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Thursday, March 19, 7:00pm (in person)
at Hebrew College, 1860 Washington Street, Newton
Join us on Thursday, March 19, 2026 for a free book talk with Dr. Shulamit Reinharz about the book Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir, which she penned with her father Max Rothschild. Together, they tell the story of a Jewish man who saved his life repeatedly during the Holocaust, eventually being hidden by Dutch Righteous Gentiles for three years. Hiding in Holland presents Max’s roller-coaster ride of living and almost dying in Holland, exploring in depth what it meant to be an onderduiker. What was it like to hide in a brothel or with someone you didn’t like? What was it like to switch hiding locations repeatedly? How did outsiders help? How did hiders deal with Nazi raids? And how did Max retain his sanity?
Max answers these questions by offering a new definition of “resistance” understood in terms of the Jewish person’s experience. Shulamit introduces historical contexts that challenge the exaggerated stereotypes of the valorous Dutch. Together, this inner and outer perspective helps explain why the Netherlands had the worst record of Jewish annihilation of all Western European countries. Only now are Dutch government leaders acknowledging the truth.
Event Co-Hosts
Susan Harris
Annette Miller
Suzanne Priebatsch
Rabbi Ma’ayan Sands
Dr. Shulamit Reinharz is Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology, Emerita and Founding Director of the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandies University as well as Founding Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Her areas of teaching include group dynamics, history of sociology, social psychology, the relation between Jews, gender and art. Since 1991, she has been deeply engaged in institution building, first as director of the Women’s Studies Program at Brandeis, and then as founder of two research institutes housed in a renovated building that she designed.
Reinharz is deeply engaged in community development, in Jewish women’s studies, and empowering students and scholars through various new programs including investigative journalism, a college women’s health website, a flourishing art gallery, a book publication series, etc. All of these new activities are propelled and shaped by her sociological imagination.
She holds a PhD from Brandies.