Liana Millu

You have probably consumed media about the Holocaust before. Maybe you watched movies or documentaries, you read a book or two, you probably discussed what happened in school and wondered how it could happen.

Even in a vulnerable and dehumanizing situation like a Nazi concentration camp, gender still mattered. Much media about life in and about surviving concentration camps is by and about men. The reasons for this are two fold: men's testimonials have been published and shared more often, and less women survived the camps than men. Some of the best and unfortunately least known insights into life in the women's camp was produced by Liana Millu.

Liana was born on December 21, 1914 in Pisa, Italy. She grew up with her grandparents who were religious Jews and developed an early interest in journalism. In 1943, Liana joined the resistance group, Otto. Her main task was to facilitate the communication between the group and English and American forces. During a failed mission, she was caught in Venice and deported.

Her book 'The Smoke Over Birkenau’ is a first-hand journalistic telling of six women who died in Birkenau. Contrary to popular understanding, Auschwitz was not the worse of the camps. Birkenau, just a couple of kilometers away from Auschwitz, was the more brutal of the two. The walls in Birkenau were built from wood, rather than brick like in Auschwitz. The women in Birkenau had to face gendered challenges in addition to the harsh camp life. Millu shares the stories of women who were targeted for their looks, had to use them to survive, and faced separation from their children or lovers. The book ends with a heartbreaking story of a woman who hid her pregnancy and ultimately died in labor. When I read this story, I was not aware that pregnant women were forced to abort on arrival or were gassed. Women's stories and what the life in camps was like is usually obliterated.

This month, we remember not only women like Liana Millu, who have left their name on history, but we also remember all the women who have been lost to history, whose contributions, discoveries, lives, were not deemed worthy of capturing, even when they were. It is women like Liana that help us fight this erasure, and who we should look up to as they kind of historians we should all strive to be.

Discover the stories Liana captured here.