 | |
| Author | Judy Batalion |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | William Morrow (publisher) |
Publication date | 2021 |
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos is a 2021 non-fiction book by Canadian writer Judy Batalion. [1] [2] [3]
Kirkus Reviews called the book a "resounding history of Jewish women who fought the German invaders in World War II" and a "welcome addition to the literature of the Shoah and of anti-Nazi resistance." [4] Diane Cole of the Wall Street Journal wrote that the book "does not flinch from describing the wanton acts of Nazi-inflicted cruelty and torture these women witnessed and endured," calling the book a "well-researched and riveting chronicle." [5]
Julia M. Klein of the Boston Globe wrote that the book "takes readers deep into the psyches of these women" and that Batalion's "research is prodigious, and her dedication to her story obvious and moving. But the book’s very scope — its huge cast of characters, geographical sweep, and mix of chronological and thematic organization — may deter less committed readers." [6] Writing for The New York Times, Sonia Purnell said the book "pulses with both rage and pride," but that Batalion's "desire to pay tribute to as many as possible is understandable, but a simpler narrative with fewer subjects might have been even more powerful." [7]
Mordechai Anielewicz was the leader of the Jewish Combat Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the largest Jewish resistance movement during the Second World War. Anielewicz inspired further rebellions in both ghettos and extermination camps with his leadership. His character was engraved as a symbol of courage and sacrifice, and was a major figure of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
The ghetto uprisings during World War II were a series of armed revolts against the regime of Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1943 in the newly established Jewish ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. Following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Polish Jews were targeted from the outset. Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos in which they forced the Jews to live. The new ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life with the aim of economic exploitation. The combination of excess numbers of inmates, unsanitary conditions and lack of food resulted in a high death rate among them. In most cities the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although ghettoization had severely limited their access to resources.
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland.
Henryk Iwański (1902-1978), nom de guerre Bystry, was a member of the Polish resistance during World War II. He is known for leading one of the most daring actions of the Armia Krajowa in support of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, however later research cast doubts on the veracity of his claims. For his assistance to the Polish Jews Iwański was bestowed the title of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1964.
Nechama Tec was a Polish-American historian who was Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she studied and worked with the sociologist Daniel Bell, and was a Holocaust scholar. Her book When Light Pierced the Darkness (1986) and her memoir Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (1984) both received the Merit of Distinction Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. She is also the author of the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans on which the film Defiance (2008) is based, as well as a study of women in the Holocaust. She was awarded the 1994 International Anne Frank Special Recognition prize for it.
Roland Merullo is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels Breakfast with Buddha, In Revere, In Those Days, A Little Love Story, Revere Beach Boulevard and the memoir Revere Beach Elegy. His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German, Chinese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech and Italian.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1933 novel by the Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel. Based on the events at Musa Dagh in 1915 during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the book played a role in organizing the Jewish resistance under Nazi rule. It was passed from hand to hand in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and it became an example and a symbol for the Jewish underground throughout Europe. The Holocaust scholars Samuel Totten, Paul Bartrop and Steven L. Jacobs underline the importance of the book for many of the ghettos' Jews: "The book was read by many Jews during World War II and was viewed as an allegory of their own situation in the Nazi-established ghettos, and what they might do about it."
Of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust, two million were women. Between 1941 and 1945, Jewish women were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps or hiding to avoid capture by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler's regime in Germany. They were also sexually harassed, raped, verbally abused, beaten, and used for Nazi human experimentation. Jewish women had a sizable and distinct role in the resistance and partisan groups.
Pearl Schiff was an American author from Boston, Massachusetts. She is best known for her first novel, Scollay Square, which made The New York Times Best Seller list in 1952. The novel, about an upper-class woman's affair with a sailor in Boston's red-light district, was considered scandalous at the time.
Isaiah Trunk was a chief archivist of the Yiddish Scientific Institute YIVO in New York from Warsaw, and the leading historian on the Holocaust. Trunk was an expert on Jewish history during the Nazi occupation of Poland. A scholar and author originally from Poland, he was the winner of a National Book Award in history and a National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for his monograph titled Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation published in New York by Macmillan in 1972.
Tilar J. Mazzeo is a cultural historian, wine writer, and author of bestselling works of narrative nonfiction.
Leonardo da Vinci is a 1996 children's biography by Diane Stanley. The book looks at Leonardo's life and accomplishments.
Sonia Shainwald Orbuch was an American Holocaust educator. During the Second World War, she was a Jewish resistance fighter in eastern Poland.
The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City is a 2009 book by Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak. It was first published in Polish in 2001 as Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście. The book focuses on the Warsaw Ghetto.
"In the Presence of Mine Enemies" was an American television play broadcast on May 18, 1960. It was the 16th episode of the fourth season of the CBS television series Playhouse 90, and also the final broadcast in the show's four-year run.
Niuta Tajtelbaum, was a Jewish resistance fighter in Warsaw, Poland during World War II.
Afterland is a 2020 science fiction novel by South African writer Lauren Beukes. It takes place during "Manfall", a 2020 pandemic which has killed off almost all the world's men. Three years later In the United States, Cole and her twelve-year-old son, Miles are trying to flee to their home in South Africa. Miles is one of the few surviving males, and is sought after by US government researchers and boy traffickers.
Renia Kukielka was a native of Poland and a member of the Zionist youth resistance during the Nazi occupation. From 1943 until she escaped Poland in 1944, she was a member of the Freedom couriers, a group of young people who smuggled food, medicine, and weapons into the Ghettos. During this time, Kukielka disguised herself as a Polish Catholic. In 1943, she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but was able to escape and fled to British Mandate Palestine. She published her memoir in Hebrew, titled, Bindudim Uvamachteret: 1939–1943 B'Polin, when she was nineteen years old, before the end of World War II. She died in Haifa, Israel, in 2014.
Bela Yaari Hazan (1922–2004) was a member of the Jewish resistance in Poland during the Second World War. She took on a Christian Polish identity and worked as a courier, passing information, money and arms between various ghettos. She was eventually imprisoned, tortured and sent to concentration camps, all the while maintaining her false identity. She worked as a nurse in the various camps that she found herself in, assisting resistance groups in the camps and getting medicine to Jewish inmates. She survived disease, hard labour, starvation and finally attempts by an SS squad to kill all the remaining prisoners in her final camp by helping move them overnight to the safety of approaching American troops. After liberation she went to France and then Italy, resuming her Jewish identity, before migrating to Israel in late 1945. After writing her memoirs They Called Me Bronislawa, she married and spent the rest of her life in Israel with her family. Many years after her death she was awarded the "Jewish Rescuer Citation" by B'nai B'rith.