1938: Fanny Zelshinsky is a sophisticated, modern daughter of the city’s Jewish elite who wants nothing more than to be recognized as a legitimate artist by her family, her radical professor whom she idolizes, and the world at large. All while she wonders if she is really going to go through with her wedding.
Meanwhile, Zosia Dror has left behind her small northeastern shtetl and religious family in the wake of violence. Part of a budding youth movement that believes in social equality and creating a Jewish homeland, all she wants is to not get distracted by the glitz and hubbub of the city—or by the keen eyes of a certain tall, handsome comrade.
When legendary artist Wanda Petrovsky—both a member of Zosia’s movement leadership and Fanny’s beloved photography professor—goes missing, the two young women are thrown together in the pursuit of the elusive firebrand. Is Wanda simply hiding, or is her disappearance connected to the rise in antisemitic laws and university practices? Fanny and Zosia may be the most unlikely of allies, but they must bridge their differences to help someone they both care for – and dodge the danger mounting around them in the process.
—New York Times Book Review
—Wall Street Journal
—Jewish Review of Books
—Los Angeles Review of Books
—Boston Globe
—Globe and Mail
—Times Literary Supplement
—Haaretz
—Publishers Weekly
—The Economist
—The Jerusalem Post
—BBC History Revealed (Book of the Month)
—Good Morning America Book Club
—Smithsonian Magazine
—The Independent (A Book of the Month)
—Booklist
—Kirkus (Starred Review)
Tablet
June 11, 2024
Belief: Personal Essay
It’s Yom Kippur 1982, a sunny September morning in Montreal. I’m at synagogue with my grandparents, wearing a blush-colored dress with a bib of cream frills, sucking hard Life Savers I’ve fished out of my bubbie’s linty pockets. Around me, they chant lullingly, peacefully, until suddenly: The children must leave the room.
Lithub
Feb 17, 2023
Christopher C. Gorham Recommends Judy Batalion, C. Sarah Soh, and More
After decades of relative silence, several recent works have uncovered the stories of the women who did their part to fight totalitarianism. As war again rages in Ukraine, where untold numbers of women died eight decades ago, these works have a timely resonance.
Reader’s Digest
June 20, 2022
Best audiobook for women - The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
Looking for stories about some of the bravest women to have ever lived? Look no further than this powerful and enlightening tale of the Jewish women who became resistance fighters during World War II.
The Jewish Voice
March 26, 2022
This is a very well-written, powerful, important and sad book. It is about young women, usually between seventeen and thirty, who give themselves to the fight against the Nazi Holocaust with everything they have.
Tablet Magazine
March 25, 2022
Rokhl’s Golden City: Changing how we think about the past—and whose stories matter—can move narratives from the margins to the center
Forbes
March 24, 2022
Goodreads has released a list of the 20 most popular biographies and histories of women, according to their members, published over the last 10 years.
Bookriot
March 7, 2022
The traditional historical narratives that put male experiences at the center have the unfortunate tendency to draw a veil over the contributions of women. This tendency deprives us of the knowledge about the experiences of half of those who came before us, across all spheres of human history – politics, science, literature, art.
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 3, 2021
1. “The Light of Days” illuminates the compelling if little-known stories of the courageous young women, some of them still in their teens, who helped turn youth groups into resistance cells in Nazi-occupied Poland.
TLS
July 23, 2021
In The Light of Days, Judy Batalion has uncovered a trove of unknown or forgotten information about the Holocaust of genuine import and impact.
Los Angeles Review of Books
July 17, 2021
Women’s roles in wars and revolutions are so often underplayed, but in her brilliantly researched new book, The Light of Days, Judy Batalion champions the true stories of audacious acts by Jewish women during Work War II.
Los Angeles Review of Books
July 17, 2021
MONTREAL-BORN AUTHOR and essayist Judy Batalion, who wrote White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between, embarked on an entirely different project more than a decade ago while living in London, pursuing her PhD in art history, and performing as an actor and comic.
The Globe and Mail
July 2, 2021
Three books by Canadian authors reveal new information, new perspectives to add to the Holocaust literary canon
Shondaland
June 7, 2021
Judy Batalion, the author of the critically acclaimed The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, was raised in a community of Holocaust survivors in Montreal and educated at Harvard.
