Mela Iancu: A Holocaust Heroine in Romania

In 1939, Mela Iancu, a Romanian Jewish leader, established the Jewish Center for the Protection of Mothers and Children. With branches throughout Romania, the center contributed to the salvation of hundreds of women and children during the Holocaust period, providing Jewish children with shelter, food, and medical care and aiding orphans who returned from Transnistria. With financial assistance from JDC and other international organizations, the center helped many children during this period of danger and uncertainty for the Jewish people. Sylvia Hershcovitz will present this narrative from a Jewish, Zionist, and feminist perspective.

Sylvia Hershcovitz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University in Israel. She is a Spiegel Fellow in The Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute for Holocaust Research and a recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/ JDC Archives Fellowship. Her dissertation and her research in the JDC Archives focus on the quotidian lives of Jewish women and their organizations in Romania in the early 20th century.

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