Strategii de supravieţuire în Holoaust în memoria feminină
Strategies of Survival During the Holocaust in the Female Memory

Summary/Abstract: The present work is an attempt to study the link between memory and history based on the oral testimonies of female survivors of the Holocaust. It is a research study that analyses the strategies of surmounting death in the Nazi concentration camps and social reinsertion after the Holocaust. The female memory that served as raw material was obtained by interviewing five women survivors of the Holocaust that lived in Cluj when deportations began, Eva Pamfil, nee Semlyen, Marta Gyemant, nee Reich, Judith Muresan, nee Kertesz, Eva Maiorovici, nee Katona and Elisabeta Goldstein, nee Farkas to whom I would like to express my gratitude, my hommage and admiration for the way they went through the tragedy of death and for having defeated it. The research was carried out on three levels: 1. Pre-Holocaust. "Jewish Identity - a stigma and an 'announced death'" is the main theme of this section and shows how the survivors faced antisemitic behaviour of the local population and antisemitic legislation. 2. Deportation and incarceration in camps. Imprisonment and survival pattems. This second part of the research tries to give an insight and to analyse the most dramatic moments and how they were perceived by the survivors: the epicenter of the suffering - the ordeal of undressing and shaving, of the daily appeal, of the marches to which permanent privations as starvation and hunger, freezing winter temperatures or unbearable hot summer days, disease and unsanitary living conditions were added. Instinctive behaviors of the incarcerated women in order to survive and to resist their fate for they indeed exhibited remarquable survival skills and strength in the most horrific situations. 3. Post-Holocaust. This last section reveals the strategies of surmounting the Holocaust experience by coming home and gradual social reinsertion, reintegration în schools, youth organizations, work and rebuilding of a new life: betrothal, marriage, motherhood and children as supreme proof of survival and defeating death.

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