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Margot Heuman

February 17, 2023

Margot Heuman[a] (February 17, 1928 – May 11, 2022) was a German-born American Holocaust survivor. As a lesbian, she was the first queer Jewish woman known to have survived Nazi concentration camps.

Margot Heuman
Born
Margot Cecile Heumann

(1928-02-17)February 17, 1928
Hellenthal, Rhineland, Prussia, Germany
DiedMay 11, 2022(2022-05-11) (aged 94)
Pima County, Arizona, U.S.
Known forSurviving the Holocaust

When Heuman was ten years old, she and her younger sister were expelled from public school for being Jewish. In 1942, the Heumanns were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto. In her youth home in the ghetto, Heuman met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann, and the two began a secret intimate relationship. In 1943 or 1944, both the Heumann family and Neumann were taken to Auschwitz. Heuman chose to participate in the selection for forced labor in order to stay with Neumann. As a result, she did not see her parents or sister again; all three died in the concentration camps.

The group of women selected for forced labor were taken to Neuengamme concentration camp, where Heuman and Neumann slept together in the barracks and engaged in sexual barter with men to obtain food. In April 1945, the Schutzstaffel shut down Neuengamme and the Jewish women were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. On April 15, 1945, Heuman was freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British soldiers. After spending two years in Sweden and attending school, she moved to the United States, where she chose to stay because she was able to live openly as a lesbian. She worked for an advertising agency in New York City, and in the early 1950s was in a relationship with New Yorker editor Lu Burke. She later married a male colleague from another advertising agency in order to have children. After having an affair with another married woman, she left her husband in the 1970s. She later moved to the Southwestern United States and came out to her family as a lesbian.

Heuman's life story was censored by multiple Holocaust-related archives, which initially described Neumann as her best friend rather than her romantic partner despite her frank discussion of their relationship. Interviews with historian Anna Hájková, however, included details of Heuman's queerness; in June 2021, a documentary play titled The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman premiered based on Hájková's interviews. Heuman died in Arizona in 2022.

Life

Margot Heuman was born Margot Cecile Heumann on February 17, 1928, in Hellenthal, Germany,[1] close to the border of Belgium. She lived above a general store that her parents Carl Heumann[b] and Johanna Falkenstein Heumann owned and ran, and her grandfather lived across the street. When Heumann was four years old, her family moved to Lippstadt, where she learned to swim in the Lippe. She had a younger sister named Lore Heumann.[2]

Nazi persecution

 
Stolpersteine for the Heumann family in Bielefeld, October 2020
 
Detail from above image of Stolperstein for Margot Heuman

When Heumann was nine years old, her family moved again to Bielefeld and enrolled her in public school.[2] Her father worked for the Aid Association of German Jews [de].[3] A year later, she and her younger sister were expelled from school without warning. Their parents enrolled them in a Jewish school, where they had teachers who had been fired from schools by the Nazis.[2] As a child Heumann knew she was attracted to women.[1]

In 1942, most Jews in Bielefeld were deported to extermination camps, but the Heumanns were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto in June of that year[3] or in 1943[1] because Carl Heumann worked for a Jewish organization. Children in Theresienstadt were placed in youth homes where they received better food and accommodations than others in the ghetto. Margot and her sister Lore were sent to separate homes.[3] Margot met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann[c] in the youth home,[4] and the two slept together and were intimate but did not have sex. They kept their relationship secret.[3]

In May 1943[5] or 1944,[3][1] the Heumann family was transported to Auschwitz after Karl Heumann was caught stealing food.[1] Neumann and her aunt arrived a few days later. Heumann's parents did not attempt the selection for forced labor because her younger sister would not have been able to pass, but Neumann and her aunt did, and Heumann chose to follow Neumann.[3] The group of about 200 women who passed were transported by train from Auschwitz to Neuengamme concentration camp.[6] Heumann's father died at Auschwitz[1] while her mother and sister are believed to have been murdered at Auschwitz[7] or died at Stutthof concentration camp.[1] She did not see any of them again after leaving Auschwitz.[2]

The group of Jewish women, including Heumann and Neumann who were 16 years old at the time, were the first female prisoners to arrive in Neuengamme, where they were forced to build shelters for German civilians and clean up rubble.[3] The group was moved through three satellite camps of Neuengamme, including Dessauer Ufer from July to September 1944, Neugraben from September 1944 to February 1945, and Tiefstack from February to April 1945.[4] Heumann and Neumann slept together in a bed at the end of their group's barracks, which disturbed some others, but Neumann's aunt defended the couple on the grounds that they were still children.[3][8] Both Heumann and Neumann engaged in sexual barter with men while at Neuengamme, obtaining food which they then shared with each other.[9] At the beginning of April 1945, the Schutzstaffel shut down Neuengamme and the Jewish women were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.[3] Heumann walked the 100 kilometres (62 mi) from Neuengamme to Bergen-Belsen in two days with no shoes.[6]

Later life

Heumann was freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945, by British soldiers. She had typhus and weighed only 35 kilograms (77 lb) at a height of 1.67 metres (5.5 ft). She was hospitalized for two months,[3] after which the Swedish Red Cross[1] brought her to Sweden to recover[2] while Neumann stayed behind.[10] Heumann remained in Sweden,[3] where she lived with a schoolteacher and attended school.[1] In 1947[3] she moved to New York City at the urging of her maternal uncle who wanted to gather the family together;[1] she only intended to live in the United States for a year, but stayed because she was able to live as a lesbian.[3] Upon moving to the United States, she changed the spelling of her last name to "Heuman".[4] In New York she worked as a nanny and a waitress, also holding a job in a button factory. She began a romantic relationship with Lu Burke, who later became a New Yorker copyeditor; the two lived together in the West Village.[1] In the early 1950s, the two were sometimes seen visiting lesbian bars in Greenwich Village together,[3] and Burke read the dictionary with Heuman to help her improve her English.[1]

Heuman attended the City College of New York, and in the early 1950s entered a job at Doyle Dane Bernbach. She continued working for the advertising firm until her retirement.[1] In 1953 she broke up with Burke because she wanted to have children,[3] feeling it was an obligation to her parents,[1] and knew she would need to marry a man to do so.[3] She married accountant Charles Mendelson in 1952 and had two children,[1] whom she did not raise religious because she no longer believed in God.[6] Eventually she reentered her career in advertising after hiring a black housekeeper, while also having an affair with a married woman who lived next door.[3]

In the 1970s, Heuman's husband was addicted to gambling and began abusing her, so she left him[3] through a divorce in 1976. Later, at the age of 88, Heuman moved to the Southwestern United States and came out to her family as a lesbian; her coming out did not surprise them.[3]

Heuman suffered from severe depression and went to a psychiatrist for years after the Holocaust.[6] In 2018, historian Anna Hájková visited her home and conducted an interview in which Heuman described her relationship with Neumann as a romantic one.[1][d] She visited the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in 2019, where she was interviewed by schoolchildren.[11] As of May 2020, she was 92 years old and living in Green Valley in the Arizona desert with her dog.[6] She died on May 11, 2022,[11] in a Green Valley hospital aged 94.[1]

Historical significance

Margot Heuman was the first known woman to have survived the Nazi concentration camps despite being both Jewish and queer. Although she openly discussed her queerness in several interviews for archives about the Holocaust, those archives kept it hidden, instead describing Neumann as her best friend. In an article about Heuman in Der Tagesspiegel, historian Anna Hájková wrote that it was "tragic that homophobic prejudice prevented a number of queer Jewish women who survived concentration camps from leaving testimonies of their lives", arguing that Heuman's story was even more important because of that fact.[3][e]

The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman

 
Poster for The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman

A documentary play titled The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman, based on Anna Hájková's interviews with Heuman, premiered in an online performance during Brighton Fringe in June 2021.[12] Directed by Erika Hughes, the one-act play included Hájková and Heuman as characters. Hájková was depicted by an actor at her age, while the actor playing Heuman was in her early twenties, close to Heuman's age during the Holocaust. The characters broke the fourth wall during the play.[13]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ pronounced [hɔʏman] HOY-man
  2. ^ This name is also spelled "Karl" by some sources.
  3. ^ This name is also spelled "Dita" by some sources.
  4. ^ The New York Times states that this is the first time Heuman described the relationship in this way, contradicting Hájková's assertion that similar characterizations in previous statements by Heuman had been censored by Holocaust archives.
  5. ^ Original quote in German: "Es ist tragisch, dass homophobe Vorurteile verhindert haben, dass etliche queere jüdische Frauen, die KZs überlebten, Zeugnisse ihres Leben hinterließen. Auch deswegen sollten wir Margots Geschichte aufmerksam zuhören."

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Green, Penelope (May 27, 2022). "Margot Heuman, Who Bore Witness to the Holocaust as a Gay Woman, Dies at 94". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Margot Heumann". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Hájková, Anna (January 2, 2021). "Das wundersame Leben der Margot Heumann" [The wondrous life of Margot Heumann]. Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  4. ^ a b c Hájková 2020, p. 120.
  5. ^ "Margot Heuman". Museum of Tolerance. Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e Laufer, Benjamin (May 1, 2020). "Margot Heuman hat Neuengamme überlebt" [Margot Heuman survived Neuengamme]. Hinz&Kunzt (in German). Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  7. ^ "Carl Heumann". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  8. ^ Hájková 2020, pp. 125–126.
  9. ^ Hájková 2020, pp. 126–127.
  10. ^ Hájková 2020, p. 130.
  11. ^ a b "Margot Heumann gestorben" [Margot Heumann died]. Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (in German). May 16, 2022. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
  12. ^ "Play about lesbian Holocaust survivor to premiere at Brighton Fringe". Jewish News. June 15, 2021. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  13. ^ Hájková, Anna; Hughes, Erika (February 18, 2022). "LGBT+ history: The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman – how theatre gave voice to a queer Holocaust survivor". The Conversation. Retrieved March 26, 2022.

Works cited

  • Hájková, Anna (July 15, 2020). "Between Love and Coercion: Queer Desire, Sexual Barter and the Holocaust". German History. 39: 112–133. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghaa047. ISSN 0266-3554.

General references

  • Hájková, Anna (2021). Menschen ohne Geschichte sind Staub. Homophobie und Holocaust. Hirschfeld-Lectures 14. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein Verlag. pp. 24–30. ISBN 978-3-8353-3769-5. OCLC 1260142387.

