The identity of women in the She'erit Hapletah: Personal and gendered identity as determinants in rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement

Eretz Yisrael. A land of milk and honey. The Jewish homeland. These were the thoughts which helped “camp sisters” Rivka Englard, Rivka Horowitz, and Pearl Mandelker survive the Holocaust. During their hardest days in Płaszów, Auschwitz, and finally Bergen-Belsen, these young former schoolmates from Poland buoyed each other’s spirits with the thought that after the war, they would make their way together to the Holy Land.

Yet, out of the three, only Englard actually ended up immigrating to Palestine, having received one of the few precious legal certificates available to postwar European Jews. In spite of her love of Eretz...