To many, the name Mordechai Anielewicz is synonymous with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Less well-known, among some 750 ghetto fighters who held out for nearly a month against the overwhelming Nazi forces were many women who fought — and fell — alongside the men. Their names are scarcely invoked or remembered. Now, Elizabeth R. Hyman has focused on five of these women to shed new light on the remarkable story of that resistance.
The women Hyman brings into the foreground are Zivia Lubetkin, Adina Blady-Schweiger and Vladka Meed, who all survived the war; and Tosia Altman and Tema Schneiderman, who did not. Other women also figure prominently in Hyman’s recounting of events.
As they awaited the German attack on the ghetto, Zivia — a leader and part of a group of thirty fighters — wrote, “A tremor of joy mixed with a shudder of fear passed through all of us. But we suppressed our emotions and reached for our guns.” They knew, of course, that they were outnumbered. Zivia, wrote one of the commanders, Marek Edelman, “sees herself as a simple soldier, but her authority among the fighting groups is very strong.” It was April 19, 1943, “a lovely spring day,” observed Edelman. It was also the start of Passover.
That initial German attack on the ghetto and the resistance to it had gone on for two hours, when, to the amazement of the ghetto fighters, the Germans retreated, leaving not a single Jewish casualty. “We were stunned and left breathless by our victory,” wrote Zivia. The Germans, alas, would reenter the ghetto — this time with tanks.
The women who participated in the uprising fought in the resistance, but they also served as couriers; passing as Aryans, they had freedom of movement. As such, not only did they relay information in and out of the ghetto, but they also acquired guns and explosives, and smuggled them inside. Their male counterparts called the women “girls”; the Nazis referred to Jews as banditen. Thus does Hyman arrive at her title, fashioning epithets of inequality and racism into an appellation of honor.
With extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Hyman has retold this familiar story of resistance and uprising with an infusion of detail and drama. The courage, organization, dedication, and inventiveness of the featured young women, who faced life-and-death situations on a daily basis, continues to amaze.
While the uprising’s ending is known, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto tells a story of such heroism, and Hyman’s researched portrait is so captivating, that this retold piece of Jewish history is difficult to put down and impossible to forget.
