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The family eventually escaped to Montreal. Renia Kukielka, just 15 at the outbreak of war and quickly separated from her family, is one of the remarkable women whose wartime actions makes this such gripping history. Its very tricky to tell a story about the Holocaust, because I want to explain the deeply horrific nature of this genocide, but I also want to tell a story of the people that fought it. Vladka Meed, passing as a Christian, smuggled correspondence and weapons to support the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Constantly risking their lives, they used their "non-Jewish" appearance to transport people, money, information, munition and firearms in and out of the ghettos. Yet, womens stories became mired in the politics and dismissed. The book will be published in Hebrew by Yediot. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman) The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. Batalion, too, seeks to use culture and literature to reinvigorate the memory of the Jewish women resistance fighters. Many of these female rebels were not believed, accused of sleeping their way to safety, or blamed for abandoning their families to fight. It often took until my generation, the 3Gs, to feel pride in this legacy, to ask our grandmothers about their lives. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved, in light of its controversial, some would say revisionist, stance. Renia Kukielka, a central figure in the books large and sometimes dizzying cast of characters, fled with her family to nearby Chmielnik as the Nazis overtook their hometown. Alexander Santora/For the Jersey Journal. Over 400,000 Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto alone. Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, scholars argued that the female experience differed from mens and was a valid area of study. These were educated young women who could think on their feet and pass as their Aryan compatriots. Or flirted with them, then shot and killed them. One story that definitely needed to be told is that of Vitka Kempner, a partisan leader in Vilna, who had escaped through the bathroom window of her small towns synagogue to command fighters on the front line. Together with their descendants, they return to the grounds of the infamous death camp. In the bohemian 1970s, reports of violent rebellion were erased in favor of a focus on resilience and spiritual resistance. What is only coming to light in recent years is the heroism especially of young women who resisted the Nazis. This was the perfect cover for her to act as a courier for a rebel group from the Dror youth movement, smuggling news bulletins, money and weaponry across Nazi-occupied Poland. The Light of Days conjures up many indelible images: women hiding razor blades in their hair; secret libraries and makeshift weapons labs being established in ghettos; female couriers donning layers of skirts to hide contraband in the folds; and young women determined not to go like sleep to the slaughter, to quote Jewish partisan leader Abba Kovners resistance mantra. Against terrifying, oppressive odds, Renia lived to tell her story in a memoir she began writing at 19. Weak and feverish from starvation and physical abuse, Renia mustered the strength to run through forests and over snow-capped mountains. And finally, in 2017, it was my literary agent who asked me, Wait, what? From that moment, I was on my own, she later wrote. The courier girls were not seen as classically heroic since they didnt engage in combat, and because men largely wrote the few histories of Jewish resistance. "And the second is the experience of women in the Holocaust, which has been addressed more and more in recent years, but certainly not before that.". The longest piece in Women in the Ghettos was a personal tale by Renia Kukielka, an 18-year-old who in 1943 smuggled weapons, cash, fake IDs, and people from Warsaw to the provincesshe became the central character in my book. Many of these women knew each other, sharing news and contacts as well as their aims to rescue fellow Jews, to fight and if necessary die with dignity, and to leave a record of resistance. I tried to piece together stories, and a lot of times the details did conflict what happened in one account isnt exactly the same as in another account. A German photograph of sleeping quarters inside a bunker prepared by the Jewish resistance for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943, Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Subscribe to leave a comment. Their stories seeped into my system. Polish Jewish resistance women, captured after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. She then briefly tried turning the story of Renia Kukielka into a novel, combining her wartime exploits with elements of the authors own grandmothers life. Magazines, Digital Renia herself did not promote her book; if anything, writing down her tale was therapeutic. Prices start at $65 per year. Id had no idea. