Defying Expectations: Women Resistance Fighters during the Holocaust

2021 Monna and Otto Weinmann Annual Lecture

Renia Kukielka sewed fake IDs into her skirts to save Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. Vladka Meed, passing as a Christian, smuggled correspondence and weapons to support the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And Frumka Plotnicka, a leader in the underground, once hid guns in a potato sack and was killed while battling the Nazis in Będzin.

Women in the Jewish resistance wrote memoirs and gave testimonies after World War II, and scholars have written about these women in recent decades. Why do their stories of courage and cunning still surprise us? Join the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) to learn more about their motivations and contributions and the role of gender in Jewish resistance.

Opening remarks
Dr. Janice Weinman Shorenstein, former CEO and Executive Director, Hadassah

Speaker
Dr. Judy Batalion, Author, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors

Moderator
Dr. Sara R. Horowitz, Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

This program is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Register here.

For more information, please contact Katharine White at 202.314.0395 or via e-mail.

The Monna and Otto Weinmann Annual Lecture honors Holocaust survivors and their fates, experiences, and accomplishments. Monna Steinbach Weinmann (1906–1991), born in Poland and raised in Austria, fled to England in autumn 1938. Otto Weinmann (1903–1993), born in Vienna and raised in Czechoslovakia, served in the Czechoslovak, French, and British armies; was wounded at Normandy; and received the Croix de Guerre for his valiant contributions during the war. Monna Steinbach and Otto Weinmann married in London in 1941 and immigrated to the United States in 1948.

This annual lecture has been made possible by Janice Weinman Shorenstein.