Women in the Holocaust

Women prisoners pull dumpcars filled with stones in the camp quarry. Plaszow camp, Poland, 1944.

USHMM, courtesy of Leopold Page Photographic Collection

In March 1987, the U.S. Congress declared the month as National Women’s History Month “in perpetuity” after years of lobbying by women’s organizations.[1] This Women’s History Month we remember the female victims, resistors, and survivors of the Holocaust.

The Nazi regime targeted both Jewish and non-Jewish women for persecutions, forced labor, and often death. In May 1939, the SS opened Ravensbrück as the largest concentration camp for women. In carrying out the “Final Solution,” pregnant women and mothers of small children were often first to the gas chambers as they were deemed “unfit for work” and held no value for the Nazi Regime.[2] Women that were not immediately killed worked in forced labor.

Haika Grosman, one of the organizers of the Bialystok ghetto revolt. Poland, 1945.

Moreshet Mordechai Anilevich Memorial

Women played a vital role in the resistance activities and served in armed units. Women like Sophie Scholl, a student and member of the White Rose resistance movement, was executed in 1943 for passing out anti-Nazi information. Haika Grosman assisted in leading the Bialystok ghetto revolt in 1945, five women in Auschwitz I supplied the gunpowder used to blow up a gas chamber in 1944, and Hannah Szenes was executed in 1944 for parachuting into German-occupied Hungary to assist in aid and rescue missions[3].

For more information visit the USHMM special online exhibit for Women’s History Month.

[1] womenshistory.si.edu

[2] ushmm.org

[3] yadvashem.org