The Hidden Heroines of World War II

Lilith
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 The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (William Morrow, $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. 

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