Resilience and Courage: Women, Men and the Holocaust

by Nechama Tec

In this riveting book Nechama Tec offers insights into the differences between the experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. Her research draws on a variety of sources: wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, a range of archival materials, and most important, direct interviews with Holocaust survivors. Tec reveals how women and men on the road to annihilation developed distinct coping strategies and how mutual cooperation and compassion operated across gender lines.

“Tec is able to paint a more nuanced picture of the realities of Jewish resistance than previous historians. . . . A remarkable and important book.”—Tikkun
"Tec offers compelling evidence that gender-related analyses add significantly to our understanding of Jewish experiences during the Holocaust.”—Jewish Book World
“While this is a work of powerful emotionality, it is also a groundbreaking study of how gender is inexplicably bound to history and experience.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Nechama Tec (née Bawnik) (born 15 May 1931) is a Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut.[1] She received her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she studied and worked with the sociologist Daniel Bell, and is a Holocaust scholar. Her book When Light Pierced the Darkness (1986) and her memoir Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (1984) both received the Merit of Distinction Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. She is also author of the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans on which the film Defiance (2008) is based, as well as a study of women in the Holocaust. She was awarded the 1994 International Anne Frank Special Recognition prize for it.[2]

Reviews

[Sharon Zink · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contrasted the experiences and roles of men versus women during the Holocaust of World War II. It was skillfully done, and it was interesting. Names of some of the chapters are Life in the Ghetto, Leaving the Ghetto, The Concentration Camps, Hiding and Passing in the Forbidden Christian World, and Resistance. The introductory chapter and the concluding chapter were not as interesting.

[Mary]

Do ILL.