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. But it didnt. Virago 558pp 20. "If we must die, then let us die together. On this day, women and men have come together in this building to make a momentous decision. 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. 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. Batalion, too, seeks to use culture and literature to reinvigorate the memory of the Jewish women resistance fighters. As a 15 Outraged, she vowed to join the resistance. These were women who saw and acknowledged the truth, had the courage to act on their convictions and fought with their lives for what was fair and right, she said. (JTA) They hid revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear. Left to right: Vitka Kempner, Ruzka Korczak, and Zelda Treger. If the Polish Jewish resistance achieved relatively modest victories, Batalion argues that it was much larger and more organised than historians have previously recognised. This was a horrific genocide, and these were teenagers who tried to organize to overcome.. Many of those who survived, like Renia, honoured their commitment to bear witness, writing the memoirs and giving the talks that Batalion has used to good effect. She almost set it aside, but the historian in her forced her to pick it up and examine it. Despite all the hardships and loss they endured, the young rebels would take time to practice makeshift holy days, like Sukkot, while hiding in the forest. 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. 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. Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. These rebel women had Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish names, as well as nicknames. 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. Thats a huge number. Freuen was just the starting point for The Light of Days, though. Theyre all talking about that day in 1942. 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. Furthermore, much of this resistance was enabled, organised and led by women. Haviva Reich was also a paratrooper; shed convinced an American pilot to blind-drop her in Slovakia, where she organized shelter for thousands of refugees, rescued Allied service members, and helped children escape. Jewish resistance fighters Tema Schneiderman, left, Bela Hazan and Lonka Kozibrodska. Batalion: Every testimony I read, every memoir I read, was just so full of action they were so alive. Writing my book on these women, The Light of Days, required working with a multitude of languages and monikers. "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. Visit judybatalion.com/events for details of online talks connected to the book. The chapters had titles like Ammunition and Partisan Battles, and in one part there was an ode to guns, she recalls. 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. Tosia Altman is at the bottom. Batalion hopes the stories of female heroism she resurrected serve to inspire future generations of all faiths, especially her own two daughters, both in elementary school. The social and intellectual zeitgeist played a role in sidelining tales of the Jewish resistance in the narrative of the Holocaust. Renia Kukielka sewed fake IDs into her skirts to save Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. The influence of such courageous acts of resistance was tremendous. Poignantly, Batalion adds,Reinhartz was reading the USnovel Gone with the Windwhile hiding to escape deportation. Together with their descendants, they return to the grounds of the infamous death camp. Zivia Lubetkin speaking at Kibbutz Yagur, 1946. The most detailed story is that of Renia Kukielka, who was among the few who survived, escaping to Palestine in 1944. "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.". They thought it was their duty to create a new generation of Jews and wanted their children to live normal, happy lives. This is how the historical events of that night are portrayed by historian Judy Batalion in her book The Light of Days. Some took on militant action, plotting and carrying out sabotage against the Nazis, including blowing up train tracks. Perhaps the standout woman here, though, is the hugely appealing Renia Kukielka, whom Batalion describes as neither an idealist nor a revolutionary but a savvy, middle-class girl who happened to find herself in a sudden and unrelenting nightmare.. After Its the result of her 12-year odyssey digging through archives and interviewing descendants of the women. Even some of the camps that I visited, theyre very human in size in my head they loomed so large. When Batalion read Renias memoir she felt as if shed discovered a kindred spirit a thoughtful writer processing her experiences. Renia Kukieka and her eldest granddaughter, Merav Waldman, at Meravs sisters wedding, Israel, 2008. Over a decade, I learned many reasons why the tale of Jewish female resistors fell to the footnotes. Her grandparents escaped from Warsaw to Siberian work camps, and her mothers was born in then Soviet-ruled Kyrgyzstan as the war raged. Sarah and her underground comrades bribed a guard with whiskey and cigarettes to rescue her from prison. Some 14 years ago, I decided to research the life story of Hannah Senesh, a young Hungarian Jew who lived in Palestine but joined the allied forces to return to Europe and fight the Nazis. Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @padrehoboken. A panel of five German judges found her guilty of treason and sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler personally overruled the decision and ordered her to be decapitated at age 40. Director Steven Spielberg has optioned the book for a motion picture and signed Batalion to co-write the screenplay. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. I made fascinating connections in Poland, mainly with young people in their 20s and 30s. 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. The Lake County Captains announced a new ownership group Jan. 17. This brought home on such a personal level that I was writing about real people, she said. Theyre convinced that Germans will revolt against this lunatic politician, Donner writes. Two female rabbis in Berlin, one queer, one a convert to Judaism, may represent the diversity in Jewish life in Germany today. Together, these women will go on to become the face of female Jewish resistance to the Hitler regime in Frumka Plotnicka died in combat against the Nazis, while Renia Kukielka and numerous other women acted as "messengers." Anyone can read what you share. "It is the place where we arein our feminist trajectory, in the history of feminism," she tells DW. She has talked to survivors and their children and grandchildren all over the world. Then there was the small matter of trying to verify stories that havent been told in nearly 80 years, if at all, and were sometimes written when typewriters, pens and paper werent exactly easy to access. 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. She was the only person Id ever heard of who volunteered to return and fight Hitler. They built rescue networks to help other Jews to hide or flee and engaged in"moral, spiritual and cultural resistance. 