By Barbara Spindel Correspondent
In 1942, two years before his death at the hands of the Gestapo, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum, in a diary entry written from the Warsaw Ghetto, praised the courage of female resistance fighters. “How many times have they looked death in the eyes? How many times have they been arrested and searched?” he marveled. “The story of the Jewish woman will be a glorious page in the history of Jewry during the present war.”
Alas, Ringelblum’s prediction did not come to pass. Instead, as Judy Batalion observes in her thrilling, devastating new book, “The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos,” the heroism of the female resisters has been largely forgotten.
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This week on 51%, we hear the untold story of women resistance fighters in Hitler s ghettos. We also speak with an author about life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein s regime.
Of the legions of stories of World War II and the Holocaust that shape our understanding of those history-changing events, one of the most extraordinary has remained hidden: the daring resistance efforts of Jewish women in the ghettos of the Nazi occupations. In the new book T
White Walls: A Memoir about Motherhood, Daughterhood and the Mess in Between. Her essays have appeared in the
New York Times, the
Washington Post, and
Judy Batalion s new book, The Light of Days, details acts of heroism by Jewish women in the ghettos of eastern Europe - and even within the death camps. She documents how female couriers hand-carried crucial messages, weapons, and ammunition as part of the resistance in besieged Jewish ghettos. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant presents the report for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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Judy Woodruff:
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, now 76 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe.
A new book out this week, The Light of Days by Judy Batalion, details acts of heroism by Jewish women in the ghettos of Eastern Europe, and even within the death camps, who risked their lives to challenge the Nazis.