The Light of Days

The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos

Judy Batalion

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780062874238
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Biographies militaires

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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 fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.

Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these "ghetto girls" paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town's water supply. They also nursed the sick, taught children, and hid families.

Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown.

As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, and Band of Brothers, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes 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. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond.

Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.

NPR's Best Books of 2021

National Jewish Book Award, 2021

Canadian Jewish Literary Award, 2021

Part 1

Ghetto Girls

Heroic girls. . . . Boldly they travel back and forth through the cities and towns of Poland. . . . They are in mortal danger every day. They rely entirely on their “Aryan” faces and on the peasant kerchiefs that cover their heads. Without a murmur, without a second’s hesitation, they accept and carry out the most dangerous missions. Is someone needed to travel to Vilna, Białystok, Lemberg, Kovel, Lublin, Częstochowa, or Radom to smuggle in contraband such as illegal publications, goods, money? The girls volunteer as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Are there comrades who have to be rescued from Vilna, Lublin, or some other city? — They undertake the mission. Nothing stands in their way. Nothing deters them. . . . How many times have they looked death in the eyes? How many times have they been arrested and searched? . . . The story of the Jewish woman will be a glorious page in the history of Jewry during the present war. And the Chajkes and Frumkes will be the leading figures in this story. For these girls are indefatigable.

—Emanuel Ringelblum, diary entry, May 1942

Chapter 1

Po-Lin

Renia

OCTOBER 1924

On Friday, October 10, 1924, as the Jews of Jędrzejów were settling in for their Sabbath eve, shutting shops, closing tills, boiling, chopping, frying, Moshe Kukielka rushed from his store. His family home at 16 Klasztorna (Monastery) Street was a small stone structure on a verdant main road, just around the bend from a magnificent medieval abbey known for its turquoise and gilded interior. Tonight the house was particularly abuzz. As sunset approached, the orange autumn light bleeding red into the lush valleys and rolling hills of the Kielce region, the Kukielkas’ oven heated, their spoons clanged, their stove hissed, and the church bells formed their usual backdrop to the family’s Yiddish and Polish clatter. And then, a new sound: a baby’s first wail.

Moshe and Leah were both modern and observant, as were their three older children. They engaged in Polish culture and celebrated Jewish traditions. Moshe was used to hurrying home or to a shtiebel (prayer house) for the Shabbat meal and prayers, walking briskly through the open town square, with its rows of pastel-colored buildings, passing Jewish merchants and Christian farmers who lived and worked side by side. This week, he rushed even more hastily through the cool fall air. Traditionally, candles were lit and Shabbat itself was welcomed as a bride into the home, but that day Moshe had a new guest to greet. An even better one.

And then he arrived to find her: his third daughter, who immediately became the shiny apple of his discerning eye. Rivka in Hebrew, a name whose roots have various meanings, including connection, union, and even captivating. In the Bible, Rivka was one of the four matriarchs of the Jewish people. Of course, in this partly assimilated family, the baby also had a Polish name: Renia. The name Kukielka resembles the Polish Kukielo—the surname of family who for generations had run the local funeral home. Jews often constructed last names by adding winsome endings such as -ka to Polish names. Kukielka means “marionette.”

It was 1924, just a year after the new Poland was finally recognized by the international community and had its boundaries set, following years of occupation, partitioning, and constantly fluctuating borders. (As the old Jewish joke went, a man asks whether his town is now in Polish or Soviet territory. He’s told, “This year, we’re in Poland.” “Thank goodness!,” the man exclaims. “I simply could not take another Russian winter.”) The economy was afloat, and though most Jews in Jędrzejów lived below the poverty line, Moshe succeeded as a small businessman, running a gallenteria shop that sold buttons, clothing, and sewing supplies. He raised a middle-class family and exposed them to music and literature. Their Shabbat table, set that week by the Kukielkas’ older two daughters and relatives while Leah was otherwise occupied, served up the delicacies of the day, which Moshe was able to afford: sweet liquor, ginger cake, chopped liver with onions, cholent (a slow-cooked beans and meat potage), potato and sweet noodle kugel pudding, compote of plums and apples, and tea. Leah’s gefilte fish, offered most Fridays, would become Renia’s favorite. No doubt, the meal was extra festive this week.

