Nechama Tec

Nechama Tec (née Bawnik, 15 May 1931 – 3 August 2023) was a Polish-American historian who was Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she studied and worked with the sociologist Daniel Bell, and was a Holocaust scholar. Her book When Light Pierced the Darkness (1986) and her memoir Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (1984) both received the Merit of Distinction Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. She is also the author of the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans on which the film Defiance (2008) is based, as well as a study of women in the Holocaust. She was awarded the 1994 International Anne Frank Special Recognition prize for it. Nechama Tec was born in Lublin, Poland to a family of Polish Jews in 1931 and was 8 years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. She survived the Holocaust thanks to her life being saved by Polish Catholics. After the war she emigrated to Israel and later moved to the United States, where she earned a doctorate at Columbia University.Tec was the mother of film director Roland Tec. Her daughter, Leora Tec, is the founder and Director of Bridge To Poland, an organization she created to break down stereotypes between Jews and non-Jewish Poles. Her husband, Dr. Leon Tec, was a noted child psychiatrist and author of Fear of Success and the autobiography, Adventure and Destiny.Nechama Tec was initially shocked by the changes made in adapting her book to make the film Defiance. The Bielski partisans, for example, never actually went into battle against German tanks. However, after seeing the film a number of times, she confessed to liking it "more and more."Tec was appointed to the Council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and served in 1995 as a Scholar in Residence at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, in Israel.Nechama Tec died in New York City on 3 August 2023, at the age of 92.