention to the experience of girls and women during the Holocaust and encouraged viewers to reflect on lessons to be learned from it. In our continuing commitment to research about the Holocaust and gender, in the fall of 2024, HBI will host Dr. Rachel Perry, whose project examines graphic albums and artwork created by Jewish women survivors of the Holocaust.
Image:
Top Row (l-r): The Weavers of Trautenau: Jewish Female Forced Labor in the Holocaust, Janine Holc (2023); Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust (2010), editors Sonja M. Hedegepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel; Tema Schneiderman, by Lauren Bergman, Oil on cradled panel, 36 by 36 in.
Bottom row (l-r): Jewish Families in Europe: History, Representation, and Memory (2017) edited by Joanna Beata Michlic; Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma (2013) by Federica K. Clementi; The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (2021) by Judy Batalion.