Margot Heuman, one of the few lesbian women to survive the Holocaust and testify about a same-sex relationship in a concentration camp, has died at 94.
Heuman died on May 11 at an Arizona hospital, her son Dan told the New York Times. She’s survived by her two children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
In 1943, when she was just 14, Heuman and her family were deported to Theresienstadt, a “transit ghetto” town for Jews en route to death camps. The Nazis ripped the family away from a comfortable life in Germany, where Heuman was born.
While in Theresienstadt, the teenage Heuman fell in love with a Viennese girl named Dita Neumann.
A year later, in 1944, Heuman’s family was sent to Auschwitz. Neumann and her family were then also sent to the Nazi death camp just a month later.
Heuman’s mother, father and sister ultimately died in the camps. But the younger Heuman and Neumann both survived, moving between different concentration camps.
Speaking about the ordeal later in her life, Heuman said she believes the two girls’ bond kept them alive.
Heuman later told the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that she “stuck together” with Neumann, and the two girls “shared everything”.
Read the article by Jordan Hirst in QNews.