Because of the situation in Israel, this event has been postponed and will be rescheduled for this Fall. Updated information will be posted when we have a new date.
Our thoughts and prayers for safety and peace are with our friends in Israel during this trying time.
We are pleased to partner with the Ghetto Fighters’ House for their Special Talking Memory Book Launch Event. You are invited to join us for a Zoom presentation about an important new book:
Heroines of the Holocaust: Reframing Resistance and Courage in Genocide
Sunday, June 22, 2025,
2 PM EST/8 PM CET and SAST/9 PM Israel
The program features two contributing chapter authors, Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern and Dr. Steven Meed, with comments by the book’s co-editors, Prof. Lori Weintrob and Prof. Judy Baumel-Schwartz.
Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern will examine the often overlooked stories of Jewish women partisans during the Holocaust, focusing on the personal narrative of Chaya Shapira Lazar. Through her grandmother’s journey from the Vilna Ghetto to the partisan forests, Daniela illuminates the unique challenges faced by female resistance fighters who navigated between traditional gender roles and revolutionary combat duties.
Dr. Steven Meed, the son of Ben and Vladka Meed (nee Feyge Peltel), will talk about his mother, who was a young member of the Bund organization SKIF in Warsaw. With her qualities of fearlessness and resourcefulness, as well as her perfect command of spoken Polish and her extraordinary memory, she was gradually tapped for increasingly challenging missions, particularly on the Aryan side. After liberation, she continued to speak about her experiences.
This program is in partnership with the Wagner College Holocaust Center, the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar Ilan University, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Center, Classrooms Without Borders, and the Rabin Chair Forum, as well as Remember the Women Institute. Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, Founding Executive Director of Remember the Women Institute, is also one of the book’s contributing chapter authors.
This new book brings together international scholars to examine and share new approaches in the history of women’s rescue and resistance during the Holocaust and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides.