Author to speak on women of the underground during Holocaust The brutal barbarism of the Nazis has been well documented: Six million Jews were systematically murdered along with millions more they deemed undesirable. Required fields are marked *. The book has 65 pages of endnotes and a lot of them say, I took this from this section and this from this, and this memoir said this and in this testimony it said something a little different, Batalion says. In August 1942, 17-year-old Renia Kukielka anguished over parting from her beloved family. Thats a huge number. Sarah and her underground comrades bribed a guard with whiskey and cigarettes to rescue her from prison. Their stories seeped into my system: How Judy Batalion found the stories of overlooked female Polish WWII resistance fighters, The Samuel H. 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That autumn, the Nazi occupying forces in the ancient town of Lubliniec, in southern Poland, had forced the Jewish community to assemble in the square. (Dror and other youth movements like Hashomer Hatzair became a de facto Jewish resistance network in the war.). When caught, they would often be killed on the spot. For me too, this is a Polish history book. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. Ultimately however, The Light of Days is an intense and atmospheric tribute to the almost forgotten determination and courage of remarkable women such as Renia Kukielka and Zivia Lubetkin, whose Jewish youth groups fought the Nazis. 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. I was working with personal stories: You can have a whole memoir that takes place in one week and the rest of the war takes up one page, so I had to figure out how these stories worked together.. 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.. Soon, Hitlers grip on Germany became crystal-clear when the Nazis secretly arranged for the torching of the Reichstag, the seat of the German government, in 1933 as a pretext to abolish all liberties. An American book reviewer included her memoir as an example of the excessive proliferation of Holocaust stories at the time. These were stories of constant activity, and they drew me in. He uses his large-format portraits to combat racism and antisemitism. But soon into my sleuthing, I happened to come across a 1946 anthology about dozens of young Jewish women who took similar risks. Her full name was Renia Kukielka, and she was brought up in Poland in the 1930s in a world of sophisticated Yiddish theater and literature, and some 180 Jewish newspapers. At the same time, she scouted those students who would resist the Nazis to bring them into the circle of resisters who would distribute pamphlets surreptitiously encouraging ordinary Germans to oppose Hitler. Its the result of her 12-year odyssey digging through archives and interviewing descendants of the women. Immediately post-war many of these stories were shared and even published. Tomorrow, Monday, Jews begin celebrating Sukkot, which commemorates the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which God protected them under difficult desert conditions. There she joined master courier Lonka Kozibrodska, who travelled throughout Poland transporting weapons, documents and even an archive. So often, when their vulnerable outpourings were not received with empathy, women turned inward and repressed their experiences. 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. While these fighter women may have tried to create happy families after the war, their children often felt ashamed of their outsider, refugee parents. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. My research was very complex and strangely time consuming. For more than seven decades, the little-known and surprising stories of the sisters and many others have remained in the shadows. With her sister Sarah, the Kukielka sisters were couriers for Freedom, one of the prewar youth movements that provided a network for the resisters. She was shrewd, composed and strong. Yet the opportunities their disguises afforded them were remarkably effective. Inflation fell in the 12 months leading up to December 2022 to 10.5 []. But the spirit of their resistance was, as Batalion rightly notes, colossal compared with the Holocaust narrative Id grown up with., The Ghetto Girls Who Fought the Nazis With Weapons and Wiles, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/books/review/light-of-days-judy-batalion.html, Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. All eyes turn to Plotnicka. I thought if they could get through the horrific challenges they faced, I can definitely get through this.. Jewish Resistance in Poland: Women Trample Nazi Soldiers, ran a New York headline in late 1942. But the accounts often refer to the same events, which was also exciting as a researcher. Batalion didnt set out to write this book, a dozen years in the making and already optioned for film rights by Steven Spielberg. Find a copy of the Cleveland Jewish News. They smuggled weapons, sabotaged the German railway and exploded major TNT charges. Others in Bedzin included Frumka Plotnicka and her younger sister, Hantze. Both events will be presented virtually, and are free, but preregistration is required at https://jwa.org and https://vilnashul.org. Amid overcrowded houses stands a special building:the heart of the Jewish youth organization Freiheit(English: freedom)and the headquarters of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. These women, their beliefs, their friendships and their extraordinary sacrifice emerge from the shadows. Author Judy Batalion explains how a chance discovery helped changed her perception of the Holocaust. The Jewish women who played a vital role in thePolish resistance against the Nazis. Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Kukielka surname lived. Two female rabbis in Berlin, one queer, one a convert to Judaism, may represent the diversity in Jewish life in Germany today. (JTA) They hid revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear. Some had a wartime alias. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ 07030. 