Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust

Different Voices is the most thoroughgoing examination of women’s experiences of the Holocaust ever compiled. It gathers together–for the first time in a single volume–the latest insights of scholars, the powerful testimony of survivors, and the eloquent reflections of writers, theologians, and philosophers.

Part One, “Voices of Experience,” recounts the painful and poignant stories of survivors, stories of resistance, compliance, medical experiments, all kinds of horror, and total vulnerability. Part Two, “Voices of Interpretation,” offers the new insights of women scholars of the Holocaust, including evidence that the Nazis specifically preyed on women as the propagators of the Jewish race. In Part Three, “Voices of Reflection,” women artists and intellectuals contemplate the Holocaust, even to the point of suggesting, through painstaking statistical evidence, that more Jewish women than Jewish men actually perished in the Holocaust.

Lyrical, vivid, and affecting, Different Voices is a powerful commemoration of the sufferings and of the courage of Jewish women during the darkest years of the twentieth century. It is a compelling–and essential–contribution to our knowledge of the Holocaust.

Carol Rittner, R.S.M., is distinguished professor of holocaust and genocide studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

John K. Roth is the Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he has taught since 1966. In 1988, he was named National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Roth is a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington.