Help a Holocaust Historian Pay for Translators

Hello, my name is Elizabeth Hyman. I am an independent, public scholar with my Masters degree in Modern Jewish History from the University of Maryland-College Park, I am the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Polish Jews who fled that country in 1939.

Pictured above: my grandmother, Alice Rita Edelman (née Lewkowicz) ז״ל as a child in Krakow, Poland; left to right: 1939, 1937, and undated mid-late 1930s.

Pictured above, left to right: my grandmother standing with her parents, Ruth and Jacob Tobias Lewkowicz ז״ל, in New York, late-1940s, early 1950s; photo bearing the caption "Marco Polo 1940," we believe that this is the vessel Alice, Ruth, Jacob, and family members took to the United States.

I’m here to ask for your support as I write and research my first book, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: a work of narrative non-fiction about Jewish women’s role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the organized Jewish resistance in Warsaw. To be published by HarperCollins, with a release date set for Fall, 2025.

The book centers on four women: Zivia Lubetkin, Vladka Meed, Tema Schneiderman and Tossia Altman.

(image courtesy of the USHMM)

These women smuggled weapons into the Warsaw Ghetto in preparation for the Uprising, fought in the Uprising, and served as commanders and reconnaissance officers. Two of these women—Tema and Tossia—gave their lives in service to this work. They are women whose names you should know, but whom, sadly, have yet to take their well-deserved place in Holocaust memory despite the hard and ongoing work of writers and historians like myself.

I am hoping to raise at least $10,000, and ultimately $20,000 to be able to pay for the translators I need to be able to access a wide variety of primary and secondary sources which only exist in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish. A translator has quoted me $10,000 for five books, and I have ten I need translated. To provide full financial transparency to potential backers, I left Manhattan and moved in with my parents in order to cut costs. I received a generous publisher's advance, however, it's only enough to cover my monthly bills (health insurance, storage unit, gas) through March, 2024, at which point the manuscript is due.

Few financial resources exist for independent scholars publishing outside the university press system—and those few that do often have as an unwritten rule that all successful applicants must have a PhD—so please help me do my part to bring attention to the female heroes of the Holocaust, and their unique contributions to organized Jewish resistance movements.

If you'd like to take a look at my previous work before taking a chance on me, you can read my Masters thesis, “'An Uncertain Life in Another World': German and Austrian Jewish Refugee Life in Shanghai, 1938- 1950” here.

I have given three public talks on these women and their context; you may view the transcripts of these talks at the following links: "Voices From Beyond the Grave: Tema Schneiderman and Tossia Altman" (paper presented at the Heroines of the Holocaust Symposium at Wagner College, June 2022); "Women in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" (presented at the National World War II Museum’s 15th International Conference on World War II, November 2022); and my Keynote, "Women of the Warsaw Ghetto" (delivered in honor of Yom Hashoah, on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County, New York, April 2023).

I have also written a great deal on this topic for a public, general readership, most of it on my blog, HISTORICITYwasalreadytaken, which commands over 120,000 followers. Some of these include: Why Gender History is Important Asshole, (originally posted October, 2012), the post which opened my eyes to the number of people out there who are both passionately curious about the topic of women and the Holocaust, and indignant over the fact that this knowledge is so uncommon; We Need to Talk About Anne Frank (originally posted July, 2014), a thinkpiece about how we use and misuse the memory of Anne Frank; an 11-part post series about Vladka Meed, originally posted April-May 2018 in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which inspired me to begin this project; and Girls with Guns, Woman Commanders, and Unheeded Warnings: Women and the Holocaust, a thinkpiece featured on Medium in June, 2019 about how Holocaust memory is shaped by male experiences, and what we miss through this centering of the male experience.

In return for your generous contribution, I will thank you by name in the book’s Acknowledgements section, alongside my backers from an earlier round of funding.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth R. Hyman