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Jewish women in the Vyhne camp. Czechoslovakia, between 1941 and 1944
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women

From perpetrators and victims to leaders and rescuers, women embodied many roles during the Holocaust and World War II. As victims, women were often uniquely targeted by the Nazi regime. 

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The Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and established a ghetto in Warsaw in 1940. After her parents were deported, Doris hid with her sister and other relatives. Doris's sister and an uncle were killed, and she learned that her parents had been killed. Her grandmother committed suicide. Doris was smuggled out of the ghetto and lived as a non-Jewish maid and cook, but was ultimately deported to the Ravensbrück camp. Upon arrival there, Doris and her friend Pepi contemplated swallowing poison, but decided against it.
Oral History
Doris Greenberg describes conditions in Ravensbrück
After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Dora's family fled to Vilna, Lithuania. When the Germans occupied Vilna, Dora's father was shot and the rest of the family was confined in the Vilna ghetto. Dora, her sister, and her mother were deported to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and then to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Her mother and sister perished in Stutthof. Dora herself was shot immediately before liberation, but she survived.
Oral History
Dorotka (Dora) Goldstein Roth describes retaliation against women for an escape from Stutthof
Media Essay
Drancy - ID Cards/Oral Histories
Best friends Ejanga Egiomue (left) and Magdalene Garber (right) on an outing in Berlin, Germany during World War II (likely 1941-1942). Magdalene stayed in Germany, but Ejanga fled to Denmark in 1944. Both women survived the war and stayed in contact with each other, exchanging letters and correspondence well into the 1990s. Magdalene (“Leni”) Garber was born in January, 1919 in Germany. Her parents were Joseph Garber, a Togolese man, and Johanna Maychrzak, a white German woman. Magdalene grew up in Berlin-Neukölln and worked as a performer from an early age. She was part of several ethnographic shows, including a variety of Mohamed ben Ahmed’s Afrika-Schau during the late 1920s through the early 1930s, and the German Africa Show (Deutsche Afrika-Schau) during the Nazi period. After the war, she married Jack Goodwin, who was an African American GI. She moved to the United States with her husband in 1946.
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Ejanga Egiomue and Magdalene Garber in Berlin during the war
An elderly Jewish woman wears the compulsory yellow badge in the Riga ghetto. Latvia, between 1941 and 1944.
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Elderly women in the Riga ghetto
Article
Eleanor Roosevelt
Article
Eleanor Roosevelt: The Early Years
Identification card for Erika Neuman
Article
Erika Eckstut
Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS) identity card for Estera Wakschlag (now Estelle Laughlin), July 1947.  Estelle was born in Warsaw, Poland, on July 9, 1929. Her and her family were transported to Lublin-Majdanek after being discovered hiding during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Estelle, along with her mother and sister, was chosen for forced labor, then later transferred to the Skarżysko concentration camp. She was transferred and liberated at Czestochowa. Estelle moved to Germany after the war, then immigated to the United States in 1947.  Estelle Laughlin is a volunteer at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. 
Article
Estelle Laughlin
Photograph of Esther Lurie and a friend, Jose, who were both students at the Institute of Art in Brussels. Here they are enjoying refreshments on an outdoor terrace in the early 1930s. Lurie would later flee Europe as war became imminent. Brussels, Belgium, 1931–1933. 
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Esther Lurie in Brussels
Article
Eta Wrobel
Eva Braun Levine
ID Card
Eva Braun Levine
A color photograph of Eva Justin interviewing a Romani woman interned in a "Gypsy camp." Vienna, Austria, 1940. During the Nazi era, Dr. Robert Ritter was a leading authority on the racial classification of people pejoratively labeled “Zigeuner” (“Gypsies”). Ritter’s research was in a field called eugenics, or what the Nazis called “racial hygiene.” Ritter worked with a small team of racial hygienists. Among them were Eva Justin and Sophie Ehrhardt. Most of the people whom Ritter studied and classified as Zigeuner were German Roma called Sinti. Sinti are a subgroup of Romani peoples.  In 1935, municipal authorities across Nazi Germany began to force Romani families to move into Zigeunerlager (“Gypsy camps”). Eventually, these camps were centralized under the authority of the Nazi Kripo (criminal police). Ritter and his team regularly examined the individuals in these camps. They sometimes used threats or bribes to force people to cooperate. The creation of these camps was one of the Nazis’ early steps toward the genocide of Romani peoples. Many Romani victims were later deported to concentration camps, ghettos, or killing centers.  Source Record ID: Bild 146/87/108/15
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Eva Justin interviews a Romani woman interned in a "Gypsy camp"
False identification card which Vladka Meed had used from 1940–42 on the Aryan side of Warsaw, smuggling arms to Jewish fighters and helping Jews escape from the ghetto.
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False identification card used by Vladka Meed
During World War II, people often used false identities and forged identity documents to evade Nazi authorities. False identities were essential for resistance fighters, aid workers, and Jews hoping to pass as non-Jews. Creating high-quality, convincing forgeries required dozens of people to work together clandestinely. It also required sophisticated photography and printing equipment. For Jews passing as non-Jews, acquiring forged documents could mean the difference between life and death.  During World War II, Ewa Sarnecka adopted the alias “Regina Cybulska” and used this false identity document to conduct clandestine activities. From 1942 to 1944, Ewa and her husband Tadeusz Sarnecki worked for the Council for Aid to Jews (codenamed “Żegota”). Żegota was a clandestine rescue organization of Poles and Jews that coordinated efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and murder. The Sarneckis served as couriers for the Zamość and Lublin branches of Żegota. They traveled to selected forced labor camps in the region, including Piotrków Trybunalski, Radom, and Starachowice. The Sarneckis secretly delivered money, documents, food, medicine, and letters to the Jews imprisoned there. On several occasions, they were even able to smuggle individuals out of the camps. Both Ewa and Tadeusz survived the war.
Document
False identity for Żegota member Ewa Sarnecka
During World War II, people often used false identities and forged identity documents to evade Nazi authorities. False identities were essential for resistance fighters, aid workers, and Jews hoping to pass as non-Jews. Creating high-quality, convincing forgeries required dozens of people to work together clandestinely. It also required sophisticated photography and printing equipment. For Jews passing as non-Jews, acquiring forged documents could mean the difference between life and death.  This identification document was used by Izabela Bieżuńska to establish her alias as "Janina Truszczyńska.” Izabela was a member of the Council for Aid to Jews (codenamed “Żegota”), an underground rescue organization of Poles and Jews in German-occupied Poland. Supported by the Polish government-in-exile, Żegota operated from December 1942 to January 1945. The organization coordinated efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and murder. 
Document
False identity for Żegota member Izabela Bieżuńska

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