Judith Hemmendinger

Judith Hemmendinger (née Feist, 2 October 1923 – 24 March 2024) was a German-born Israeli researcher and author who specialised in child survivors of the Holocaust. During World War II, she was a social worker and refugee counselor for the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a French Jewish children's aid organization based in Geneva, and from 1945 to 1947, she directed a home for child survivors of Buchenwald in France. She authored books and papers on the Holocaust experiences and later lives of child survivors. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2003.

Early life Judith Feist was born on 2 October 1923, in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany, to Phillip Feist, a native of Frankfurt who worked as a mining engineer, and his wife Hannah, née Eisenmann. She was a great-granddaughter of Eliezer Liepman Philip Prins. Her family was Orthodox Jewish and well-off. Among the boys under her care were Yisrael Meir Lau, the future Chief Rabbi of Israel; his brother Naphtali Lau-Lavie; Menashe Klein, the future Ungvarer Rav; and Elie Wiesel.

After the home closed, Judith went to London to stay with her aunt and uncle. There, she received a letter from Claude Hemmendinger, her fellow student at the hakhshara, who wished to see her again. They met in Paris and were married in September 1948. At first, they settled on a kibbutz in Beit She'an, Israel, but returned to Claude's mother's home in Strasbourg after the death of his father. They resided in Strasbourg for 20 years. They had two sons and one daughter.

Education and research In Strasbourg, Judith Hemmendinger began seeing a psychotherapist to work through her wartime experiences. Upon the family's return to Israel in 1969, she undertook a formal education, earning her bachelor's degree in Jerusalem, her master's degree at Bar-Ilan University, and her PhD at the University of Strasbourg in 1981. Her doctoral thesis was titled "Rehabilitation of Young Camp Survivors after the Death Camps".

In 1982, she published the paper "Psychosocial adjustment 30 years later of people who were in Nazi concentration camps as children". In 1984, she co-authored, with Elie Wiesel, Les enfants de Buchenwald: que sont devenus les 1000 enfants juifs sauvés en 1945? (The children of Buchenwald: What became of the 1,000 Jewish children rescued in 1945?) (Favre, 1984), and in 1986, Survivors: Children of the Holocaust (National Press, 1986). Dr. Robert Krell, a Holocaust survivor, saw the Dutch translation of the 1984 book, and in 2000, he translated it into English with supplementary material under the title The Children of Buchenwald: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Post-war Lives (Gefen, 2000).

Hemmendinger remained in contact with the Buchenwald children and their offspring for years. In 1970, she was invited by the child survivors to a dinner commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.

In 2003, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work to rehabilitate the child survivors of Buchenwald.

Hemmendinger died on 24 March 2024, at the age of 100.

Publications

(with Dr. Robert Krell)

(with Elie Wiesel)