Have you ever been told the specific details pertaining to the Holocaust? Have you heard the gruesome stories explained by the Jewish people? Have you seen the horrid movies and re-enactments of what the Jewish people went through during the Holocaust? The Jewish were beaten! Killed! Gassed! Incinerated! The Jewish citizens endured more pain than any one person could imagine. They suffered more than any other religious group during those years of the Holocaust. Miraculously, there were Jewish victims who made it through all of this to vividly describe the horrific stories of what they encountered; however, Ethel Stern was not able to tell her story because her fate was unknown by the war’s conclusion.
Ethel Stern was born in Warsaw, but her family moved to Mogielnica when she was nine. Mogielnica was forty miles southwest of Warsaw (U.S.H.M.M., “Ethel Stern”). Her father spent all of his time studying religious books. Her mother managed the family liquor store and Stern attended the public school during the day while she was tutored in religious studies in the evening. She always had hopes to be a teacher. After attending religious school in Lodz, she began to teach in Kalisz, where her brother lived, at age fourteen. Kalisz contained 15,300 Jews and was known for religious and cultural life (USHMM,
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Not only did she have a baby in the ghetto, but also spent the rest of her recorded days laboring over a sewing machine. Even after all of the effort she put forth to keep herself alive her fate is still unknown. Ethel Stern may not have been able to tell her story, but she deserves to be remembered for her efforts throughout this horrific event. Stern should be considered as a model to all women showing that they too can endure the same kind of appalling labor as men. She proved that women should be equal. Stern is an incredible woman figure to take after and should be remembered as “one of the