Therese Schlesinger’s life was characterized by her lifelong passion for learning and her endeavor to improve the plight of working-class women. She was a dedicated feminist who was inspired by the ideals of socialism, struggling to combine both of these political passions within the Austrian Social Democratic Party.

Dorothea Mendelssohn Schlegel was an author and editor who published work under her husband’s name that received little recognition during her lifetime. An intelligent and spirited woman, she changed her name from Brendel to Dorothea, divorced the husband her parents had chosen for her, married a controversial writer, and converted first to Protestantism in 1804 and then to Catholicism in 1808.

Alice Schalek first entered the public sphere at the turn of the century as the author of a well-received novel, published under the male pseudonym Paul Michaely. The first woman in Austria to become a career photojournalist and travel writer, and the first and only female member of the Austrian Kriegspressedienst (war information unit) during World War I, Schalek paved the way for careers in both photography and journalism for other women.

Writer Michèle Sarde’s biographies, novels, and essays cover a wide range of themes and issues, including female literary figures, women’s equality, and the trauma of war persecutions through the lens of both the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. She has received many awards for her work and taught at Georgetown University for over 30 years.

Writer and lawyer Nathalie Sarraute was an innovative figure in post-World War II French literature. No longer allowed to practice law during the German occupation of France, she posed as the governess of her three daughters to hide her Jewish identity. Sarraute’s many novels and plays are characterized by an “inwardness” and an unusual lack of characters, names, and plot.

Born into a wealthy Venetian Jewish family, Margherita Sarfatti joined the Socialist Party and became the art critic for the newspaper Avanti!, where she met Benito Mussolini. The two became lovers, and she followed Mussolini into the Fascist movement and helped plan the rise of the Fascists, only abandoning his cause when Mussolini embraced antisemitism in 1938.

Bouena Sarfatty Garfinkle, a Sephardi woman, risked her life over and over again to aid to her community during World War II. At a later stage in her life, Bouena’s historical-literary acumen enabled her to record Jewish life in Salonika during the twentieth century, including the devastation to her community at the hands of the Nazis.

Rachel Salamander is a writer, scholar, editor, and publisher. Born in 1949 in a DP camp in Germany, she has written and published multiple works about German Jewry and DP camps after World War II. In 1982, Salamander established the Literaturhandlung in Munich, a prominent bookshop and meeting place specializing in Jewish literature.

In 1966 Nelly Sachs became the first German woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. After Sachs fled Berlin in 1940, her thirty-year exile in Sweden proved fertile ground for her poetry. She was motivated as a writer by her deep desire to bear witness to the victims of the Holocaust.

Nina Salaman was a well-regarded Hebraist, known especially for her translations of medieval Hebrew poetry, at a time when Jewish scholarship in Europe was a male preserve. In addition to her translations, she published historical and critical essays, book reviews, and an anthology of Jewish readings for children, as well as poetry of her own.

Helena Rubinstein built a global beauty empire by selling face cream to Depression–era housewives and teaching makeup tricks to film vamp Theda Bara.

Dame Miriam Rothschild was a renowned British natural scientist who published over 300 scientific papers throughout her lifetime, making groundbreaking contributions to the fields of entomology, zoology, marine biology, and wildlife conservationism. In 1985 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and credited for her work in the histology, morphology, and taxonomy of fleas.

Lillian Roth, a singer-actor whose career met with early success but was eventually sidetracked by alcoholism and mental illness, wrote an autobiography that became an international bestseller. At fourteen Roth landed a part in the Shubert show Artists and Models; by seventeen, she was in Ziegfield’s Midnight Follies. She moved to Hollywood for a successful film career before her life fell apart due to mental health challenges and alcoholism. 

Chava Rosenfarb, a major Yiddish novelist of the second half of the twentieth century, is one of the few Holocaust survivors who transmuted their experiences into fiction rather than memoirs or reminiscences.

Born in Brooklyn in 1925 to secular and assimilated parents, Norma Rosen was an American-Jewish novelist, essayist, educator, editor, and professor. Rosen’s exploration of Jewish history and religion in her writings contributed to questions surrounding Jewish theology and Jewish feminism in the second half of the twentieth century.

Colette Roberts devoted her life to increasing people’s understanding and appreciation of modern art. The success she earned as a gallery director, art critic, and educator influenced the art world of the mid-twentieth century in New York and Paris and throughout the world.