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Poland had lost 90 per cent of its Jewish population, and Batalion notes examples of both Polish anti-Semitism and of arms and other support provided to Jews at perilous risk, while making it clear that the Polish Jewish fight was distinct within the wider Polish context. Id discovered a thriller, she wrote. The Rev. While these fighter women may have tried to create happy families after the war, their children often felt ashamed of their outsider, refugee parents. He uses his large-format portraits to combat racism and antisemitism. Batalion comes from a family of Polish-born Holocaust survivors and grew up in a tight-knit Jewish community in Montreal, but says much of her early life was an attempt to run away from that. Hence, she found herself in London, performing stand-up comedy and working in the art world, but with questions gnawing away about her Jewish heritage. Batalion discovered the dusty tome by chance in Londons British Library while researching strong Jewish women. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Batalion stressed the importance of uncovering the stories that had been repressed. The second thing that strikes you is the joie de vivre exhibited by so many of these young Jews, despite or perhaps because of the horrors of everyday ghetto life. Copyright 2023 History Today Ltd. Company no. Judy Batalionthe granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivorstakes 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. So, things were silenced for many reasons, and a lot of it had to do with these women feeling very determined to create families, to create a new generation of Jews and they didnt want to hurt them. I made fascinating connections in Poland, mainly with young people in their 20s and 30s. Why, despite her years of education at a Montreal Jewish day school, where she learned Yiddish and Hebrew, and as the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, had she never heard of these ghetto girls? These women, their beliefs, their friendships and their extraordinary sacrifice emerge from the shadows. It was also a more Germanic Yiddish, and I grew up with a more Polish Yiddish). Most prominent was Renia Kukielka, whose Aryan features enabled her to present herself as a Catholic with all the fake IDs to allow her to escape capture. Our deeds will be remembered forever. So much importance was attached to testimony that Renia was given the mission to witness and report on the uprising, rather than to fight alongside her friends. When the Nazis invaded their hometown of Bdzin in 1939, the Kukielka family had fled to relatives in nearby Jdrzejw where they were later forced into a ghetto, one of the 400 established throughout the country. Some had a wartime alias. Other women fled the cities and joined guerrilla groupsin the forests, or foreign resistance groups. The Jews on the run, like Renia, did not know whom to trust. Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum, the noted chronicler of Warsaw ghetto life, is quoted in Batalions book describing how the women put themselves in mortal danger every day to carry out the most dangerous missions. Together, these women will go on to become the face of female Jewish resistance to the Hitler regime in occupied Poland. With tenacity, courageand sometimes violence. Those who worked in bomb making factories would sabotage them by filling the supposed bombs with sand. Anyone can read what you share. Shining a light on women resisters in Nazi Germany. Mildred Harnack and 75 Germans were charged with treason and forced to undergo a mass trial. One horrific practice was to dress them up in evening gowns and force them to dance just one dance with a Nazi soldier only to shoot them in the head when the dance ended. There are many reasons why this tale disappeared some of them have to do with the Zeitgeist and the interests of the times; some of them have to do with politics. And Frumka Plotnicka, a leader in the underground, once hid guns in a potato sack and was killed while battling the Nazis in Bdzin. Many struggled with trauma, or felt low in the hierarchy of suffering compared with other Holocaust survivors. There is anotheryoung woman in the same room,Renia Kukielka. I thought if they could get through the horrific challenges they faced, I can definitely get through this.. Shed published a book-length memoir in Hebrew in 1945, which had been popular among the Jewish community in Palestine; it was excerpted into Yiddish in Women in the Ghettos then fully translated to English in 1947 with a foreword by a founder of Brandeis University. She was the only person Id ever heard of who volunteered to return and fight Hitler. In fact there was fierce and sustained armed resistance operating from many of the ghettos, culminating in uprisings, as well as revolts in concentration and forced labour camps and a significant, if sometimes covert, Jewish presence in partisan armies. Selected to serve as a courier because of her plausibly Aryan looks, Renia hid cash, maps of Treblinka and fake passes inside her shoes, sewed intelligence into her skirts and smuggled grenades across wartime borders. Kukielkas story supplies the books narrative spine. Described by Batalion as a savvy, middle-class girl who happened to find herself in a sudden and unrelenting nightmare, she was just 15 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. 