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Margot Heuman, a Holocaust survivor, opened up later in life about dwelling within the focus camps as a homosexual lady. (YouTube/Yad Vashem/USC Shoah Basis Institute)
Margot Heuman, one of many few Holocaust survivors to testify about her life within the focus camps as a homosexual lady, died at 94.
Margot Heuman died on 11 Might at a hospital in Inexperienced Valley, Arizona. She is survived by her son, daughter, 5 grandchildren and one great-grandson.
When she was simply 14 years outdated, Heuman and her household had been deported to Theresienstadt – a city in what’s now the Czech Republic that was used as a ‘transit ghetto’ for Jews en path to dying camps – in 1943.
Her household had been taken from their snug life in Germany, the place Heuman was born on 17 February, 1928. In response to The New York Instances, Heuman was joyful in Theresienstadt, and it was there that she fell in love with a Viennese lady named Dita Neumann.
Only a yr later, in 1944, Heuman’s household was despatched to Auschwitz after her father was caught stealing meals. Neumann and her household had been despatched to the notorious dying camp a month later.
Heuman’s family members – together with her father, mom and youth sister – died within the camps. However Heuman and Neumann survived as they had been transported to varied camps, and Heuman mentioned later in life that their bond saved them alive.
Margot Heuman mentioned in an oral historical past recorded by america Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992 that she “caught collectively” with Neumann, including “we shared every part”.
“All these years, after Auschwitz, I by no means ate something with out sharing it along with her, regardless of how hungry I used to be,” Heuman mentioned.
She continued: “And he or she did the identical, and I believe if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be alive and I don’t assume that she can be alive if it hadn’t been for our relationship both.
“Additionally due to my … caring for an additional human being, someway we by no means misplaced our dignity and we remained individuals.”
Heuman and Neumann had been final imprisoned on the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany when it was liberated by British forces on 15 April, 1945. The forces discovered round 60,000 prisoners within the camp, most of them severely sick, in accordance with america Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Neumann was despatched to England whereas Heuman was taken to Stockholm by the Swedish Purple Cross.
Margot Heuman later moved to the US and she or he later married Charles Mendelson in 1952.
The pair had two kids and divorced in 1976. Heuman mentioned in 2019 that she felt like she “owed it to my mother and father to have kids”, the New York Instances reported.
Later in her life, Heuman determined to return out formally to her family members together with her son, daughter and daughter-in-law. In response to the New York Instances, none of them had been stunned as they didn’t consider her as being closeted.
She remained shut mates with Neumann, who turned a nurse and married a health care provider in Canada. Heuman was by Neumann’s facet when she died of most cancers in 2011.
Dr Anna Hajkova, an affiliate professor on the College of Warwick, informed the New York Instances that Heuman was among the many uncommon Holocaust survivors who “bore testimony” about her same-sex experiences within the focus camps.
For a very long time, Heuman introduced her reference to Neumann as a powerful friendship, however she later forged it as a romantic bond after she met with Dr Hajkova.
Dr Hajkova, who specialised in queer historical past and the Holocaust, mentioned that “subsequent to none” of the 52,000 interviews with Jewish survivors within the Shoah Basis’s archives “discuss same-sex need”.
Margot Heuman’s story will probably be included in Dr Hajkova’s upcoming e book Quartet: Sexuality, Queer Need and the Holocaust. Her story has additionally been carried out as an one-act play titled The Superb Lifetime of Margot Heuman, which was first proven on-line on the 2021 Brighton Fringe Competition.
It’s scheduled to be carried out this yr on the College of Hamburg and the Jewish Museum in Vienna, the New York Instances reported.
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