Forgotten Feminism: Poland in the 1930s

Lilth
By Judy Batalion
April 7, 2026

Just weeks after submitting my laboriously-conceived dissertation on women’s collaborative art stemming from California in the 1970s, I stumbled on my next obsession and a new understanding of feminist history–one that would take me back to pre-war Poland.

It began when I haphazardly discovered another piece of women’s history. Grappling with my own Jewish identity, I had decided to write a creative piece about strong Jewish women. The first to come to mind was someone I’d studied in 5th grade: Hanna Senesh, a young WW2 resistance paratrooper who was caught but looked the Nazis in the eye when they shot her; she was the symbol of courage, the only such woman I’d ever heard of. But who was she, really?

I went to the British Library, looked her up in the catalog, and ordered the few books listed under her name. One was Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos), old and rare and in Yiddish, a language I happened to know. I flipped through the yellowing pages looking for Hanna Senesh, but she was only in the last chapter. Before her — dozens of young Jewish women who defied the Nazis. These “ghetto girls” hid revolvers in teddy bears, flirted with Gestapo guards, bribed Nazis with wine, whiskey and pastry, and shot and killed them. They helped the sick and taught the children; they flung Molotov cocktails and bombed German supply trains; they carried out espionage missions for the Red Army; they distributed underground bulletins and were bearers of the truth about what was happening to the Jews. 

I was astonished. How could I — with a background in women’s history and who came from a Holocaust survivor family — not know this story?