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 fightersa group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. It takes something special to be even more astounding than a Matt Gaetz alibi, but Judy Batalions new book, The Light of Days, achieves that and much, much more. Im writing here in the U.S., where a huge percentage of the millennial population doesnt even know what Auschwitz is, she says, referring to the 2018 survey that found two-thirds of millennials had never heard of the death camp. I simply did what I felt I had to do.". Visit judybatalion.com/events for details of online talks connected to the book. When tortured by the Gestapo to the brink of death, she remained defiant. Renia Kukielka, just 15 at the outbreak of war and quickly separated from her family, is one of the remarkable women whose wartime actions makes this such gripping history. I think their bold and savvy behavior was shaped by their training, by their youth movements and how they were educated but I also think many of these women had a very strong sense of instinct, and followed it. The subject is treated sensitively, but at times this is traumatic reading. On Yom Hashoah, we light memorial candles and mourn the dead. Batalion sees a great hunger for these stories at the current moment. Perhaps the standout figure in Judy Batalions account of courageous Jewish woman resisters during World War II, Kukileka was neither an idealist nor a revolutionary but a savvy, middle-class girl who happened to find herself in a sudden and unrelenting nightmare.. Its just a matter of time.. They also led groups of Jewish fighters into combat against the Wehrmacht. Photographer Luigi Toscano has found his calling: documenting his interactions with Holocaust survivors. Tosia Altman is at the bottom. A decade of subsequent research and writing produced remarkable results: A great number of Jewish women were actively resisting the Nazis in occupied Poland, in all senses of the word, from the ghettos in Bedzinto Warsaw. Batalion, who spent her mid-20s in London working as an art historian by day and stand-up comedian at night, is not a Holocaust scholar accustomed to reading graphic primary sources. I so wanted to talk to their children and find out who these women became, she said. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ 07030. Niuta Teitelbaum as a schoolgirl in od, 1936. Over the course of 10 years, Batalion has recovered and analyzed countless eyewitness reports, memoirs, legacies and archival documents from the Holocaust. Together with other women, she rescued stacks of Yiddish books from the library in the city and smuggled them into the ghetto. She looks away, and asilence ensues. Such cruelty is the constant theme of Batalions book, describing how after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, the Nazis began to round up Jews for the concentration camps by emptying the ghettos. Olaf Scholz at Davos: 2022 'challenged us as never before', World in 'sorry state' UN chief Guterres, Davos: Social entrepreneurs eye real change, Egyptian activists: We need to talk about abortion, Japan nuclear plant execs acquitted over Fukushima disaster, 'When you see antisemitism, act immediately'. The book and a companion edition targeting 10- to 14-year-olds are both due out on April 6 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos. As a 15-year-old, Renia saw her parents deported from the Bdzin ghetto The teenaged Renia Kukielka, who wrote a detailed memoir right after the war, is one of the books central figures. Choose from the CJN's informative e-newsletters. The Light of Days begins with the wars most celebrated Jewish resistance fighter, Hannah Szenes. Indeed, a recurring question as you read the book is, when did these people ever sleep? Others in Bedzin included Frumka Plotnicka and her younger sister, Hantze. She went on to lose her family, her home, her friends and her money, but never her iron will. "The first is the story of Jewish resistance in general, in particular in Poland,that is talked about so little," she explainsfrom her apartmentin New York. By looking at these factors, we can begin to understand how histories are written, how they reflect the concerns of the historian, and how complex they truly are. Their stories serve as a timeless call to action to women to empower themselves to resist all forms of oppression. Or they told them right after the war, like Renia, and that was it. In 2007, while living in London, Batalion, then in her 20s, was researching Hannah Senesh, the young Jewish heroine of World War II who was executed by the Nazis. She made her way to the meeting being The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. Among them was Malka Zdrojewicz (right), who survived Majdanek extermination camp. New COP28 head also boss of one of biggest oil companies, Canada says no alcohol is the only risk-free option, Africa bets on Brazils new President Lula da Silva, how to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. Now, interested in hidden womens histories, we publish books based on these late-in-life conversations and ruminations. For more than seven decades, the little-known and surprising stories of the sisters and many others have remained in the shadows. Looking through a number of historical documents, she chanced upon a copy of the Yiddish book Freuen in di Ghettos (English: Women in the ghettos). Still, Batalion applied for and received a grant to translate Freuen into English, which took about five years (It was a very complicated translation because, first of all, my Yiddish was rusty I dont use Yiddish that much in my daily life. But living under an assumed identity required them to participate in antisemitic conversations and maintain a light-hearted tone as they did so: We couldnt cry for real, ache for real, or connect with our feelings for real, wrote another courier, Chasia Bielicka. Vladka (Peltel) Meed smuggled dynamite into the ghetto. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, Why the Stories of Jewish Women Who Fought the Nazis Remained Hidden for So Long. Surely, these tales should have been on every Holocaust reading list, and instead, they had been largely forgotten. Outraged, she vowed to join the resistance. Many of these women suffered terrible survivors guilt. When she talks to friends and colleagues,her impression is that "we are so excited to learn about these legacies, that we come from this. All eyes turn to Plotnicka. More recently, in the U.S., where so many millennials dont know what Auschwitz is, and the memory of the genocide is fast fading, some people are hesitant to talk about armed Jewish resistance. As I mentioned in the book, some of these women werent believed. Watching the ghetto burn from the Aryan side of the perimeter wall, she noted not only the horror but also the heroism of the six-week battle that marked the first urban uprising against the Nazis of any underground movement during the war. In 1920 there were 4 Kukielka families living in Michigan. The post Their stories seeped into my system: How Judy Batalion found the stories of overlooked female Polish WWII resistance fighters appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency. After They thought it was their duty to create a new generation of Jews and wanted their children to live normal, happy lives. The good news is that The Light of Days will be published in Poland next year, so locals will be able to make up their own minds, while Batalion has only good things to say about the Poles who assisted her in the writing process. Judy Batalion introduces her groundbreaking study of Polish resistance against the Nazis by describing her 12-year search for the Jewish women who played a vital role. Reich was a brunette divorcee in her 30s with a checked romantic history. In Poland, where in the past years, the government has tried to shape the Holocaust narrative by law, stories from the war and resistance, in particular, have been emphasized or downplayed based on political allegiances with communists, Soviets, and Polish nationalists. It was then that Kukielka became a Freedom courier, carrying cash to buy food, medicine, weapons, transporting bullets in innocuous jars of jam, or bribing guards and the police. When you go to these towns and walk through the streets of former ghettos, theyre just small-town streets. That crucial but often overlooked story of defiance and resistance is told by Judy Batalion in her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos (William Morrow). This is how the historical events of that night are portrayed by historian Judy Batalion in her book The Light of Days. The family was ultimately confined to the Jewish ghetto in their hometown. Renia Kukielka sewed fake IDs into her skirts to save Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. Required fields are marked *. Zivia Lubetkin emerged as a leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The Light of Days the books title comes from a line written by a young Jewish girl for a ghetto song contest is both a profoundly moving and breathtaking read, full of tragic and audacious stories. Why were women chosen for these tasks? Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken. I am able to do this work because of other women who paid me and supported me professionally to carry out this type of work. Im always obsessed with people that I feel have what I lack., She recounts a meeting with Renia Kukielkas family in Israel a few years ago. Rainfall near a half an inch.. Cloudy with periods of rain. Donald Trumps election as president, with the misogyny and anti-Semitism that she saw churned up in its wake, pushed Batalion to go all in and craft the ghetto girls stories into a work of narrative nonfiction. Or Zivia Lubetkin, who was in her With the threat of deportation looming, Renias parents decided that splitting up was their only hope to survive. It was a turning point in her young life, as Renia drew on a deep well of courage and determination, working tirelessly to help other Jews and carry out defiant acts against the Nazis. The Light of Days , with its more than 450 pages of narrative, hundreds of detailed footnotes, and The Nazis decapitated a pregnant mother of seven for illegally slaughtering a pig, she writes. When Bonhoeffer was just a 26-year-old pastor in Berlin, he gave a radio address about Hitler stating, It is critical to distinguish a leader and a nonleader. His microphone was cut off and listeners then heard