Helga Newmark
Helga Newmark, née Helga Hoflich, was the first female Holocaust survivor ordained as a rabbi. She was born in Germany, and was sent to the concentration camps of Westerbork, Bergen-Belsen, and Terezin in Czechoslovakia. She was freed at the age of twelve, and immigrated to America at the age of sixteen. When she had her first child, a daughter, she began to wonder how she would answer her daughter's questions about God. After considering several religions, she joined a synagogue, in There she learned so much from the rabbi and his wife that she eventually became principal of the synagogue.
She was accepted to the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion on her second attempt, and was ordained in 2000 after eight years of study. She served as a rabbi at Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, for two years.
She is the author of the book Letters to the Wise One: A Holocaust Survivor's Conversations with God, published in 2007.
