For International Women’s Day, I would like to share a couple of the texts I wrote years ago, when studying the history of the survivors and victims of both Nazi and Soviet camps. The first two texts were written as a part of the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust and Resistance: while working in McMaster Archives, I discovered the cookbooks and a diary written by a Polish lady while she was imprisoned in Nazi camps. The other text commemorates women in Ravensbrück camp (also a part of the same collection). The third text is my article about resisting darkness by means of reading and writing – it is based on memoirs and diaries of the former prisoners of Soviet camps, including Evgenia Ginzburg, whose book greatly influenced me when I was a teenager (this one is posted on my blog). This is not a happy reading; however, I think that each of these stories contains hope – at least, that’s how I tried writing them. Finding light in the darkness, holding on.

1. Irena Matusiak: Cookbooks and Diaries
2. Women in Ravensbrück
3. Reading and Writing Against Destruction