External links

February 17, 2023
margot, heuman, february, 1928, 2022, german, born, american, holocaust, survivor, lesbian, first, queer, jewish, woman, known, have, survived, nazi, concentration, camps, bornmargot, cecile, heumann, 1928, february, 1928hellenthal, rhineland, prussia, germany. Margot Heuman a February 17 1928 May 11 2022 was a German born American Holocaust survivor As a lesbian she was the first queer Jewish woman known to have survived Nazi concentration camps Margot HeumanBornMargot Cecile Heumann 1928 02 17 February 17 1928Hellenthal Rhineland Prussia GermanyDiedMay 11 2022 2022 05 11 aged 94 Pima County Arizona U S Known forSurviving the HolocaustWhen Heuman was ten years old she and her younger sister were expelled from public school for being Jewish In 1942 the Heumanns were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto In her youth home in the ghetto Heuman met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann and the two began a secret intimate relationship In 1943 or 1944 both the Heumann family and Neumann were taken to Auschwitz Heuman chose to participate in the selection for forced labor in order to stay with Neumann As a result she did not see her parents or sister again all three died in the concentration camps The group of women selected for forced labor were taken to Neuengamme concentration camp where Heuman and Neumann slept together in the barracks and engaged in sexual barter with men to obtain food In April 1945 the Schutzstaffel shut down Neuengamme and the Jewish women were sent to Bergen Belsen concentration camp On April 15 1945 Heuman was freed from Bergen Belsen concentration camp by British soldiers After spending two years in Sweden and attending school she moved to the United States where she chose to stay because she was able to live openly as a lesbian She worked for an advertising agency in New York City and in the early 1950s was in a relationship with New Yorker editor Lu Burke She later married a male colleague from another advertising agency in order to have children After having an affair with another married woman she left her husband in the 1970s She later moved to the Southwestern United States and came out to her family as a lesbian Heuman s life story was censored by multiple Holocaust related archives which initially described Neumann as her best friend rather than her romantic partner despite her frank discussion of their relationship Interviews with historian Anna Hajkova however included details of Heuman s queerness in June 2021 a documentary play titled The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman premiered based on Hajkova s interviews Heuman died in Arizona in 2022 Contents 1 Life 1 1 Nazi persecution 1 2 Later life 2 Historical significance 3 The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman 4 See also 5 Explanatory notes 6 References 6 1 Citations 6 2 Works cited 6 3 General references 7 External linksLife EditMargot Heuman was born Margot Cecile Heumann on February 17 1928 in Hellenthal Germany 1 close to the border of Belgium She lived above a general store that her parents Carl Heumann b and Johanna Falkenstein Heumann owned and ran and her grandfather lived across the street When Heumann was four years old her family moved to Lippstadt where she learned to swim in the Lippe She had a younger sister named Lore Heumann 2 Nazi persecution Edit Stolpersteine for the Heumann family in Bielefeld October 2020 Detail from above image of Stolperstein for Margot Heuman When Heumann was nine years old her family moved again to Bielefeld and enrolled her in public school 2 Her father worked for the Aid Association of German Jews de 3 A year later she and her younger sister were expelled from school without warning Their parents enrolled them in a Jewish school where they had teachers who had been fired from schools by the Nazis 2 As a child Heumann knew she was attracted to women 1 In 1942 most Jews in Bielefeld were deported to extermination camps but the Heumanns were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto in June of that year 3 or in 1943 1 because Carl Heumann worked for a Jewish organization Children in Theresienstadt were placed in youth homes where they received better food and accommodations than others in the ghetto Margot and her sister Lore were sent to separate homes 3 Margot met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann c in the youth home 4 and the two slept together and were intimate but did not have sex They kept their relationship secret 3 In May 1943 5 or 1944 3 1 the Heumann family was transported to Auschwitz after Karl Heumann was caught stealing food 1 Neumann and her aunt arrived a few days later Heumann s parents did not attempt the selection for forced labor because her younger sister would not have been able to pass but Neumann and her aunt did and Heumann chose to follow Neumann 3 The group of about 200 women who passed were transported by train from Auschwitz to Neuengamme concentration camp 6 Heumann s father died at Auschwitz 1 while her mother and sister are believed to have been murdered at Auschwitz 7 or died at Stutthof concentration camp 1 She did not see any of them again after leaving Auschwitz 2 The group of Jewish women including Heumann and Neumann who were 16 years old at the time were the first female prisoners to arrive in Neuengamme where they were forced to build shelters for German civilians and clean up rubble 3 The group was moved through three satellite camps of Neuengamme including Dessauer Ufer from July to September 1944 Neugraben from September 1944 to February 1945 and Tiefstack from February to April 1945 4 Heumann and Neumann slept together in a bed at the end of their group s barracks which disturbed some others but Neumann s aunt defended the couple on the grounds that they were still children 3 8 Both Heumann and Neumann engaged in sexual barter with men while at Neuengamme obtaining food which they then shared with each other 9 At the beginning of April 1945 the Schutzstaffel shut down Neuengamme and the Jewish women were sent to Bergen Belsen concentration camp 3 Heumann walked the 100 kilometres 62 mi from Neuengamme to Bergen Belsen in two days with no shoes 6 Later life Edit Heumann was freed from Bergen Belsen concentration camp on April 15 1945 by British soldiers She had typhus and weighed only 35 kilograms 77 lb at a height of 1 67 metres 5 5 ft She was hospitalized for two months 3 