If This Is A Woman was a 2019 conference in Bratislava, and is now a book.

A book published December 2021 is based on an international conference, XX Century Conference – If This Is A Woman, which took place in Bratislava, Slovakia, from January 20-23, 2019. A feature of the conference was the screening of Return to a Burning House, a documentary about Israeli-Slovakian Holocaust hero Haviva Reick. After the film was screened on January 21, there was a discussion by Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, Remember the Women Institute, and filmmaker Anna Grusková of Bratislava, moderated by Katja Grosse-Sommer.

Return to a Burning House, a Slovakian feature documentary (with English subtitles) portrays the life of heroine Haviva Reick (1914-1944), an activist during the Slovak National Uprising, a member of British Intelligence and the Palmach, and a passionate Zionist leader. Haviva left her beloved native Slovakia to found a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz in British Mandate pre-Israel Palestine. After joining the Palmach strike force of pre-Israel’s army, she was recruited by the British military in 1944 and sent back to Slovakia to rescue Allied airmen and help the remnant of the Jewish community. She was ultimately captured, tortured, and murdered. Using interviews with people in Slovakia, Israel, and Great Britain, some of whom knew Haviva, as well as archival material, the film tells the story of a compelling and inspiring woman. .

For an excellent detailed and comprehensive understanding of Haviva’s story, read the English biography by Tehila and Zeev Ofer.

Prof. Dalia Ofer of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a member of the Remember the Women Institute Advisory Board, presented the conference keynote address, “Will you hear my voice? Women in the Holocaust: Memory and Analysis.”

The conference was organized by: Faculty of Arts, Palack University, Olomouc, Czech Republic; Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia; Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland; and University of Szeged, Department of Contemporary History, Szeged, Hungary, and was sponsored by the Visegrad Fund. Conference program (3.2MB).

The book based on the conference, entitled If This Is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust, is edited by Denisa Nešťáková, Katja Grosse-Sommer, Borbála Klacsmann, and Jakub Drábik. ISBN: 9781644697108 (hardcover), $119.00/ For details about the book, please see https://www.academicstudiespress.com/out-of-series/if-this-is-a-woman.

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