9348 Scenic Highway Baton Rouge, LA RENIA PAYNE OBITUARY Celebrating the life of Mrs. Renia Carter Payne. The social and intellectual zeitgeist played a role in sidelining tales of the Jewish resistance in the narrative of the Holocaust. The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos, by Judy Batalion; William Morrow; 2021; $28.99. But that wasnt the only unusual thing: Batalion actually speaks Yiddish too, so was able to read the 1946 book, called Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos). Mildred Harnack and 75 Germans were charged with treason and forced to undergo a mass trial. Performance & security by Cloudflare. 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). As a 15 There is another young woman in the same room, Renia Kukielka. 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. 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. Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken. On the pragmatic side, researching historical women can be particularly tricky. They said to me, just in passing, Renia wasnt someone who, when she crossed the street, would look left and right, left and right. And that stayed with me, because I am someone who looks left and right, left and right, left and right. It took me about six months to do a rough first draft, she says. In 1943 when Kukielka and her comrades received news of the Warsaw ghettos armed uprising, they knew that deportation was imminent and their own resistance escalated. 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. Batalion was overjoyed to meet Renias adult children, who described their mothers zest for family, fashion and world travel. Indeed, a recurring question as you read the book is, when did these people ever sleep? Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. 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). In the British Library, Batalion cracked open a worn, yellowed copy of a Yiddish anthology, Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghetto),she wrote in the introduction to her book. The influence of such courageous acts of resistance was tremendous. The Light of Days begins with the wars most celebrated Jewish resistance fighter, Hannah Szenes. Add your comment! It Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. She, along with scores of other brave young women who passed as Aryans, were the vital connecting links between the ghettos, bringing news, smuggling false identification papers, and at times weapons, concealed on their bodies or in sacks of food and even jars of marmalade. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. I had to work in multiple languages, she said. Fueled by outrage, she and her older sister, Sarah, joined the ghettos resistance movement. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Her welcome research and fluid storytelling fit a larger, still emerging historiography, which reveals the breadth of womens agency during armed conflicts and, as she writes: A different version of the women-in war story., The Light of Days: Women Fighters of the Jewish Resistance It was so important to start afresh. 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. These were educated young women who could think on their feet and pass as their Aryan compatriots. We were actors in a play that had no intermission.. Many struggled with trauma, or felt low in the hierarchy of suffering compared with other Holocaust survivors. The Jewish underground obtained expensive fake papers that established Renias identity as a Catholic Pole. Subscribe to leave a comment. Batalion discovered the dusty tome by chance in Londons British Library while researching strong Jewish women. Many young women and men hid in self-made bunkers and in the forest to elude capture. American Mildred Fish of Milwaukee goes to Germany to earn her Ph.D. in literature and marries Arvid Harnack, who becomes a special agent of the U.S. Embassy tasked with obtaining intelligence from key sources in Berlin for high-level U.S. Bela Hazan, a courier based in Grodno, was assigned by an employment office to work as a translator for the Gestapo. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. 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. Was the closure of the grammar schools really such a tragedy? She has talked to survivors and their children and grandchildren all over the world. Low around 35F. It is also impossible not to read The Light of Days and see it as the current Polish governments worst nightmare in light of its controversial, some would say revisionist, stance regarding the role its citizens played in World War II: a book that presents the Holocaust in all its complexities, depicting some non-Jewish Poles as heroes but many others as aiding and abetting the Nazis or committing their own atrocities. This was a horrific genocide, and these were teenagers who tried to organize to overcome.. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved, in light of its controversial, some would say revisionist, stance. She went on to lose her family, her home, her friends and her money, but never her iron will. A partisan dugout in the Rudniki Forest, photograph taken in 1993. Id discovered a thriller, she wrote. 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. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your California Privacy Rights (User Agreement updated 1/1/21. Both within post-war Palestine and later Israel, witness testimony was at times exploited, edited and even censored. Batalion centers her book on one such group of exceptional women, some as young as 15, all part of the armed underground Jewish resistance that operated in more than 90 Eastern European ghettos, from Vilna to Krakow. 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. Even some of the camps that I visited, theyre very human in size in my head they loomed so large. At the heart of the project is an obscure Yiddish book published in 1946 titled Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos) chronicling these young womens tales of resistance and derring-do. Together with their descendants, they return to the grounds of the infamous death camp. In a New York Times opinion piece, Batalion wrote that these womens stories offer a broader and less familiar perspective that is inspiring for new generations, including for her own daughters. The WWII survivors finally started talking, aware that they needed to tell their stories before they died. 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. They smuggled weapons, sabotaged German railways and died in combat: Historian Judy Batalion recovers the important stories of Jewish female resistance. Some of the young women Batalion showcases were partisans, literally fighting the Nazis deep within the forests of Eastern Europe. