Judy Batalion: The Jewish "Ghetto Girls" Who Fought the Nazis

Join author Judy Batalion, in conversation with Nancy Spielberg, to learn more about Batalion's new book The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.

In this event Hosted by USC Shoah Foundation, in partnership with Writer's Bloc and Holocaust Museum LA, Batalion unveils countless stories of ingenuity, ferocity, and daring by girls and young women who fought the Nazis in Hitler’s ghettos in Poland. They blew up trains. They smuggled food and guns. They distributed false papers. They built bombs from a recipe unearthed in an old Russian pamphlet. They bought munitions. They spied. They sabotaged Hitler’s supply lines. They killed Nazis. These “ghetto girls” used their brilliance, their bravery, and often their beauty, to fight their captors.  

Batalion’s accounts of these WWII resistance fighters show the range and breadth of the resistance effort– from the dazzling to the mundane, and the lucky to the tragic.The Light of Days brings these resistance fighters’ stories to light through diaries, personal accounts, interviews, and extensive research. It is spellbinding and thrilling. 

Nancy Spielberg is a writer and producer. She is the Executive Producer of Who Will Write Our History, which explored the secret collection of photos, documents, posters, and accounts of how people lived and died in the Warsaw Ghetto. She is also the producer of documentaries such as GI Jews: Jewish Americans in WWII; Mimi and Dona; Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals; and Above and Beyond. Recently, she helped establish Jewish Story Partners, a film fund to help tell Jewish stories to promote understanding and tolerance.

Support authors and local bookstores by ordering a copy of The Light of Days from Chevalier’s Books here.

Read about resistance fighters Faye Schulman, Anna Heilman and Vladka Meed, featured in Judy Batalion's book.