The Spectator
June 5, 2021
Judy Batalion celebrates the women of the Warsaw ghetto whose courage and ingenuity saved many Jews from certain death
The Economist
May 1, 2021
Judy Batalion brings to light half-forgotten tales of astounding courage.
51% (Northeast Public Radio)
April 15, 2021
This week on 51%, we hear the untold story of women resistance fighters in Hitler's ghettos.
C-Span Book TV
April 10, 2021
Judy Batalion, the daughter of Holocaust survivors and author of The Light of Days, and Rebecca Donner, author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, shared the stories of women who fought against Germany during World War II. This was a virtual event hosted by the San Antonio Book Festival.
C-Span Book TV
April 18, 2021
Judy Batalion recounted the Jewish women who served as resistance fighters against the Nazis in Poland during World War II. This was a virtual event hosted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Irish Times
April 18, 2021
Book review: The unspeakable is succeeded by the unthinkable in this passionately written history.
“Heroic girls” the historian Emmanuel Ringelblaum called them, writing in 1942 from the misery of the Warsaw ghetto. “Nothing stands in their way. Nothing deters them. The story of the Jewish woman will be a glorious page in the history of Jewry during the present war.”
The Jewish Chronicle
April 8, 2021
Of the hundreds of terrifying incidents recorded by Judy Batalion in her powerful book, The Light of Days, one, perhaps, encapsulates the overwhelming problems faced by young Jews in Poland during wartime.
The Jerusalem Post
April 7, 2021
Zelda Treger was a resistance fighter in disguise. A Nazi and a police officer caught her, after she was denounced as a Jew. The police officer allowed her to live in exchange for gold, but forced Zelda to his apartment. The police officer’s landlord, however, did not approve of his lady guest and threatened the officer. Zelda managed to escape in the riot that ensued. Nonplussed, she continued on her mission to smuggle weapons into the ghetto.
Christian Science Monitor
April 16, 2021
Judy Batalion’s thrilling, devastating book tells of an underground network of young Jewish women in Poland who resisted the Nazis by engaging in smuggling, sabotage, and even armed defense. Their courageous deeds, largely forgotten until now, are astounding.
Daily Express
April 20, 2021
ZIVIA Lubetkin was ready for death. The shattered, burning buildings and corpse-strewn streets of the wartime Warsaw Ghetto, created to house Jews before they were deported to extermination camps, had been the backdrop to her existence for weeks. The Nazi "aktions" against Jews in the Polish capital were increasing in barbarity and regularity by the start of 1943.
The Boston Globe
April 15, 2021
The Polish Jewish heroines of “The Light of Days” threw off gender norms and ghetto constraints to resist Nazism, and sometimes survived to tell their stories.
A multilingual museum curator and the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, Judy Batalion first stumbled on their accounts in an unexpectedly riveting Yiddish-language book in the British Library. “I was jolted by these tales of agency,” about “women who acted with ferocity and fortitude — even violently,” she writes.
CBC The Current
April 20, 2021
When Montreal-born author Judy Batalion first learned about a group of Jewish women in Poland who rebelled against the Nazis during the Second World War, it was by total chance.
History Extra (BBC podcast)
April 26, 2021
Author and historian Judy Batalion discusses her new book The Light of Days, which recounts how a group of young Jewish women fought back against their German oppressors in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Christian Science Monitor
April 19, 2021
In 1942, two years before his death at the hands of the Gestapo, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum, in a diary entry written from the Warsaw Ghetto, praised the courage of female resistance fighters. “How many times have they looked death in the eyes? How many times have they been arrested and searched?” he marveled. “The story of the Jewish woman will be a glorious page in the history of Jewry during the present war.”
The Forward
April 13, 2021
More than a decade ago, Judy Batalion accidentally stumbled upon a Yiddish-language book in the British Library. Published in 1946, the book comprised a collection of memoirs of “ghetto girls,” young Jewish women who revolted against the Nazis in Poland. These women tricked the Gestapo into carrying their luggage filled with contraband, hid revolvers in teddy bears, flung Molotov cocktails, and bombed German supply trains.
PBS Newshour
April 8, 2021
Judy Batalion's new book, "The Light of Days," details acts of heroism by Jewish women in the ghettos of eastern Europe - and even within the death camps.
The Shmooze (Yiddish Book Center podcast)
April 8, 2021
Judy Batalion is the author of the recently released The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, which illuminates the extraordinary history and accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full until now.
