The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos,-Judy Batalion, author; Mozhan Marhan, narrator
This is a story of Jewish women and girls who formed a resistance movement and fought Hitler and his Nazis. It is an important story, crying out to be told, because most of the world believes all Jews were led to the slaughter, without resisting; it is believed that the people of the book went quietly to their deaths, complying with the commands of their captors, even when they outnumbered them. The fact that they were so brutalized, and demeaned, and made totally helpless without any allies to help them, never entered the equation. The book begins in the 1940’s, and the author includes a brief history of the women and Zionism. It goes on to illustrate, in great detail, each of these women’s efforts to fight for the freedom of their country and their people, and in that illustration, it also opens eyes to the valiant efforts of not only the women, but the men, as well, including gentiles and Jews, who also fought the forces of evil that Hitler had spawned. The women who began to fight back, too numerous to name, came from a community in Poland that was largely Communist or Socialist. Their efforts spread to other towns and women. The author allows the reader a glimpse into their lives involving family and friends, their philosophy of life, and their enemies and the dangers they faced daily. Danger came from the Germans, the Poles and the Judenrat made up of their fellow Jews. Antisemitism was rampant and there were unknown collaborators, everywhere, eager to turn in a Jew for a crust of bread, so cheap were their lives believed to be. Jealousy and greed were motivators at first, but as the war raged on, poverty and starvation loomed large in everyone’s life. To survive, people took desperate measures on both sides of the battle. In most instances, the enemies of each other were barbaric in their behavior.
The author took 12 years to complete this book and her extensive research and attention to detail and description attests to it.. She stays with each of the women until the end of the war and beyond, describing battles, captures, underground efforts, betrayals, punishments, torture, loyalty and even romance, until the conclusion in which she describes, ultimately, the survival of the few lucky ones. The war went on and on and they suffered emotionally and mentally from their war effort to challenge the Nazis. Every day they hoped and prayed for help and/or for an end to the horror, the slavery, the cruelty, the atrocious treatment of prisoners. Several of those involved committed suicide, before and after the war, never able to justify why they lived and others in their group, those they loved, were tortured and died. Not even the next generations of the survivors escaped unscathed from the onslaught of the terrible memories that the Jews had to deal with, since there were always invisible scars that could not be erased, what is called survivor’s guilt. The shadow of the Holocaust always loomed over them, in spite of the fact that it was often not discussed out loud.
While the guilt of survivors may surprise some readers, the incredible amount of facts about the savagery, humiliation and degradation that the victims of Hitler and his minions had to endure will startle and shock them. Reading the details about the roundups, the selections, the camps, the torture, the sadism, the inhumane treatment without regard for the Geneva Conventions, and the murders for sport, coupled with the callousness of the Germans and the Poles, and sometimes their fellow Jews, will make the reader understand why there is so much emotional detritus associated with them. The policies of the National Socialists turned citizens into creatures so beaten, they would do anything to survive. The Jews were slaves, and no one cared. Yet they did show courage as they blew up bridges, sabotaged weapons, smuggled documents to the allies and fought the Germans whenever they found them. It was eye opening.
There were some Poles who were not Nazis, but like elsewhere that Hitler invaded, there were too few. Hitler invoked such fear of retaliation, that anyone willing to help was soon discouraged. Only the very brave stepped up to the task. More likely, they took advantage of the Jewish plight and stole their property, blackmailed them or betrayed them and reported them to the authorities for rewards that surely did not equal the value of a human life, but Hitler’s policies convinced them that his enemies were less than human, and so, they participated in the murder of millions. There were over 400 Ghettoes in Poland, so it would be rather impossible to claim ignorance of what was happening. Many women (and men) fought back, sabotaged equipment, couriered documents, helped escaped prisoners of war and risked their lives to save the lives of others. This book is about several unsung Jewish female heroes. They knew they had no hope of beating the Germans, but they had no desire to acquiesce to their demands and “go quietly into the night”. The lies about their resettlement were slowly coming to light and they knew they faced being humiliated, tortured, starved and worked to death, if captured. They had few weapons and few allies. After the war, only 10% of the Jews of Poland survived. The losses were devastating with whole families wiped out.
As one reads this book, it will be impossible not to be moved. How could decent people accept the ambitions of Hitler to kill those who were not perfect Aryans, according to him? How did mass hysteria grip a world without it becoming generally known that people were being rounded up and indiscriminately murdered? Did the world turn a blind eye, or was it truly blind? Many of those who supported the Nazis were motivated by jealousy and greed. They resented the success of the Jews, and although these people did not earn it, they wanted their share of what the Jews possessed. They wanted the spoils of this terrible war. When the war ended, many claimed they didn’t know what was really happening, but it was impossible for them not to have seen children mercilessly tortured and murdered in front of their parents, prisoners put in buildings and burnt alive, not to have noticed the empty apartments with all the belongings left behind which they took, and impossible not to wonder where these people had disappeared to when they smelt the scent of burning bodies in the crematoria. Few showed remorse, rather they were angry and still vindictive and cruel, even in their defeat.
Although Hitler also murdered the disabled, the gay and the gypsies among others, this is not mentioned in this book. This book is about women who fought back. However, the reader must be left with the thought that without so many willing accomplices and subjects, wouldn’t Hitler have failed? Had other countries and citizens stepped up to help those targeted by the National Socialists, had they provided weapons and ammunition to the Freedom Fighters and resistance workers, had they bombed the transport routes, more victims could have fought back valiantly. There would have been hope, instead of the hopelessness that faced those who did fight with their limited means, gathering one or two weapons at a time, sabotaging German efforts in whatever way they could, even putting sugar into their gas tanks or not tightening the screws on their tools of war so that they would fail. They fought in the ghetto and in the forest, and they succeeded in sabotaging the Germans as they refused to go like sheep to their own slaughter. The retribution was savage, but they believed it to be worth it. Their honor and country, their people and way of life was being threatened. Someone had to survive to tell their story, and now, someone has.

***The book is long and intense. It can’t be read in one sitting although it is written well. It needs to be read more than once. It needs to be read, period. There is so much information within these pages, it would be a pity for it to go unread and not to have the chance to open the eyes of people today to the dangers of current behavior, even in America., a country in the throes of change and chaos which may not be good for it, in the end.