Regardless of gender, faith, or creed, freedom can only come with equality. When we fight together, we are stronger than even the most nefarious of history’s evils, Revital Yakin Krakovsky writes.
Where What When - In the Light of Days : A Book Review and Personal Commentary wherewhatwhen.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wherewhatwhen.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Renee Ghert-Zand is a reporter and feature writer for The Times of Israel.
From left: Renia Kukiełka in Budapest, 1944. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman); Tosia Altman (Courtesy of Moreshet, Hashomer Hatzair Archives); Courier Hela Schüpper (left) and Akiva leader Shoshana Langer disguised as Christians on the Aryan side of Warsaw, June 26, 1943. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Photo Archive)
Comrades from the pioneer training commune in Białystok, 1938. Frumka Płotnicka is standing second from the right. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Photo Archive)
Gusta Davidson (left) and Minka Liebeskind at an Akiva summer camp, 1938. They both became members of the Krakow ghetto underground. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Photo Archive)
Soldates, espionnes Ces femmes juives qui ont défié les nazis en Pologne timesofisrael.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timesofisrael.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Elizabeth Michaelson Monaghan
April 5, 2021
Assassinating Nazis, escaping death via sewers, and saving fellow Jews in World War II Poland sounds like an action movie, but it was real life for the Jewish women profiled in
(HarperCollins, $28.99).
Author Judy Batalion first encountered these women in a 1946 Yiddish compilation about Jewish women in the resistance. The heroines, including Renia Kukielka, Tosia Altman, Chajka Klinger, Zivia Lubetkin, and others, so intrigued Batalion that she started researching their stories.
The Light of Days, with its more than 450 pages of narrative, hundreds of detailed footnotes, and 11-page bibliography, is the result.
Lilith has chronicled the stories of many of these women over the years. Most of the women who regularly risked their lives to rescue Jews and deliver news, medicines, and weapons were members of an organized, armed Jewish resistance that emerged from the Jewish youth movement that flourished in Poland between the wars.