Sometimes traits of personality are visible, even unmistakable, in the earliest hours of existence; psychologies stamped on the soul. It’s possible that Moshe knew when he first held her—infusing her with his gentleness, intelligence, and incisiveness—that his spirit would carry her forward on journeys a person in 1924 could scarcely imagine. It’s possible he knew then that his little Renia, with the big green eyes, light-brown hair, and delicate face—his little, captivating marionette—was born to perform.

* * *

Jędrzejów was a shtetl, Yiddish for “small city,” and a word that referred to Polish market towns with significant Jewish populations. Renia’s birth added one to the 4,500 Jews in the village, who composed almost 45 percent of the population. (Her younger siblings, Aaron, Esther, and Yaacov, or little Yankel, would soon add three more.) The Jewish community, established in the 1860s when Jews were finally allowed to settle in the region, was largely poor. Most Jews worked as traveling salesmen, peddlers, and small business owners with shops on or around the breezy market square. The rest were mainly artisans: shoemakers, bakers, carpenters. Jędrzejów was not as modern as Będzin, which bordered on Germany and the West, but even here a small number of elite locals were doctors, emergency medical workers, and teachers; one Jew was a judge. About 10 percent of the town’s Jews were wealthy and owned timber mills, flour mills, and mechanical workshops, as well as property on the main square.

As in the rest of Poland, modern Jewish culture flourished as Renia grew into a child of the 1930s. At that time, Warsaw alone had a staggering 180 Jewish newspapers: 130 in Yiddish, 25 in Hebrew, and 25 in Polish. Accordingly, dozens of magazine subscriptions passed through the Jędrzejów post office. The local Jewish population grew. Different prayer houses were established to suit various flavors of Judaism. Even in that small town, three Jewish bookstores, a publishing house, and Jewish libraries opened; drama groups and literary readings proliferated; political parties boomed.

Renia’s father was engaged in Jewish learning and charitable endeavors, feeding the poor, tending to the dead with the chevra kadisha burial society, and serving as a local cantor. He voted Zionist. The religious Zionists honored writer Theodor Herzl’s nineteenth-century ideals, believing that a true and open Jewish existence could be achieved only in a homeland where Jews were first-class citizens, in Palestine. Poland may have been their home for centuries, but it was temporary. Moshe dreamt of one day moving his family to “the promised land.”

The parties organized lectures and political rallies. One can imagine Renia accompanying her beloved, bearded father to one of the large and increasingly popular Zionist town meetings, like a talk on “The Struggle for a Jewish Palestine,” on May 18 1937. Clad in her Polish schoolgirl white-and-navy-blue “sailor” suit, pleated skirt, and knee-high socks, forever a lover of promenades, Renia clasped Moshe’s hand as they marched past the two new Zionist libraries to the lively gathering where hundreds of Jews debated and discussed—riled by questions of belonging. As Poles negotiated their new identities in their newly stabilized homeland, so did Jews. How did they fit into this novel country, a place where they had lived continually for more than a thousand years, yet were never truly considered Polish? Were they Polish first or Jewish first? The modern question of Diaspora identity was at a fever pitch, especially due to rapidly rising antisemitism.

* * *

Moshe and Leah Kukielka prized education. The country saw a mass influx of Jewish schools: secular Hebrew schools, Yiddish prep schools, single-sex religious schools. Of Jędrzejów’s four hundred Jewish children, one hundred studied at a charity Talmud Torah, a Jewish nursery, or the local branch of the Beit Yaakov girls’ elementary school, where students wore long sleeves and stockings. For reasons of proximity—and because religious education was costly and often reserved for sons only—Renia, like many Jewish girls, attended Polish public school.

No matter. She was at the top of her class of thirty-five. Renia had mainly Catholic friends and spoke fluent Polish in the schoolyard. Unbeknownst to her at time, this cultural immersion, including her capacity to banter in the national tongue without a Jewish-sounding accent, would be her most critical training for the underground. But while Renia excelled and assimilated, she was not entirely included. At a ceremony when she was called up to receive an academic award, a classmate threw a pencil case at her forehead, leaving a lasting impression—literally. So, was she in or was she out? She personally straddled the centuries-old hurdle: the “Polish Jewish identity” question.

