Review of "The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos" by Judy Batalion

For the most part, war histories have been written by men, and brave women have been given short shrift. Judy Batalion helps correct this by telling the stories of Jewish women in Poland who resisted the Nazis during World War II. These women served as couriers, caretakers, and fighters, especially in Będzin, Krakow, Warsaw and other cities that had relatively large Jewish communities.


Jews in Warsaw before World War II

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Jews in cities were relegated to cramped ghettos where living space, food, medicine, clothing, money, sanitation, work papers, etc. were in short supply.


Warsaw Ghetto

Women smugglers who could pass for Polish Christians would sneak out, round up supplies, pass messages, and do what had to be done....with no thought to their own safety.


Some Jewish women in Poland could pass as Aryans

A female memoirist describes the girls in a diary: 'Heroic girls; boldly they travel back and forth through the cities and towns of Poland. They are in mortal danger every day. They rely entirely on their Aryan faces and on the peasant kerchiefs that cover their heads. Without a murmur, without a second's hesitation, they accept and carry out the most dangerous missions. If someone needed to travel to Vilna, Białystok, Lemberg [or other cities], to smuggle in contraband such as illegal publications, goods, money, the girls volunteer as though it's the most natural thing in the world. If comrades have to be rescued, they undertake the mission. Nothing stands in their way. The missions are dangerous; the women are often arrested and searched. But they are indefatigable.'


Jewish women resistance fighters

The book, which is almost 600 pages long, contains the stories of many women - all of them memorable. To provide a feel for the narrative, I'll briefly summarize one woman's tale.

In 1942, Renia Kukielkher was a 17-year-old girl living in the Warsaw Ghetto with her family. Jews who made their way to the ghetto from outside told horrible tales. Renia heard the story of a German, foaming at the mouth who killed two infants by kicking them with spiked boots. The mother was ordered to watch, then dig them graves. The German finally crushed the mother's skull with the butt of his rifle.

On another day Renia saw a group of half-insane women - raggedy, pale, blue-lipped, and shaking - who told her that their town had been surrounded. Gunshots flew and the Nazis beat their children to death.


Nazis killed Jewish children

Other women told stories of Poles adding to the persecution, blackmailing Jews for money and possessions, under threat of turning them in.

When the Nazis began liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, and deporting Jews to work camps and concentration camps (extermination camps), Renia's family decided to leave.


Krakow`s Polish Jews arriving at German Auschwitz concentration camp

Renia made it to a Nazi-run Jewish labor camp, where the workers hoped to be safe from deportation.


Nazi-run Jewish labor camp

The camp wasn't safe, however, and Renia left and began wandering around Poland. Renia was caught by police with dogs, but looked Aryan enough to pass for a Christian, and got away.

At a train station, Renia found a woman's purse with some money and a Polish passport, which was her ticket to travel.


Polish train station during World War II

After a harrowing journey - during which Renia lived in constant fear of being exposed as a Jew - she got a job as a housekeeper in the home of a half-German family called the Hollanders. There Renia pretended to be Catholic, went to church with the family, was careful to speak like a Pole, etc....all the time fearful of being outed as a Jew, and suffering from anxiety and insomnia.


Polish Catholics attended church on Sundays

Renia received letters from her sister, and learned that her family was living in the woods and suffering. Though it was very dangerous, Renia made up her mind to join them. Renia told the Hollanders her aunt was sick, and got permission to visit her. A smuggler helped Renia travel, with her Jewishness deeply buried. Renia finally made it to a Jewish enclave in Będzin, but all her relatives - except for one sister - was lost.


Będzin Ghetto

Wanting to help the Jewish cause, Renia became a courier for the resistance. If caught by Germans, couriers were imprisoned in filthy conditions, raped, beaten, starved, and either transported to concentration camps or killed. But Renia survived to tell her story.

Other women have tales similar to Renia's, and some even took part in armed rebellions. Women fought during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, for example, and German soldiers were amazed to see women hand-to-hand fighting, shooting guns, and throwing grenades.


Warsaw Ghetto uprising

The book is hard to read because the disgusting, vicious, stomach-churning atrocities committed by the Nazis and (many) Poles are described in detail. Still, the bravery of the featured women is uplifting and inspiring, and it's good to see their stories told.


Author Judy Batalion

In an afterward, Judy Batalion writes that she took 12 years to write the book, most of it spent researching diaries, memoirs, testimonies, books, and writings in a variety of languages, including English, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Polish and Russian. Battalion also traveled around the world to meet the descendants of the featured women, sifted through photographs and letters, and learned how the ladies lived during the post-war phase of their lives. Many of the women suffered from survivor's guilt and/or mental illness, and some committed suicide.

The book tells an important story of remarkable women, and is well worth reading.

Thanks to Netgalley, Judy Battalion, and William Morrow Publishers for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4 stars