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Jewish Women Secretly Damaged Nazi War Materials to Weaken Their Oppressors From Within
Female solidarity in Auschwitz became a weapon against genocide.
Rina Govrin, a Holocaust survivor, had surgery to remove the prisoner number that had been tattooed on her arm in the concentration camp in Poland. Living out the rest of her years in Israel with her family, she never spoke about the Holocaust.
In fact, her daughter, Michal, had no idea her mother was a Holocaust survivor till she was around 12. Eventually, she learned that her mother was not just a survivor but a member of a 10 person group of women ‘the Zehnnerschaft,’ that survived the Holocaust through sticking together in a miraculous show of female solidarity and sisterhood. Once Michal began to study the survival strategies of this group of women, she realized that their resistance to the Nazis was the most powerful of all, not one through violence, or revolt but through holding onto their humanity in spite of the best attempts by the Nazis to destroy it.
These ten women saw the darkest of days, transported across two camps together and losing children, friends and family along the way. The survival strategy of these women was characterized by a relentless effort to keep each other alive at all costs. They endured death marches…
