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Jewish Women Resistance Fighters in World War II
(Israel Hayom) Eldad Beck - Judy Batalion came across a Yiddish book at the British Library in London published in 1946 titled Women in the Ghettos, comprising a collection of memoirs of young Jewish women who revolted against the Nazis in Poland. Batalion, who knew Yiddish from home, developed this topic into the 2021 book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos. It details how women worked to save other Jews, gather intelligence and smuggle weapons, and actively participate in the uprisings that erupted in dozens of ghettos across occupied Eastern Europe. Women contributed to the resistance movement in a different way than men. It was easier for Jewish women to pretend to be Christian and this allowed them to do work on the Aryan side, outside the ghettos and camps. Because of circumcision, Jewish men were easily identifiable. Beyond that, Jewish women were more involved in non-Jewish society than men. "In Poland...in many families, the boys were sent to Jewish schools, and the girls, to save on expenses, were sent to public ones. There was a generation of Jewish girls who were more educated than the boys and also spoke fluent Polish without a Yiddish accent....The men were immediately recognizable by their accents. And of course, there was the sexist culture of the Nazis. They did not think that women were capable of engaging in resistance."