Award-winning Author, Editor, Ghost-Writer, Holocaust Educator, popular Public Speaker, and successful Personal Historian, Joanne D. Gilbert, M. Ed, was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and in 1985, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2004, she relocated to Las Vegas in order to be close to her son and his family. Since retiring in 2008 from a 40+ year career as an educator, she has filled her days—and many of her nights—by researching, writing, and speaking publicly about the Jewish and Gentile women who successfully defied the Nazis. Her passion for, and dedication to this topic actually began developing at a very young age, eventually becoming her life’s work.
Joanne’s Journey Begins
As a young child, Joanne was profoundly affected by the images and poignant stories that her Jewish immigrant Grandmother told her as they poured over old family photo albums. The photos showed page after page of handsome, vibrant relatives that Joanne had never seen. Each story ended with Joanne’s question, “What happened to . . .?” And the answer was always: “Hitler got him.” Or, “Hitler got her.” With typical little girl curiosity, Joanne would ask lots of questions that her Grandmother was never able to answer. The photos showed page after page of handsome, vibrant relatives that Joanne had never seen. Each story ended with Joanne’s question, “What happened to . . .?” And the answer was always: “Hitler got him.” Or, “Hitler got her.” With typical little girl curiosity, Joanne would ask lots of questions that her Grandmother was never able to answer. Three specific questions became the basis for a recurring theme:
● Why didn’t the Gentiles help their Jewish friends, neighbors, and colleagues?
● Why didn’t the Jews put up a fight?
● Why didn’t the women fight?
Wordlessly, her Grandmother would hold her hands out, palms up, as if to say, “Who knows?
As she grew up, Joanne remained haunted by the faces and lives of the relatives, whose lives had been so brutally ended when the conquering Germans destroyed Lithuania’s Vilna Ghetto. Her curiosity about the perpetrators, collaborators, and bystanders of the Holocaust, increased—as did her belief that there must have been heroes. There must have Jews who fought, there must have been Gentiles who helped, and there must have been women who refused to be victims.
Her Earliest Family Influences
