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Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust – 4 week course

Event details
Date Time
07 Mar 2024 7:00 pm
End Time
28 Mar 2024 8:30 pm
Type
Course
Cost
General Admission $120 | Concession/MHM volunteer $80
Format
In-Person
Venue
Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Elsternwick - address provided on registration
Enquire
bookings@mhm.org.au
About this event

Please join us for a four-week course 

Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust will apply gender as a lens for understanding the Holocaust. More than 2 million girls and women were murdered during the Holocaust, and their experiences must be understood for their uniqueness. Over the course of 4-weeks we will consider the ‘female voice’ to shed light on Jewish women’s experiences during the Holocaust by examining ghettos, camps, hiding, and resistance. By considering diaries, documents, and testimonies, we will delve into the lived experience that Jewish women faced on a daily basis during the Holocaust and the lessons we can take into the world today.

The course will be facilitated by Head of Exhibitions and Programming Dr Breann Fallon and Co-President Sue Hampel OAM with each evening dedicated to a particular theme.

  • Speaker

    Why study gender in the Holocaust?

    • Readings
      • Zoe Waxman, Untold Stories: The Representation of Women’s Holocaust Experiences

    Week Overview: Whilst considerable analysis of the “final solution” has been undertaken, the issue of gender has been a relative newcomer to the field of Holocaust Studies. Women’s experiences must be reclaimed in order to enlarge our understanding of one of the darkest periods of history. In week one, we will consider the arguments for and against a specific study of gender and the Holocaust as the foundation for our course.

     

  • Speaker

    Women in the Ghettos and Hiding

    • Readings
      • Michael Unger, The Status and Plight of Women in the Lodz Ghetto
      • Leonre J. Weitzman, Living on the Aryan Side in Poland: Gender, passing and the Nature of Resistance

    Week Overview: The uniqueness of women’s experiences in the ghettos and hiding are often overlooked, but in week two we dive into memoirs and other intimate documents to fully understand this incomplete picture. We will focus particularly on how gendered relationships, interfamily dynamics, and religious practice were challenged in the Holocaust, particularly in the context of ghettos and hiding

  • Speaker

    Women in the Camps

    • Readings
      • Myrna Goldenberg, Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender

    Week Overview: The physical and psychological difficulties that women faced, particularly in the camp system, brought about various ways to cope with the grim reality of their situation. In week three we will examine the experience of women in the camp system whilst also focusing on friendship, hope, the special bond of camp sisters (lager-schwestern) and spiritual resistance.

  • Speaker

    The Heroism of Women Resistors

    • Readings
      • Nechama Tec, Women among the Forest Partisans

    Week Overview: Amongst the horrors of the Holocaust we also see remarkable resistance, including examples of armed as well as the spiritual and psychological.  To wrap up the course, in this final week we will finish by delving into an array of examples displaying the heroism of women resistors across multiple settings including ghettos, camps and partisans.

     

  • Week 1  7 March: Dr Breann Fallon
  • Week 2 14 March: Dr Breann Fallon
  • Week 3 21 March: Sue Hampel OAM
  • Week 4 28 March: Sue Hampel OAM
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