The Nazi-Fighting Women of the Jewish Resistance

[GeoWilliam750]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/Jewish-women-Nazi-fighters.html

"In 1943, Niuta Teitelbaum strolled into a Gestapo apartment on Chmielna Street in central Warsaw and faced three Nazis. A 24-year-old Jewish woman who had studied history at Warsaw University, Niuta was likely now dressed in her characteristic guise as a Polish farm girl with a kerchief tied around her braided blond hair.

She blushed, smiled meekly and then pulled out a gun and shot each one. Two were killed, one wounded. Niuta, however, wasn’t satisfied. She found a physician’s coat, entered the hospital where the injured man was being treated, and killed both the Nazi and the police officer who had been guarding him.

“Little Wanda With the Braids,” as she was nicknamed on every Gestapo most-wanted list, was one of many young Jewish women who, with supreme cunning and daring, fought the Nazis in Poland. And yet, as I discovered over several years of research on these resistors, their stories have largely been overlooked in the broader history of Jewish resistance in World War II.

In 2007, when I was living in London and grappling with my Jewish identity, I decided to write about strong Jewish women. Hannah Senesh jumped immediately to mind. As I’d learned in fifth grade, Hannah was a young World War II resistance paratrooper. She had left her native Hungary for Palestine in 1939, but later returned to Europe to fight the Allied cause; she was caught and was said to have looked her killers directly in their eyes as they shot her."

[JanMichael]

1. Wow. "smiled meekly" then lays down the boom.

Then tracks the wounded nazi down in the hospital and wastes him and the guard.

Pretty unstoppable. Justified. Wow.

[brer cat]

2. Stories not often told.

Thanks for posting.

[Satch59]

3. An amazing piece...

What riveting stories. I want to either read more or hope this gets a film or series treatment.

[secondwind]

4. I looked her up... her last name was a tad different.

Niuta Tajtelbaum ("Wanda&quot , Jewish Communist and member of the Polish Armia Ludowa underground in Warsaw (Warszawa). Her name in the underground was Wanda Witwicka.

Niuta Tajtelbaum was a native of Lodz.
During the Great Aktion (mass deportations) of the summer of 1942, she left the ghetto and joined the partisans to fight the Germans, then returned to the ghetto. She was among the Armia Ludowa Polish Communist underground's "Spetzgruppe" special unit, carrying out missions such as the PKO bank robbery and placing a bomb in a cinema and the "Kammerlicht Spiel" Theater at 8 Marszalkowska Street on January 17, 1943. The Germans set a price on her head of 150,000 zloty.
During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943, she was part of a group that attacked a German artillery unit that was shelling the ghetto. She was caught on July 19, 1943, tortured and killed.

In April 1945, Niuta Tajtelbaum was posthumously awarded the Gruenwald Cross, Third Class, by the Polish army High Command.

[Haggard Celine]

5. That is bad ass!

Those are some women to admire. Thanks for sharing.

[Rustyeye77]

6. Super cool

thanks

[sheshe2]

7. Thank you.

[hedda_foil]

8. This is an amazing story from an upcoming book.

The author is doing a virtual tour (mostly free) in April. I signed up for one of the talks. This is her webpage https://www.judybatalion.com/. Scroll down to "Upcoming Events" to see the dates of her talks as well as links to preorder the book.