Ilse Seger: An Ordinary Woman’s Story of Imprisonment and Resistance in Nazi Germany

Week of March 8, 2025

Melissa Kravetz will share the story of an ordinary woman who resisted authoritarianism in Nazi Germany well before anyone knew what would unfold, and for that reason, Ilse was quite extraordinary and can serve as a role model for all of us.

Using Family Archives to Create a Memoir
In these workshops, Melissa Kravetz will share her experience of working with the descendants of Ilse Seger, a political opponent and Nazi hostage, to publish her 1970 memoir. She will discuss the ethical questions of editing a memoir and of obtaining and preserving materials from a family archive. Here’s more information about the book: https://iupress.org/9780253071552/the-memoir-of-ilse-seger/

Melissa Kravetz is an Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Longwood University, where she has worked since 2013. She also teaches K-12 teachers in the Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute at the Virginia Holocaust Museum every summer. Her first book, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2019.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-kravetz/ and https://www.facebook.com/melissa.kravetz/