Since its foundation, Poland was evolving. With ever-changing geographical boundaries, its ethnic composition varied as new communities folded into its borders. Medieval Jews migrated to Poland because it was a safe haven from western Europe, where they were persecuted and expelled. Jews were relieved to arrive in this tolerant land with economic opportunity. “Polin,” the Hebrew name for the country, comprises “Po” and “Lin,” and means “Here, we stay.” Polin offered relative freedom and safety. A future.

A coin from the early twelve hundreds, on display at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, shows Hebrew letters. Already, Yiddish-speaking Jews were a large minority, integral to Poland’s economy, working as bankers, bakers, and bailiffs. Early Poland was a republic, its constitution ratified around the same time as America’s. Royal power was curtailed by a parliament elected by the small noble class. Jewish communities and nobles had mutual arrangements: the gentry protected the Jews who settled in their towns and gave them autonomy and religious freedom; in turn, Jews paid high taxes and carried out economic activities forbidden for Christian Poles, such as loaning and borrowing capital at interest.

The 1573 Warsaw Confederation was the first document in Europe to legally mandate religious tolerance. But as much as Jews were officially integrated into Polish culture and shared philosophies, folklore, and styles of dress, food, and music, they also felt different, threatened. Many Poles resented Jews’ economic freedom. Jews subleased whole towns from nobles, and Polish serfs begrudged the rule of their Jewish landlords. The Catholic Church disseminated the hateful and absurd falsehood that Jews murdered Christians—especially babies—in order to use their blood for religious rituals. This led to attacks on Jews, with occasional periods of wide-scale riots and murder. The Jewish community became close-knit, seeking strength in its customs. A “push-pull” relationship existed between Jews and Poles, their cultures developing in relation to the other. Take, for instance, the braided challah: the soft, egg-rich bread and holy symbol of the Jewish Sabbath. This loaf is also a Polish chalka and a Ukrainian kalach—it’s impossible to know which version came first. The traditions developed simultaneously, societies tangled, joined under a (bitter)sweet gloss.

In the late seventeen hundreds, however, Poland broke down. Its government was unstable, and the country was simultaneously invaded by Germany, Austria, and Russia, then divided into three parts—each one ruled by a captor that imposed its own customs. Poles remained united by a nationalist longing, and maintained their language and literature. Polish Jews changed under their occupiers: the German ones learned the Saxon language and developed into an educated middle class, while the Austrian-ruled (Galician) Jews suffered from terrible poverty. The majority of Jews came to be governed by Russia, an empire that forced economic and religious decrees on the largely working-class population. The borders shifted, too. For example, Jędrzejów first belonged to Galicia; then Russia took it over. Jews felt on edge—in particular, financially, as changing laws affected their livelihoods.

During World War I, Poland’s three occupiers battled each other on home ground. Despite hundreds of thousands of lost lives and a decimated economy, Poland was victorious: the Second Republic was established. United Poland needed to rebuild both its cities and its identity. The political landscape was bifurcated, the long-honed nationalist longing expressed in contradictory ways. On the one side were nostalgic monarchists who called for reestablishing the pluralistic Poland of old: Poland as a state of nations. (Four in ten citizens of the new country were minorities.) The other side, however, envisioned Poland as a nation-state—an ethnic nation. A nationalistic movement that advocated for purebred Polishness grew quickly. This party’s entire platform was concerned with slandering Polish Jews, who were blamed for the country’s poverty and political problems. Poland had never recovered from World War I or its subsequent conflicts with its neighbors; Jews were accused of siding with the enemy. This right-wing party promoted a new Polish identity that was specifically defined as “not the Jew.” Generations of residency, not to mention formal equal rights, made no difference. As espoused by Nazi racial theory, which this party adopted giddily, a Jew could never be a Pole.

The central government instituted a Sunday-Rest law and discriminated against Jews in public employment policies, but its leadership was unstable. Just a few years later, in a 1926 coup d’état, Poland was taken over by Józef Piłsudski, an unusual mix of monarchist and socialist. The former general and statesman championed a multiethnic land, and although he did not particularly help the Jews, they felt safer under his semiauthoritarian rule than under representative governm...