During the Holocaust, women were faced with terrible dilemmas. At the same time, they continued to strive to take care of their children and those who were more vulnerable than them, and to preserve tradition and religion, they participated in the resistance movement and in rescuing those in need, they yearned for love and friendship, they sought solace in artistic expression , and by nurturing their femininity, they tried to retain at least some humanity.

Before the Second World War, Jewish women, like most women, lived in a predominantly conservative and patriarchal society, so even during the Holocaust (1933–1945) they were generally not involved in the leadership of Jewish communities. Instead, they had to assume the main role in the family and ensure its survival in all possible circumstances, which included both providing food for the home and ensuring a minimum level of family functioning regardless of the difficult situation in which they found themselves. The identification of women with children, which came from the environment and also from the women themselves, became a motivating force for the preservation of life, and as a result, sent women and children together to destruction. Women who, despite everything, survived ghettos, deportations and extermination and were finally interned in concentration camps as free labor, bravely faced death there, and tried to make sense of every additional moment of life and, after being deprived for all the elements of individualism, family and culture, to recover at least some of their psychological identity.

The exhibition Spots of Light: To be a Woman in the Holocaust, which tells their stories, was prepared by the Yad Vashem memorial center, and the Slovenian translation was provided by the Center of  Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor. It will be on display in the Synagogue Maribor from 8 March 2023.