Online Class: Women in the Holocaust

In this three-session online class led by Dr. Sarah Cushman, learn about women's experiences during the Nazi era as perpetrators, victims and bystanders. This class meets on Zoom for three consecutive Wednesdays, August 6, 13 and 20 at 4:00pm PDT. Each session is approximately 60 minutes.

August 6: Women in the Weimar Republic and the Early Nazi Years

The first session will explore the context in which the Nazis rose to power and women’s participation in and responses to that context. The Nazi era is often viewed as a break from the past. We will explore continuities and ruptures, including how some German women embraces Nazism while others were targeted by it.

August 13: Women in the Holocaust

The second session will provide an overview of the impact of Nazi policies on various groups of women in Nazi-occupied and -allied Europe, including women/girls with disabilities, Romani Women, Lesbians, and Jewish women. Regarding Jewish women, we will look at Jewish women’s lives in ghettos, in hiding, and in resistance groups.

August 20: Women in Auschwitz

The third and final session will focus in on women’s existence in this most notorious of Nazi camps. Three groups of women lived and worked in Auschwitz. Women prisoners, including Jews, Romani women, political prisoners, and others, suffered and tried to survived in deadly conditions of starvation and forced labor. Some few found advantages in “privileged” work or as prisoner functionaries. Other women served the SS as guards, communications experts, and nurses, or accompanied their husbands as helpmeets in the racial domination of Europe.

Dr. Sarah Cushman, PhD is Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University and Senior Lecturer in the History Department. Cushman earned her PhD from Clark University in 2010. Her first book, Women in Auschwitz, is under contract with the University of Indiana Press. Cushman is co-editor of the forthcoming The Routledge Handbook to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and co-editor in chief of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History. Cushman served as Head of Educational Programming at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University from 2013-2016 and from 2007-2013, she was Director of Youth Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County (New York). Cushman serves on the Executive Committee of the National Higher Education Leadership Consortium of Directors of Centers in Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies and is a member of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission.

The photograph above is courtesy of Dr. Howard Resin, Holocaust Museum LA Collection. The photograph, taken by Canadian soldier Michael Resin, depicts three Jewish women behind a barbed wire fence during the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in April 1945.

Reserve your space in the class HERE. Tuition for this class is $36 for Museum members and $54 for non-members.

Not yet a member? Join HERE.