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. Immediately post-war many of these stories were shared and even published. But 2007 wasnt the right time for her to emotionally commit to such a mentally exhausting project. As I learned more about these Jewish female ghetto fighters, forest partisans, and courier girlswho dyed their hair blonde, took off their star-of-David armbands, and secretly slipped in and out of ghettos, smuggling information, false Aryan papers, and pistols, bullets, and grenades in marmalade jars, sacks of potatoes, and designer handbagsI marveled equally at these stories and their obscurity. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. "I feel grateful to Reniafor leaving such detailed accounts that enabled me to tell the story. These women didnt tell their story. Batalion discovered the dusty tome by chance in Londons British Library while researching strong Jewish women. Weak and feverish from starvation and physical abuse, Renia mustered the strength to run through forests and over snow-capped mountains. Obviously, there was no way for the Nazis to physically prove a woman was Jewish. 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. 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. 1556332. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ 07030. He compiled this 585-page tome of Jews who organized large-scale rescue operations across Europe. Batalion, who is the granddaughter of a Polish-Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, lives in New Yorkbut discovered the untold stories of these women at theBritish Library in London. Along with other scholars I interviewed, he suggests that a myth of Jewish passivity was perpetrated by Israels early politicians. Its better to begin understanding Hitlers gradual rise to power as a dictator by reading the true story in All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner, first. 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. 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. 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. 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. Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. Judy Batalion 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. 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.. She channeled her torment into words. From that moment, I was on my own, she later wrote. Her book is an achievement,as rigorous as it is gripping. "I just hope this story gets told to as wide an audience as possible," she says. With tenacity, courageand sometimes violence. 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. 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. But let us strive for a heroic death.". Niuta Teitelbaum as a schoolgirl in od, 1936. Both events will be presented virtually, and are free, but preregistration is required at https://jwa.org and https://vilnashul.org. For me too, this is a Polish history book. She survived a tortuous journey through hidden bunkers in Slovakia, then on to Hungary, Turkey and the ultimate destination Palestine. Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Kukielka surname lived. As if indiscriminate murder isnt the height of abuse, Batalion writes about the routine rape and sexual abuse of young Jewish women with Aryan features. It was so not what I expected, and so foreign to the Holocaust narrative I had grown up with. The Light of Days begins with the wars most celebrated Jewish resistance fighter, Hannah Szenes. Instead, they stayed and fought them. "I am a historian, I am a woman. The Jewish Womens Archive, headquartered in Brookline, is taking pride knowing that Batalion used the archives encyclopedia as an early source of information for her book, Rosenbaum told the Journal. It's a short day in February 1943. 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. 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. I dashed off a book proposal and committed to diving into two years of intensive, focused research.. There is anotheryoung woman in the same room,Renia Kukielka. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. And then, on the other hand, theres the smallness. She found it in the forgotten stories of Polish ghetto girls dozens of Jewish women who did not ask for pity or flee the Nazis. 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. Author to speak on women of the underground during Holocaust 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. And some of them are very personal. Defying Expectations: Women Resistance Fighters during the It was also a more Germanic Yiddish, and I grew up with a more Polish Yiddish). 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. The family was ultimately confined to the Jewish ghetto in their hometown. 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. Or flirted with them, then shot and killed them. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Much Holocaust scholarship was based on objective Nazi records, which certainly didnt contain discussions of rebellious young girls. She was shrewd, composed and strong. 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. The Cleveland Guardians High-A affiliates new ownership group, COLLiDE NEO, will be led by owners Alan Miller and former NFL punter Jon Ryan. With the threat of deportation looming, Renias parents decided that splitting up was their only hope to survive. Shining a light on women resisters in Nazi Germany. All Rights Reserved. 139.99.62.131 Contact your KUKIELKA family in Argentina We locate and contact with you the branches of your family that has emigrated to Argentina. The Gestapo headquarters [in Warsaw] is a four-story building, its so regular which is equally troubling, in a way.. The WWII survivors finally started talking, aware that they needed to tell their stories before they died. Despite repeated beatings that left her bloodied and unconscious, she clung to her cover story and never revealed her Jewish identity. "While I was translating the book and reading about what the Germans had done to these Jewish women, I felt a great sense of shame. Now, interested in hidden womens histories, we publish books based on these late-in-life conversations and ruminations. 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. For many years, memoirs and personal accounts were considered unreliable source material. Among them was Malka Zdrojewicz (right), who survived Majdanek extermination camp. Of course, Jewish men in the resistance performed heroic feats as well, but because of the womens ability to blend into the background they were often assigned more daring roles. I think many of these rebels had strong impulses and trusted their gut and just moved.. The last place I wanted to be at that time in my life was spending my afternoons in 1943 in Warsaw emotionally, socially, intellectually, she recalls. The Harnacks and their circle of friends, including the famous Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Arvids cousin, believed Hitler would be rejected by the German people. She reminds me that in moments of deep despair, COLLiDE NEO plans to m, Almost all salespeople think that they are great. 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