Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust

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)

In this riveting and poignant book Nechama Tec offers groundbreaking insights into the differences between the experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. Drawing on the personal stories of numerous survivors and rescuers, Tec reveals how the coping strategies and ultimate fate of men and women differed and how mutual cooperation and compassion operated across gender lines.

“Nechama Tecs Resilience and Courage is a remarkable achievement, based on a deep knowledge of the subject, profound sociological analysis, and convincing narrative style. Tec concentrates on the oppressed rather that the oppressors, and has shown that the gender division among them was primarily a result of the policy of the perpetrators and not the manifestation of conflicts within the society of the victims.”—Israel Gutman, Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem

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)

Nechama Tec's groundbreaking insights into the different experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust

In this, Nechama Tec's fifth book on the Holocaust, vivid individual stories blend effortlessly with detailed comparisons of wartime experiences of women and men. The result is a captivating account of how the coping strategies and the ultimate fate of each sex differed. Tec, as always, listens to the voices of the oppressed, voices that originated in wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, archival materials, and her own interviews with survivors and rescuers. Concentrating on life under extreme conditions, Tec's research uncovers the previously overlooked significance of mutual cooperation and compassion that operated across gender lines.

Nechama Tec, professor emerita of sociology at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, is a member of the Presidents Council for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. She is the author of seven books, among them Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood, and Defiance: The Bielski Partisans.