Women In The Holocaust: Plot Summary

to minimize future suffering in a situation they have little to no control over. Lawrence Langer describes the decisions mothers were faced with is “what I call choiceless choices, because whatever you choose, somebody loses—shorn of dignity and any of the spiritual renown we normally associate with moral effort” 2. Thus, choices out of desperation needed to be made, such as entrusting others with the location of buried valuables. Regina Kandt wrote to her husband to inform him that, “I’ve hidden some things, so if our kind Lord will give us the good fortune of seeing one another again, not everything will be lost. ... Everything is being arranged according to the possibilities … Katiusha knows where everything is. C” . Regina is choosing to trust the hiding place of her most precious

There was a substantial discrepancy between the anticipated death rate within the ghettos and the actual death rate. Joanna Michlic believes that the reason many Jews were able to stay alive was a result of the effectiveness of mothers to form strong family support networks and strategize. According to Yehudit Inbar, “Women in the Holocaust applied their minds to a place that deprived them of their minds; and brought strength to a place where they were denied their strength. In a place where the very right to live was wrested from women and their families, faced their deaths with fortitude and invested every additional moment of life with meaning.1” The selfless actions of mothers had an resounding impact on improving life within the ghettos and on protecting the future of the Jewish population. Despite the atrocities which persist in the modern day, much progress has been made since the Holocaust and efforts to prevent all genocides continue on an international