The Ghetto Fighters’ House:Talking Memory Book Launch Event Heroines of the Holocaust: Reframing Resistance and Courage in Genocide

The Ghetto Fighters’ House Invites You to a Special

Talking Memory Book Launch Event

Heroines of the Holocaust: Reframing Resistance and Courage in Genocide

With Co-Editors

Prof. Lori Weintrob

Prof. Judy Baumel-Schwartz

Guest Authors:

Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern

Dr. Steven Meed

The Ghetto Fighters’ House is honored to host an online book launch of Heroines of the Holocaust: Reframing Resistance and Courage in Genocide. The co-editors, Prof. Lori Weintrob and Prof. Judy Baumel-Schwartz, will give a brief introduction about the book that brings together international scholars to examine and share new approaches in the history of women’s rescue and resistance during the Holocaust and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. As well, two contributing authors, who are second and third generation of Holocaust survivors, will discuss their chapters. 

Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern will examine the often-overlooked stories of Jewish women partisans during the Holocaust, focusing on the personal narrative of Chaya Shapira Lazar. Through her grandmother’s journey from the Vilna Ghetto to the partisan forests, Daniela illuminates the unique challenges faced by female resistance fighters who navigated between traditional gender roles and revolutionary combat duties. 

Dr. Steven Meed, the son of Vladka Meed (nee Feyge Peltel), will talk about his mother who was an 18-year-old member of the Bund organization SKIF in Warsaw from the time of the German invasion in 1939.  Within the Ghetto, others in the Bund leadership noted her qualities of fearlessness and resourcefulness, as well as her perfect command of spoken Polish and her extraordinary memory, she was gradually tapped for more and more challenging missions, particularly on the Aryan side.  After Liberation, she continued as a speaker and writer, initially in Yiddish, about her experiences and as an eyewitness for those who perished and those who survived, and the respect for both that the world owed them.   

This program is in partnership with the Wagner College Holocaust Center, the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar Ilan University, Remember the Women Institute, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Center, Classrooms Without Borders, and the Rabin Chair Forum.