Women Resistance Fighters of WWII, the Secret Lives of Ants and Other New Books to Read

Smithsonian Magazine
April 1, 2021

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking the beginning of World War II, the leaders of a Warsaw-based chapter of the Zionist HeHalutz youth movement instructed its members to retreat east. Initially, Frumka Płotnicka, a 25-year-old Jewish woman from the Polish city of Pinsk, complied with this request. But as historian Judy Batalion writes in The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, “[F]leeing a crisis did not suit her, and she immediately asked … [to] leave the area where her family lived and return to Nazi-occupied Warsaw.”

Once back in occupied territory, Płotnicka became a leading member of the Jewish resistance. She brought news of Nazi atrocities to ghettos across Poland, donning disguises and false identities to avoid detection, and was the first to smuggle weapons—guns hidden at the bottom of a large sack of potatoes—into the Warsaw Ghetto. Known for her empathy and gentle demeanor, she earned the nickname “Die Mameh,” or Yiddish for “the mother.”

As the war dragged on, other resistance fighters urged Płotnicka to escape from Nazi-occupied territory so she could bear witness to the “barbarian butchering of the Jews,” in the words of friend Zivia Lubetkin. But she refused, instead opting to stay with her comrades. In August 1943, Płotnicka died at 29 years old while leading an uprising against the Germans as they prepared to liquidate the Będzin Ghetto.

The latest installment in our series highlighting new book releases, which launched last year to support authors whose work has been overshadowed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, explores the lives of unheralded Jewish women resistance fighters like Płotnicka, poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath’s rivalry-turned-friendship, black settlers who sought refuge from Jim Crow in the American West, the millennia-old relationship between music and humans, and the surprisingly complex inner workings of ant colonies.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing–appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion

In 2007, Batalion was conducting research on Hungarian resistance paratrooper Hannah Senesh when she came across a musty, well-worn book at the British Library. Titled Freun in di Ghettos—Yiddish for Women in the Ghettos—the 200 sheets of cramped text contained a surprisingly vivid tale: “I’d expected to find dull, hagiographic mourning and vague, Talmudic discussions of female strength and valor,” the author explains in The Light of Days. “But instead—women, sabotage, rifles, disguise, dynamite. I’d discovered a thriller.”

Batalion’s chance find marked the beginning of a 14-year quest to uncover the stories of World War II’s Jewish women resistance fighters. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors herself, the scholar tells Lilith magazine that she conducted research across Poland, Israel and North America, discovering dozens of obscure memoirs; testimonies; and largely overlooked records of the “hundreds, even thousands, of young Jewish women who smuggled weapons, flung Molotov cocktails, and blew up German supply trains.” Of particular note is The Light of Days’ examination of why these women’s actions are so unrecognized today: Per Publishers Weekly, proposed explanations include “male chauvinism, survivor’s guilt, and the fact that the resistance movement’s military successes were ‘relatively miniscule.’”

At the heart of Batalion’s narrative is Renia Kukiełka, a Polish teenager who acted as an underground courier, moving “grenades, false passports and cash strapped to her body and hidden in her undergarments and shoes,” as the author writes in an adapted excerpt. When Kukiełka was eventually caught by the Gestapo, she retained a sense of fierce defiance, answering an officer who asked, “Don’t you feel it’s a waste to die so young?” with the retort “As long as there are people like you in the world, I don’t want to live.” Through a combination of cunning and luck, Kukiełka managed to escape her captors and make her way to Palestine, where, at just 20 years old, she penned a memoir of her wartime experiences.

The Light of Days, notes Batalion, seeks to “lift [Kukiełka’s] story from the footnotes to the text, unveiling this anonymous Jewish woman who displayed acts of astonishing bravery” while also giving voice to the many other women who took part in resistance efforts. From Niuta Teitelbaum, an assassin who used her youthful appearance to trick Gestapo agents into underestimating her, to Frumka Płotnicka’s younger sister Hantze, a fellow courier and “ebullient charmer” who delivered sermons about “Jewish pride [and] the importance of staying human,” Batalion presents a compelling account of what she deems “the breadth and scope of female courage.”