Surviving Together | Queer Holocaust Survivor Margot Heuman(n) | Pride Month | USC Shoah Foundation
Author: USC Shoah Foundation via YouTube
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“You have to have it within yourself, and whatever comes from the outside is secondary. You can cope with it, if you have someone you care for, if you have certain principles you abide by, and if you do what you feel is right and not what the world tells you to do. I think that’s more important than anything else.”
In the Theresienstadt ghetto, teenage Margot Heuman(n) entered a romantic relationship with a girl named Dita. After being deported to Auschwitz, Margot and Dita continued their romance in the camp, and survived together.
When Margot Heuman(n) told us her story in 1994, she censored the nature of her and Dita’s relationship. More than two decades later, Margot was able to come out to her family. Many online resources now cite Margot as being “the first queer Jewish woman known to have survived Nazi concentration camps” (Wikipedia contributors. "Margot Heumann." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 25 Mar. 2023. Web. 31 May. 2023).
To celebrate the first day of Pride Month, we honor LGBTQ+ survivors of the Holocaust, and recall how difficult living – and speaking – candidly was until recent years. In our Visual History Archive, which contains interviews with over 55,000 interviewees, only ~10 interviewees openly identify as queer in their interviews.
Margot and Dita remained close until Dita’s passing in 2011. Margot passed away in May 2022.
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USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education develops
empathy, understanding and respect through testimony, using its Visual History Archive of more than 55,000 video testimonies, academic programs and partnerships across USC and 170 universities, and award-winning IWitness education program. USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive programming, research and materials are accessed in museums and universities, cited by government leaders and NGOs, and taught in classrooms around the world. Now in its third decade, USC Shoah Foundation reaches millions of people on six continents from its home at the University of Southern California.
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