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Facing Hate : Women Of The Holocaust

Decent Essays

Facing Hate: Women of the Holocaust Elie Wiesel once said in his book “Night”, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (Wiesel xv). Nazi Ideology saw women as fertilizer who would just increase Jewish population thus leading them to believe that they should be exterminated to prevent future generations. Today many work hard to keep the memory alive of two million women who perished due to terrible living conditions, mental abuse, physical abuse, medical experiments and further. To explain these things would just be doing the bare minimum. In particular throughout this essay the goal is to discuss women’s prior life to the Holocaust, what women did to survive the Holocaust, and the worst struggles they faced. Before Hitler came to power, life was average for most women they had jobs, kids, husbands, and were typically excluded from the world of business. For instance “in both Eastern and Western Europe, the lives of most Jewish men and women followed traditional gender patterns” (Ofer). In 1930’s Western Europe men were accountable for financial responsibilities and women were responsible for taking care of the home and family. Therefore this caused many women to not have many “non-Jewish business partners, professional colleagues, close friends, spouses and extended Christian families to protect them during the years of Nazi persecution” (Ofer). On the contrary in Eastern Europe it was the complete opposite of the traditional gender pattern happening

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