Heroic Women-Run Resistance In Ghettos & Nazi Death Camps: New Book, 'The Light of Days' [View all]

- PBS NewsHour. New book explores the heroic women-run resistance inside Nazi death camps. April 8, 2021. 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.

- Transcript, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-book-explores-the-heroic-women-run-resistance-inside-nazi-death-camps
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- Jews in Warsaw before World War II.

- The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, by Judy Batalion (Goodreads Author).

One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.

Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers.

They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. - Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown. -

.. The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52090762-the-light-of-days