Tema Schneiderman

Lauren Bergman

Tema Schneiderman, 2018

Oil on cradled panel

36 x 36 in.

Tema was born in 1917 in Warsaw, Poland. Upon the outbreak of World War II, she began her activities in the Jewish underground and became a courier for the Dror youth movement in Lithuania and Poland. Tema carried out some 20 missions between Bialystok and Warsaw, even smuggling grenades in her underwear. On January 17, 1943, she entered the Warsaw ghetto. The next day, she and several other young women were arrested and deported to Treblinka, where she was murdered at age 26.