World War II

Zelda Nisanilevich Treger

Zelda Treger was born in Vilna, Lithuania, which was occupied by the Germans beginning in June 1941. Treger soon joined the United Partisan Organization (FPO) and was tasked with smuggling groups of residents and supplies out of the ghetto and labor camp. Escaping capture several times, she aided in the liberation of Vilna and ultimately settled in Tel Aviv, where she remained until her death.

Nechama Tec

Nechama Tec's sociological work, informed by her experience as a Holocaust survivor, addresses the silences and inaccuracies surrounding the Holocaust and reveals untold stories of righteousness and rescue. Her experiences inspired the movie Defiance.

Olga Taussky-Todd

A self-proclaimed “torchbearer for matrix theory,” Olga Taussky-Todd made the previously little-known field essential for scientists and mathematicians.

Sara Szweber

Sara Szweber was an influential leader in the Jewish labor party, the Bund, first in Belarus, then in Poland, and later in New York.

Hannah Szenes (Senesh)

Hannah Szenes has attained legendary status in the pantheon of Zionist history. After immigrating to Israel, Szenes agreed to participate in a military operation as a paratrooper. Hungarian authorities captured her and tortured her, but Szenes refused to talk. She was killed by a firing squad in 1944. Szenes mother published her daughter’s diary, poetry, and plays posthumously.

Tema Sznajderman

Tema Sznajderman was a fearless operative in the Jewish resistance to Nazism. She assumed undercover identities to investigate and transfer vital information across borderlines.

Bela Szapiro

Before World War II, Lublin was one of the largest Jewish communities in Poland. Bela Szapiro’s activities contributed to making it the vibrant cultural and political center of Polish Jewry that it was.

Eva Szekely

Born in Budapest, Eva Szekely was forced to stop swimming during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. However, she returned to the sport after the war and went on to win thirty-two national individual swimming titles and eleven national team titles. At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, she set a new Olympic record in the 200-meter breaststroke.

Margarete Susman

Margarete Susman published her first writings, a book of poetry, in 1901 and went on to have a prolific writing career that included plays, books, and journal articles. Susman combined literature and theory, often reflecting seminal texts of modern theory and addressing political issues and women’s rights. Her writings concentrate on the most problematic issues of the modern world: God and human beings, man and woman, Jew and Christian.

Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein

Dr. Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein founded SHEK (Schweizer Hilfswerk fur Emigrantenkinder), a non-denominational Swiss women’s organization for helping refugee children, in 1933. An effective and dynamic leader, Sutro-Katzenstein directed SHEK headquarters and recruited volunteers, gaining the support of the Swiss public. Between 1933 and 1948, SHEK cared for over 10,000 refugee children, 90% of whom were Jewish.

Suburbanization in the United States

Jews migrated in large numbers to newly constructed suburbs after World War II and the end of restrictive covenants that had excluded them. During the day, suburbs were largely female spaces where married Jewish women cared for their children and private homes, while volunteering for Jewish and civic activities. Jewish daughters raised in suburbs enjoyed middle-class comforts but also experienced pressures to conform to American gentile ideals of beauty.

Eva Michaelis Stern

Eva Michaelis Stern was co-founder and director of the fundraising arm of the Youth Aliyah in Germany, and later the director of the Youth Aliyah office in London. Over the course of WWII, she helped more than 1000 children from countries all over Europe immigrate to Palestine.

Grete Stern

Grete Stern was one of the founders of Argentina’s modern photography. After studying photography in bohemian Berlin and at the legendary Bauhaus School, Stern developed an unconventional approach to photography, including advertisement collages and studies with crystals, objects, and still-lifes. Between 1935 and 1981 Stern was an influential artistic presence in Argentina, known for her photographic work, graphic design, and teaching.

Lina Stern and Members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

Lina Solomonovna Stern (Shtern)

Lina Shtern, biochemist and physician, was the first woman professor at the University of Geneva and the first woman named to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Born in Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, she returned to the Soviet Union out of political idealism. A member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, she was a victim of postwar repressions that targeted both scientists and Jews.

Sports in Germany: 1898-1938

Women’s participation in Jewish gymnastics clubs increased significantly during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Jewish sports movement grew during the 1920s, allowing women to participate in cross-country running, swimming, and tennis. After German sports clubs annulled Jewish membership in 1933, women poured into these Jewish sports groups.

Mollie Steimer

Mollie Steimer earned nationwide attention for her refusal to compromise her anarchist beliefs during the widely publicized 1918 trial in which she was sentenced to prison under the Sedition Act. Later deported to Russia and then to Germany, Steimer continued her anarchist activities throughout her life.

Hannah Stein

Hannah Stein’s life was devoted to advocating for the rights of disadvantaged women and their children. She served for 14 years as the executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women and worked in cooperation with other advocacy groups such as the National Council of Negro Women and the United Church Women to establish the Women in Community Service (WICS) coalition.

Dora Spiegel

Dora Spiegel served in many fields, including education, the organization of league sisterhoods, and publications stimulating women’s loyalty to the synagogue and the Jewish home. She helped found the Women’s Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, influencing the lives of countless Jewish women and children.

Eva Sopher

Eva Sopher was a Brazilian-Jewish theater manager and cultural entrepreneur in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, where she worked for 41 years. Sopher is recognized for her leadership in the renovation of the world-renowned São Pedro Theatre and her contributions to Brazilian theater, art, and culture.

A handwritten Yiddish diary from the Oneg Shabbat archive

Cecila Slepak

Cecilia Slepak, a journalist and translator, was a member of the Oneg Shabbat group, which was vital in collecting records and interviews about life in the Warsaw Ghetto. She focused in particular on the lives of women in the ghetto as they struggled to survive.

Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret's five-decade career of more than sixty films, her Leftist politics, and her unassailable talent in creating not only memorable but iconic female heroes at every stage of her career, give her an important place in twentieth-century cultural history.

Simone Simon

Simone Simon was a prolific international film star, known for her iconic appearance and voice. Simon spent her childhood in Marseilles and Madagascar and attended schools in Berlin, Budapest, and Turin before making her film debut in 1931. She became popular in France and Hollywood for her mysterious, vulnerable, and seductive acting style, and made over thirty-eight feature films in her career.

Lillie Shultz

Lillie Shultz poured her boundless energy into all aspects of her life. She was a journalist, a Zionist, a champion of the oppressed, a skilled administrator, and a businesswoman.

British Delegation to World WIZO Founding Conference, Carlsbad, 1921

Rebecca Sieff

Rebecca Sieff, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Manchester, England, played an active role in two central social-historical movements: the struggle for women’s rights and the Zionist movement that eventually led to the establishment of the State of Israel.

Rose Shoshana

Rose Shoshana began her acting career in the Yiddish theater world, playing Manke in Got fun Nekome in 1908. She went on to perform across Europe, America, and Asia. When she arrived in New York in 1946, she began a career as a novelist, writer, translator, and journalist at the Forverts.