Margot Heuman

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 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 Margot 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 May1944, Margot’s father was caught stealing food and sentenced to be transported as punishment. Margot remembers her mother saying "If he goes, we all go." Margot felt “terrible…very lost” at the prospect of leaving Dita. Along with her family, she was transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex via cattle car. They were sent to the Theresienstadt Family Camp, a section of Birkenau where between September 1943 and May 1944 transports were brought without being forced to go through selections.

Amidst the hunger and horror of the camp, Margot was reunited with her beloved Dita, who

arrived in the camp a few days after the Heumanns did. Shortly after, the two girls were

selected to leave Birkenau and endure forced labor elsewhere. Margot’s mother was young enough to go, too, but chose to remain with her younger daughter, who was believed to be too young to pass the selection. As Margot was leaving Birkenau, she recalls her father blessing her with a Jewish prayer. “It was the first time I saw him cry.” Her mother insisted that Margot also eat her portion of soup. Margot stated of the moment, “I didn’t realize I would never see my parents again.”

When she arrived at a women’s camp after leaving Birkenau, Margot recalls waiting in line to shower, 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 recalls, “so I lifted my dress up, I showed her, "I have a dress but no underwear!” 

Dita and Margot maintained their close relationship while in the new camp. The two shared nearly everything: food, a bed, and a fondness for foraging mushrooms. Nonetheless, they faced homophobia from a fellow prisoner, who deemed their queer relationship "not normal.” 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.” 

From there, Margot and Dita were transported to three different satellite camps of Neuengamme: Dressauer Ufer, Neugraben, and Tiefstack. Ultimately, they ended up in Bergen-Belsen. When the British Army liberated the camp April 15, 1945, Margot was ill with typhus and dangerously underweight. She was taken to Sweden to recover, and remained there for two years. Margot returned to school, and to something akin to normalcy. 

In 1947, she traveled to the United States to visit her relatives. Margot was dazzled by the vibrant lesbian life of the city, and decided to build a life there. At this time, she also changed her surname, from Heumann to Heuman. She got a job at an advertising agency, and began her career in the field. 

Margot felt she “owed it” to her parents to have children. She decided to marry a man and start a family with him. At the same time, Margot maintained an affair with another woman, the wife of a neighbor. "I'm a very good actress,” Margot stated, regarding her ability to hide her queerness for much of her life. 

At the age of 88, Margot moved to a retirement home in Arizona and formally came out to her family. “I always knew,” her daughter, Jill Mendelson said of her mother’s sexuality. “It was never a discussion.” Despite her openness about her sexuality and her inclusion of queer love in the numerous testimonies she has given about her experiences in the camps, Margot’s queer identity is absent from 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. “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.”