Jewish Women's Resilience, Resistance, and Survival in the Holocaust

This presentation traces the lives of two women Holocaust survivors who both grew up in traditional Jewish families in Bedzin, Poland and later became residents of Arizona: Jane Lipski (Tucson) and Doris Martin (Flagstaff). They managed to survive the Nazi onslaught as adolescent girls. While Jane was able to escape the ghetto and join the resistance movement in Slovakia, Doris was sent to Auschwitz and selected for labor at a women's camp near the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.

While Doris was liberated in 1945 by the advancing Soviet forces and ended up is a Displaced Person Camp in Germany, Jane was arrested by the Soviets as a suspected spy and remained in captivity in Soviet labor camps until 1947. Dr. Krondorfer will introduce the complex history of the Holocaust through the lives of women like Doris and Jane, with particular attention to their resourcefulness in the struggle to survive.

Bjorn Krondorfer is Regents' Professor and the Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University. As Endowed Professor of Religious Studies, he also teaches in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. His field of expertise is religion/gender/culture and (post-) Holocaust and reconciliation studies.

Free | Register at dfla.org. | Questions, please call 480-488-2286.