Fighting back
When a group of Polish Jewish women witnessed the brutal murders of their families and friends, as well as the destruction of their communities, they decided to fight back. Forming a resistance group dubbed the “Ghetto girls”, they inspired a generation of Poland’s Jewish youth to actively resist the Nazis. Hoodwinking the SS squads with their seeming innocence and youth – some were as young as 16 – these women moved around Poland, bribing and assassinating Gestapo agents and SS officers. In the face of great personal risk, they smuggled guns and food into the ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz, engaged in armed combat in the forests around Vilna (now Vilnius), and smuggled Jews to safety in hidden underground bunkers.
Defiant to the end, their actions extended to the sabotage of German supply lines and hiding coded messages in the braids of their plaited hair. Alongside their Polish Jewish comrades, these women smuggled themselves in and out of the ghettos and supported the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.
The brutality of the SS squads and Gestapo made Renia, one of the central characters, feel physically sick. She contemplated suicide but instead chose to survive and fight, making a pledge: “I will not ease the Germans’ work with my own hands.”
Judy Batalion’s narrative draws the reader into this world as if we were eyewitnesses to the events described. These stories are driven by suspense and drama, and the steely nerves and bravery of the characters demand that we keep reading to find out their fate.
This is a powerful and haunting book, narrated with honesty and without elaboration by Batalion – herself a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. It is one of the most important untold stories of the Holocaust.