Margot Hueman was fifteen years old when the Nazis deported her and her family to the Theresienstadt ghetto. That’s where she met Dita, the love of her life. Together, Margot and Dita survived seven different camps and were liberated in April 1945. Margot became the only lesbian Jewish Holocaust survivor to bear testimony.
This video was researched, produced, and presented by Ayelet Kaminer for the Pink Triangle Legacies Project. It is based on the important research of Dr. Anna Hájková and Margot Heuman’s own testimony. Thank you for your work in preserving queer history.
Read Margot’s full story, browse sources, and download a handout on her life at pinktianglelegacies.org/heuman.
Explore more LGBTQ+ Stories from the Holocaust at pinktrianglelegacies.org/stories.
Captions are currently available in English.
Margot Cecile Heuman was born in the small German village of Hellenthal. She is the only lesbian Holocaust survivor who bore testimony, which she did in an interview with the Holocaust historian Dr. Anna Hájková. In 1937, Margot’s family moved to nearby Bielefeld,
Where she grew up with her younger sister, Lore. Both girls received a secular and a religious education. Their family kept a Kosher home, and they celebrated Jewish holidays together. She cherished memories of skiing, biking, and spending time with her
Cousins and grandfather. Margot’s father owned a dry goods store and her mother was a homemaker. Margot’s father also worked for the Jewish organization Hilfsverein für deutschen Juden, which was a German Jewish organization dedicated to improving the political and political condition of Jews, and eventually part of the Reich Association
Of German Jews, the Jewish council for Germany. Because of his work with this organization, the Heumanns were amongst the last Jewish families to be deported from her town. On June 29, 1943, Margot and her family were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto.
Like almost all children, Margot and Lore lived in a youth home in Theresienstadt. Margot quickly acclimated to the social environment of the camp. Similar to the recollections of many children who survived Theresienstadt, Margot recalls enjoying the ghetto. The youth care was heavily influenced
By Zionism, and so Margot, too, became a Zionist. She also heard her first opera, La Bohème, while in the ghetto. Margot saw her parents daily. Her youth home was also where she met a Viennese girl: Edith “Dita” Neumann. The two became inseparable and affectionate
Early on in their relationship. At night, they shared a bed. The two quickly fell in love. In May of 1944, Margot and her family were sent by cattle car to the Theresienstadt Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Margot remembered feeling terrible and very lost at the prospect of leaving
Dita. But, amidst the hunger and horror of the camps, Margot was reunited with her beloved Dita, who arrived a month later. Shortly afterward, the two girls were transferred to another camp. As Margot was leaving, she recalls her father blessing her with a Jewish prayer.
“My father was standing in front of his barrack, and I went over to him, and he blessed me. And that’s the first time I ever saw him cry. And the last thing he said, that we should stick together, Dita and I. That’s the last I ever – I never saw him again.”
At the next camp, Dessauer Ufer, Margot waited in line for processing, uncertain whether real showers awaited her. After showering, she looked back and saw Dita still waiting in line. “We knew by then that it was okay,” Margot recalled,
“so I lifted my dress up, I showed her, ‘I have a dress but no underwear!’” Dita and Margot faced homophobia from fellow prisoners, and Margot recalls her experience of the camps as a harrowing one. “We didn’t have enough clothing, we were hungry, but we were alive…and I was with Dita.”
“That made life different, yeah. We never – we used to pretend we were in different places. What we’ll do when we get out. Fantasize about things. And share things. Care for each other.” Margot and Dita were transported to three different satellite camps of Neuengamme,
And ultimately ended up at Bergen-Belsen. After they were freed by the British Army in April 1945, Margot was taken to Sweden to recover from typhus. In 1947, she traveled to the United States to visit relatives. Dazzled by the vibrant lesbian life of New York City, Margot decided to build a life there in
New York. She also changed her surname from Heumann with two n’s to Heuman with one n. Margot felt she “owed it” to her parents to have children. She married a man and started a family. At the same time, Margot maintained an affair with the wife of a neighbor. “I’m a very good
Actress,” Margot stated, regarding her ability to hide her queerness for so much of her life. At the age of 88, Margot formally came out to her family. “I always knew,” Jill Mendelson said of her mother’s sexuality. Despite Margot’s openness about her sexuality, Margot’s queer
Identity is absent from so much of the archival materials available about her. It is thanks to the work of Dr. Anna Hájková that Margot’s testimony has been preserved without censorship. Margot lived as an openly queer woman until her passing in May of 2022,
At the age of 94. She and Dita remained extremely close. “This is a photo taken in Toronto in 1978 while I was visiting with Dita. And Dita is sitting below and I’m above her.” “We went [to] each other’s children’s Bar Mitzvahs, children’s births, weddings. I was her
Matron of honor.” She credits her relationship, and their mutual love for one another, as the reason for their survival. “Because of my caring for another human being… we remained people.” “Neither one of us would have survived without the other, and we both realized that. Because,
We gave each other hope and support, and love and friendship. And I think that’s what makes life worth living. This is why my experience is probably not very similar to other people’s. Because even though it was absolute hell, what I remember most is my friendship and love for Dita.”