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This article has two aims : to state systematically how gender mattered during the Holocaust, and to show how the analysis of gender contributes to a richer understanding of the Holocaust.We identify and discuss four sources of gender differences during the Holocaust. They are :Pre-war roles and responsibilities of men and women ;Anticipatory reactions of Jews to Nazi treatment of men and women ;German Policy and their treatment of men and women ;Responses of Jewish men and women to Nazi persecution.The discussion of women’s problems and fate helps to envision the specificity of everyday life and the different ways in which men and women responded to the Nazi onslaught. It also introduces a new perspective that may challenge today’s understanding of such basic concepts as resistance, compliance, defiance, choice, collaboration and cooperation. It thereby provides a missing element of what we must now see as an incomplete picture of Jewish life during the Holocaust.The conclusion of the article recalls that the most eminent chroniclers during the Holocaust were explicitly concerned with the issues that have been the focus of the daily lives of women, their involvement in their families, and their responses to the Nazi terror.We hope that after understanding the differences and similarities between the fate of Jewish men and women, an integrated social and cultural history of the Jews during the Holocaust will be written.