after which the Swedish Red Cross 1 brought her to Sweden to recover 2 while Neumann stayed behind 10 Heumann remained in Sweden 3 where she lived with a schoolteacher and attended school 1 In 1947 3 she moved to New York City at the urging of her maternal uncle who wanted to gather the family together 1 she only intended to live in the United States for a year but stayed because she was able to live as a lesbian 3 Upon moving to the United States she changed the spelling of her last name to Heuman 4 In New York she worked as a nanny and a waitress also holding a job in a button factory She began a romantic relationship with Lu Burke who later became a New Yorker copyeditor the two lived together in the West Village 1 In the early 1950s the two were sometimes seen visiting lesbian bars in Greenwich Village together 3 and Burke read the dictionary with Heuman to help her improve her English 1 Heuman attended the City College of New York and in the early 1950s entered a job at Doyle Dane Bernbach She continued working for the advertising firm until her retirement 1 In 1953 she broke up with Burke because she wanted to have children 3 feeling it was an obligation to her parents 1 and knew she would need to marry a man to do so 3 She married accountant Charles Mendelson in 1952 and had two children 1 whom she did not raise religious because she no longer believed in God 6 Eventually she reentered her career in advertising after hiring a black housekeeper while also having an affair with a married woman who lived next door 3 In the 1970s Heuman s husband was addicted to gambling and began abusing her so she left him 3 through a divorce in 1976 Later at the age of 88 Heuman moved to the Southwestern United States and came out to her family as a lesbian her coming out did not surprise them 3 Heuman suffered from severe depression and went to a psychiatrist for years after the Holocaust 6 In 2018 historian Anna Hajkova visited her home and conducted an interview in which Heuman described her relationship with Neumann as a romantic one 1 d She visited the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in 2019 where she was interviewed by schoolchildren 11 As of May 2020 update she was 92 years old and living in Green Valley in the Arizona desert with her dog 6 She died on May 11 2022 11 in a Green Valley hospital aged 94 1 Historical significance EditMargot Heuman was the first known woman to have survived the Nazi concentration camps despite being both Jewish and queer Although she openly discussed her queerness in several interviews for archives about the Holocaust those archives kept it hidden instead describing Neumann as her best friend In an article about Heuman in Der Tagesspiegel historian Anna Hajkova wrote that it was tragic that homophobic prejudice prevented a number of queer Jewish women who survived concentration camps from leaving testimonies of their lives arguing that Heuman s story was even more important because of that fact 3 e The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman Edit Poster for The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman A documentary play titled The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman based on Anna Hajkova s interviews with Heuman premiered in an online performance during Brighton Fringe in June 2021 12 Directed by Erika Hughes the one act play included Hajkova and Heuman as characters Hajkova was depicted by an actor at her age while the actor playing Heuman was in her early twenties close to Heuman s age during the Holocaust The characters broke the fourth wall during the play 13 See also EditLesbians in Nazi GermanyExplanatory notes Edit pronounced hɔʏman HOY man This name is also spelled Karl by some sources This name is also spelled Dita by some sources The New York Times states that this is the first time Heuman described the relationship in this way contradicting Hajkova s assertion that similar characterizations in previous statements by Heuman had been censored by Holocaust archives Original quote in German Es ist tragisch dass homophobe Vorurteile verhindert haben dass etliche queere judische Frauen die KZs uberlebten Zeugnisse ihres Leben hinterliessen Auch deswegen sollten wir Margots Geschichte aufmerksam zuhoren References EditCitations Edit a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Green Penelope May 27 2022 Margot Heuman Who Bore Witness to the Holocaust as a Gay Woman Dies at 94 The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved August 15 2022 a b c d e Margot Heumann United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Retrieved June 7 2021 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Hajkova Anna January 2 2021 Das wundersame Leben der Margot Heumann The wondrous life of Margot Heumann Der Tagesspiegel in German Retrieved June 7 2021 a b c Hajkova 2020 p 120 Margot Heuman Museum of Tolerance Retrieved June 7 2021 a b c d e Laufer Benjamin May 1 2020 Margot Heuman hat Neuengamme uberlebt Margot Heuman survived Neuengamme Hinz amp Kunzt in German Retrieved June 7 2021 Carl Heumann United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Retrieved June 7 2021 Hajkova 2020 pp 125 126 Hajkova 2020 pp 126 127 Hajkova 2020 p 130 a b Margot Heumann gestorben Margot Heumann died Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in German May 16 2022 Retrieved May 17 2022 Play about lesbian Holocaust survivor to premiere at Brighton Fringe Jewish News June 15 2021 Retrieved November 12 2021 Hajkova Anna Hughes Erika February 18 2022 LGBT history The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman how theatre gave voice to a queer Holocaust survivor The Conversation Retrieved March 26 2022 Works cited Edit Hajkova Anna July 15 2020 Between Love and Coercion Queer Desire Sexual Barter and the Holocaust German History 39 112 133 doi 10 1093 gerhis ghaa047 ISSN 0266 3554 General references Edit Hajkova Anna 2021 Menschen ohne Geschichte sind Staub Homophobie und Holocaust Hirschfeld Lectures 14 Gottingen Germany Wallstein Verlag pp 24 30 ISBN 978 3 8353 3769 5 OCLC 1260142387 External links EditOral history interview with Margot Heuman in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection You just survived because you had to interview form memoir by Heuman Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Margot Heuman amp oldid 1133759397, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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