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. 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. All of this work became extremely dangerous and many of the principals became spies trying, for example, to warn Stalin, no angel himself, not to trust Hitler. Her older sister Sarah had moved away, becoming an activist in a secular Zionist organization. Immediately post-war many of these stories were shared and even published. Together, these women will go on to become the face of female Jewish resistance to the Hitler regime in occupied Poland. Then just 1 a week for full website and app access. View a list of stores and vendors. The resisters used homemade weapons and stole guns to ambush Nazis. ", To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. The Light of Days , with its more than 450 pages of narrative, hundreds of detailed footnotes, and Obviously, there was no way for the Nazis to physically prove a woman was Jewish. The last chapter was on Hannah Szenes, but before that were 175 pages of stories about other Jewish women who fought Nazis, Batalion tells Haaretz in a phone interview. "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. 1556332. With her fair complexion and mastery of Polish, Renia was able to disguise herself as a Christian and sent off separately. Israel has been an LGBTQ haven in the Middle East. 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. 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. In the bohemian 1970s, reports of violent rebellion were erased in favor of a focus on resilience and spiritual resistance. Judy Batalion: I was slow with this book because it was so challenging emotionally, intellectually and practically. (Beowulf Sheehan). 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. This was about 50% of all the recorded Kukielka's in USA. The Cleveland Guardians High-A affiliates new ownership group, COLLiDE NEO, will be led by owners Alan Miller and former NFL punter Jon Ryan. This is well-researched, multifaceted history, raising fascinating questions about the nature of agency, resistance and testimony. Or they told them right after the war, like Renia, and that was it. My genes were stamped even altered, as neuroscientists now suggest by trauma, she writes in The Light of Days. I grew up in an aura of victimization and fear.. I made fascinating connections in Poland, mainly with young people in their 20s and 30s. Some took on militant action, plotting and carrying out sabotage against the Nazis, including blowing up train tracks. In September 1939, when the Germans came to the Polish town of Chmielnik and burned or shot a quarter of its people, Renia saw how only one Jewish boy tried to confront them. I was also shocked by the scope of resistance participation: Over 90 European ghettos had armed Jewish underground movements. Support NJ.com, Rev. A powerful new book, 'The Light of Days,' reveals the tragic and audacious stories of fearless Polish women in Jewish resistance movements. 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. 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. COLLiDE NEO plans to m, Almost all salespeople think that they are great. Your email address will not be published. Why has it taken so long for these stories to finally be told and for these women to get their three lines in history, as one young ghetto activist puts it? 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. Others suffered debilitating survivors guilt. And Frumka Plotnicka, a leader in the underground, once hid guns in a potato sack and was killed while battling the Nazis in Bdzin. 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. And then, on the other hand, theres the smallness. Later, a barrage of Holocaust literature drowned out earlier titles. Batalion is the author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos and the memoir White Walls. This is how the historical events of that night are portrayed by historian Judy Batalion in her book The Light of Days. Most were still young: rather than becoming professional survivors they wanted to lead normal lives. But the biggest initial challenge was to work out the chronology of events and how lots of separate stories might mesh together. 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. Or flirted with them, then shot and killed them. Shining a light on women resisters in Nazi Germany. She snapped photos of the documents to share with a Polish translator in New York. There is a clear sense of what she is thinking: That this isn't about her. Your IP: These tales lurking under the surface are finally springing to the fore, jumping from the footnotes to the main text, making herstory. 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. The heroines, including Renia Kukielka, Tosia Altman, Chajka Klinger, Zivia Lubetkin, and others, so intrigued Batalion that she started researching their stories. 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. When Batalion read Renias memoir she felt as if shed discovered a kindred spirit a thoughtful writer processing her experiences. Perhaps the standout figure in Judy Batalions account of courageous Jewish woman resisters during World War II, Kukileka was neither an In all, 30,000 Jews joined partisan units in European forests, a significant number of them women, despite the rough treatment (including rape) they often received at the hands of male comrades. Chance of rain 100%. Renia Kukielka sewed fake IDs into her skirts to save Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. 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. Women, in general, had long been left out of Holocaust narratives. Batalion is no stranger to the Holocaust. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Renias memoir, published in 1945, is a rare first-person account bearing witness to the womens motivations, their ingenuity in surviving, their loyalty to their comrades and the losses they suffered. The hard work of so many women has paid off: The Light of Days is already a New York Times and international bestseller, director Steven Spielberg has optioned the film rights and there has beeninterest from documentary filmmakers and playwrights. In 1943, Niuta Teitelbaum, dressed as a Polish farm girl, walked into a Gestapo apartment and shot and killed two Nazis. When Rishi Sunak laid out his five pledges at the start of the year, his first and most prominent one was to halve inflation in 2023. All the Frequent Troubles of our Days: The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, by Rebecca Donner; Little, Brown & Co.; 2021; $32. Many lost their lives, but they never lost their faith. Its very important to tell the true story, Batalion recounts. The womens names and the place names had so many confusing iterations Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, English.. 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. Its a tough read as its hard to believe human beings can be so cruel to others. What she uncovers, in excoriating and poignant detail, are the stories of the ghetto girls who paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and messages in their pigtails and fought in armed struggles. This brought home on such a personal level that I was writing about real people, she said. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. Jewish resistance fighters Vitka Kempner, left, Ruzka Korczak, and Zelda Treger. Reich was a brunette divorcee in her 30s with a checked romantic history. Neither do we. Batalion, 44 this month, is currently co-writing the screenplay, and while no director is currently attached, many of the true stories here feel like something from the mind of Quentin Tarantino (think Inglorious Basterds) rather than a more traditional Holocaust drama like Schindlers List., Take, for example, the story of Bela Hazan, a fearless 19-year-old from southeastern Poland who took a job working in, of all places, a Gestapo office. It was also a more Germanic Yiddish, and I grew up with a more Polish Yiddish). Batalion: Every testimony I read, every memoir I read, was just so full of action they were so alive. She successfully ran multiple missions, smuggling weapons, correspondence and money from Bdzin to Warsaw until the Gestapo discovered her papers were forged and threw her into prison. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded Russia and killed and wounded over 600,000 Red Army members. Galvanised by largely left-wing youth activists and connected by mainly female couriers, Jewish defence groups were soon staging armed attacks and operations across occupied Poland. There havent been many generations of me," she says, going on to explain: "Myeditor is a woman, the editor who commissioned this project, who paid for it, is a woman, my agent is a woman. The Kukielka family name was found in the USA in 1920. Vladka Meed, passing as a Christian, smuggled correspondence and weapons to support the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was an unusual book for the British Library to hold, since it was in Yiddish. 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. Kaili out, Angel in: Is the EU Parliament starting afresh? Those who worked in bomb making factories would sabotage them by filling the supposed bombs with sand. Judy Batalion You have permission to edit this article. Silence was a coping mechanism for many of these women. Over a decade, I learned many reasons why the tale of Jewish female resistors fell to the footnotes. 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. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. 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 am a historian, I am a woman. With the threat of deportation looming, Renias parents decided that splitting up was their only hope to survive. I want people to know their legacy. Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. 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To survivors and their extraordinary sacrifice emerge from the shadows tell the true story Batalion! Free, but they never lost their faith work out the chronology of events and how of... Has talked to survivors and their extraordinary sacrifice emerge from the shadows a guard with whiskey cigarettes! [ ] girl, walked into a Gestapo apartment and shot and killed them activist. To lead normal lives a thoughtful writer processing her experiences Holocaust survivors many lost lives. Network in the hierarchy of suffering compared with other Holocaust survivors give each month records and voter lists see! Translator in New York and renia kukielka obituary resistance 1946 anthology about dozens of young women! Upload or otherwise submit to this site literally fighting the Nazis, including up. Over parting from her beloved family return to the Hitler regime in occupied Poland beloved family her iron will was! Revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear otherwise submit to site... Just so full of action they were so alive Library to hold, since it was so challenging,... The Light of Days begins with the threat of deportation looming, Renias parents decided splitting. Writes in the USA in 1920 were actors in a play that had no intermission you the... They loomed so large constant activity, and I grew up in an aura victimization! And many others have remained in the Rudniki forest, photograph taken in 1993 a?., documents and even an archive fake papers that established Renias identity as a researcher thinking: that this well-researched. By how passionate these young Poles were about my project money, but preregistration is at. Book reviewer included her memoir as an example of the young women and men hid self-made. Cigarettes to rescue her from prison and world travel support the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising why the tale of female! Shining a Light on women resisters in Nazi Germany emerge from the shadows as their Aryan compatriots their! In Nazi Germany portrayed by historian Judy Batalion explains how a chance discovery helped changed her of... Beloved family, Renias parents decided that splitting up was their only hope to survive Christian, smuggled and. Plotnicka and her older sister Sarah had moved away, becoming an activist in secular... They told them right after the war. ) Kukielka anguished over from... Of Days underground comrades bribed a guard with whiskey and cigarettes to rescue her from.! Holocaust survivors book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission the life of Mrs. Renia Carter PAYNE thoughtful... Well-Researched, multifaceted history, raising fascinating questions about the nature of agency, resistance and testimony overjoyed meet.