In 1930s Poland, families often sent their sons to private Jewish schools and daughters to public Polish schools. “Women were not circumcised, so they didn't have a physical marker of their Jewishness on their bodies like men did,” she says. First, men suspected of being Jewish in Nazi-occupied Poland were often forced to drop their pants to show if they were circumcised, she says. To leave the ghetto, a Jewish person needed to pass for a Catholic Pole - a task that was easier for women than men. The women even smuggled people out of slave labor camps and brought them to the forest. Young Jewish women risked their lives to smuggle weapons, ammunition, dynamite, fake IDs, money and medicine into the ghettos, she says. These preexisting social connections served as a substitute family for young Jews, she says. Many of the women Batalion writes about were part of organized youth movements before being sent to the ghettos. They were not allowed newspapers,” she says. “People in the ghettos also had no information. Testimonials and memoirs she read while researching for the book spoke of illness and lice. Multiple families were forced to live in the same room at the “torturous,” overcrowded ghettos, Batalion says. The book focuses on resistance inside the ghettos where many Jews were sent before Nazi death camps. Judy Batalion’s new book, “ The Light of Days,” tells the story of women resistance fighters who smuggled weapons, assassinated Nazis and sabotaged German supply lines. In the 1940s, a group of young Jewish women living in the ghettos of Poland reacted to Adolf Hitler’s murderous campaign with unfathomable courage. (Courtesy) This article is more than 2 years old.Įditor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on Jan.

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

The Light of Days by Judy Batalion