Helga Newmark

Helga Newmark, née Helga Hoflich, (1932–2012) was the first female Holocaust survivor ordained as a rabbi.

Biography
She was born in Germany, and was sent to the concentration camps of Westerbork, Bergen-Belsen, and Terezin (known in German as Theresienstadt) 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 [Conservative ] synagogue, Temple Emanuel in [Ridgefield Park, New Jersey] 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.

Publications
She is the author of the book Letters to the Wise One: A Holocaust Survivor's Conversations with God, published in 2007.