The Nazi regime targeted all Jews, both men and women, for persecution and eventually death. The regime frequently subjected women, however, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to brutal persecution that was sometimes unique to the gender of the victims. Nazi ideology also targeted Roma Gypsy women, Polish women, and women with disabilities living in institutions. The Germans invaded Poland in and established a ghetto in Warsaw in After her parents were deported, Doris hid with her sister and other relatives.
Doris's sister and an uncle were killed, and she learned that her parents had been killed. Her grandmother committed suicide. Upon arrival there, Doris and her friend Pepi contemplated swallowing poison, but decided against it. Certain individual camps and certain areas within concentration camps were designated specifically for female prisoners.
At Bergen-Belsen , the camp authorities established a women's camp in The Germans and their collaborators spared neither women nor childrenβJewish or non-Jewishβin conducting mass murder operations. Nazi ideology promoted the complete annihilation of all Jews, regardless of age or gender. Madeline was born into a middle class family in an area of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Hungary in Her father worked out of their home and her mother was a homemaker.
Madeline attended high school. In April her family was forced into a Hungarian ghetto. The family lived in the ghetto for two weeks before being transported to Auschwitz. Madeline and her mother were separated from her father and older brother. Neither her father nor brother survived the war.
A week after arriving in Auschwitz, Madeline and her mother were sent to work in an ammunition factory in Breslau. They were in the Peterswaldau subcamp of Gross-Rosen for one year until liberation by Soviet forces in May Madeline and her mother lived in a displaced persons camp in Munich while awaiting visas to the United States.
