Margot Heuman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Margot Cecile Heumann February 17, 1928 Hellenthal, Rhineland, Prussia, German Reich |
| Died | May 11, 2022 (aged 94) Pima County, Arizona, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Surviving the Holocaust |
Margot Cecile Heumann (pronounced [hɔʏman] HOY-man; February 17, 1928 – May 11, 2022) was a German-born American Holocaust survivor. As a lesbian, she was the first queer Jewish woman known to have survived Nazi concentration camps.
When Heuman was ten years old, she and her younger sister were expelled from public school for being Jewish. In 1942, the Heumanns were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto. In her youth home in the ghetto, Heuman met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann, and the two began a secret intimate relationship. In 1943 or 1944, both the Heumann family and Neumann were taken to Auschwitz. Heuman chose to participate in the selection for forced labor to stay with Neumann. As a result, she did not see her parents or sister again; all three died in the concentration camps.
The group of women selected for forced labor were taken to Dessauer Ufer and later Neugraben and Tiefstack, all subcamps of Neuengamme concentration camp in the city of Hamburg. In April 1945, the Schutzstaffel shut down Neuengamme and the Jewish women were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. On April 15, 1945, Heuman was freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British soldiers. After spending two years in Sweden and attending school, she moved to the United States, where she chose to stay because she was able to live openly as a lesbian. She worked for an advertising agency in New York City, and in the early 1950s was in a relationship with New Yorker editor Lu Burke. She later married a male colleague from another advertising agency to have children. After having an affair with another married woman, she left her husband in the 1970s. She later moved to the Southwestern United States and came out to her family as a lesbian.
Heuman's life story was censored by multiple Holocaust-related archives, which initially described Neumann as her best friend rather than her romantic partner despite her frank discussion of their relationship. Interviews with historian Anna Hájková, however, included details of Heuman's sexuality; in June 2021, a documentary play titled The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman premiered based on Hájková's interviews. Heuman died in Arizona in 2022.