Henya Pekelman

In 2007 the book was re-published with annotations, including an epilogue of two essays, one by David De Vries and Talia Pfefferman, and the second by Tamar Hess, all three of them from the Tel Aviv University. The re-publication was part of the "Critical Essays" series of the Heksherim Research Institute for Jewish & Israeli Literature & Culture, inin collaboration with the Ben-Gurion University. Following a reference to Pekelman's book in the book A Woman in Eretz-Yisra'el by Deborah S. Bernstein (Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1987), Hess had found a copy of the book at the National Library of Israel, and was probably the first to request this copy.

Tzipora, Pekelman's second daughter, moved to the Tel Aviv "Pioneers' House" and later on to Kibbutz Yagur. She married Shalom Bornstein and in 1945 gave birth to Pekelman's granddaughter, Ein-Yah Tamir, and divorced Bornstein. She then moved to Kibbutz Manara and married David Tamir.

Henya M. Pekelman (Hebrew: הֶניָה מ' פֶּקֶלמן, 1903 – August 20, 1940) was a Zionist pioneer and manual laborer of the Yishuv. She immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1922, and her self-published book The Life of a Woman Worker in the Homeland (Hebrew: חיי פועלת בארץ) is recognized as one of the most authentic sources about the life of women laborers in Palestine in the 1920s. She died by suicide in 1940.

On January 19, 1940, Pekelman threw herself to her death from the third floor balcony of the Esther Cinema on Dizengoff Square. The press of the time quoted her financial and family situation as the reason for the suicide.

In 1935 she self-published her autobiography, The Life of a Woman Laborer in The Homeland, in which she described her childhood, adolescence and first three years in Mandatory Palestine, including the rape affair. At the top of her book she wrote:

In 1927 she got married, and a year later gave birth to her second daughter, Tzipora.

In 1925, the rape that she suffered resulted in the birth of her first daughter, Tikva, who died after about one month as a result of poisoning.

As told in her book, in 1925 Pekelman travelled to Tel Aviv for a farewell party held by a friend toward his leaving the country. She describes meeting, after the party, a fellow pioneer named Yeruham Mirkin, who insistently invited her to join him in his cousin's room, where she reported he beat her up and raped her.

Pekelman was born in Mărculești in Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Moldova), to a religious Jewish family of merchants that gave great importance to education and diligence. After finishing her primary education, she joined the effort of providing for the family. In 1922, after her father's death, she immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with her mother.

In Henya Pekelman's stories, the pattern of her voice being silenced can be taken as a symbol for the general frequent silencing of women's voices in those times. Her book is regarded as one of the most authentic sources on laborer's life in Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s. its uniqueness lies in the fact that in it history speaks to us through the mouth of an ordinary person, contrary to most narratives covering political leaders and elite groups.