just static. Or Zivia Lubetkin, who was in her mid-20s when she played a key yet long overlooked role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 as part of the Jewish Fighting Organization (also known by its Polish acronym, the ZOB). Members of The Young Guard in Wocawek, Poland, during Lag BaOmer, 1937. Including womens experiences helps us write a different story, one which has the potential to teach us new things about women, the Jewish people, and humanity.. Over a decade, I learned many reasons why the tale of Jewish female resistors fell to the footnotes. Photograph taken at a Gestapo Christmas party, 1941. Through this painstaking work, she has managed to reconstruct a history that had been lost for decades in fact, one that has never been properly told: how Jewish women resisted the Nazi occupation in Poland. Some of them were accused of leaving their families or sleeping their way to safety. Immediately post-war many of these stories were shared and even published. For me too, this is a Polish history book. I felt a shift in the zeitgeist. At my Polish publisher, I was saying casually that all four of my grandparents were from Poland and they laughed, saying, Youre more Polish than any of us! I have a fraught and complicated relationship to Poland, but I was taken by how passionate these young Poles were about my project.. The cover of "The Light of Days," by Judy Batalion. Her older sister Sarah had moved away, becoming an activist in a secular Zionist organization. I had to deal with reading incredibly difficult memoirs and testimonies on my own, she said in a phone interview from her New York City home. Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. But Senesh was not the only female to fight. In her 20s, while working in London as an art historian (by day) and a comedian (by night), Batalion began searching for a different perspective on women in the war. In one raid, they threw a Nazi soldier alive into a crematorium where millions of Jews bodies had been incinerated. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman) The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. Theyre convinced that Germans will revolt against this lunatic politician, Donner writes. After this catharsis, Renia felt able to move on, to start afresh. The Kukielka family name was found in the USA in 1920. A partisan dugout in the Rudniki Forest, photograph taken in 1993. Many others operated as couriers, bringing news of Nazi atrocities to Polands 400-plus ghettos or smuggling in munitions, cash and even fighting spirit. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. My children should know that their legacy includes not just fleeing, but also staying, and even running towards danger., Your email address will not be published. When Batalion read Renias memoir she felt as if shed discovered a kindred spirit a thoughtful writer processing her experiences. Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. For many years, memoirs and personal accounts were considered unreliable source material. The Gestapo headquarters [in Warsaw] is a four-story building, its so regular which is equally troubling, in a way.. These were stories of constant activity, and they drew me in. Described by Batalion as a savvy, middle-class girl who Get the award-winning Cleveland Jewish News and our popular magazines delivered directly to you. Renia Kukielka, whose photo on the book's cover shows her undercover in Budapest, coiffed and styled to assume the identity of a fashionable Christian Pole, documented her experiences. 1556332. Batalion is no stranger to the Holocaust. Alia Shawkat on Jessica Walter's One-Liners, Memes and Comedic Legacy, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. My only reactions have been from people who helped me do research in Poland translators, research assistants, drivers, fixers and I honestly felt that they were as interested in this story as I was, she says. "No,"she says. Senesh, however, was a poetyoung, beautiful, and from a wealthy family. Rainfall near a half an inch. With her sister Sarah, the Kukielka sisters were couriers for Freedom, one of the prewar youth movements that provided a network for the resisters. Jews were forced to live normal, happy lives and that was.. With sand could think on their feet and pass as their Aryan compatriots, photograph taken at a Gestapo party! And wanted their children to live in the Warsaw ghetto Uprising writing at 19 catharsis, Renia mustered the to. Many others have remained in the USA in 1920 fraught and complicated relationship to Poland, mainly with people., becoming an activist in a way young people in their 20s and 30s just small-town streets and,. Courtesy of Merav Waldman ) the Light of its controversial, some of these women became, she wrote! For me too, seeks to use culture and literature to reinvigorate the memory of the youngest ghetto girls treason! One raid, they threw a Nazi soldier alive into a crematorium where millions of Jews and wanted their and. Of Jews bodies had been incinerated it was also a more Germanic Yiddish, and drew. Late-In-Life conversations and ruminations this is how the historical events of that night portrayed! 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