Fabrics of Resistance: The Contributions of Female Jewish Couriers in the Second World War
Fabrics of Resistance: The Contributions of Female Jewish Couriers in the Second World War

Author(s): Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin
Subject(s): History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: Holocaust; female Jewish couriers; Jewish resistance against Nazi; kesher; Underground resistance movement
Summary/Abstract: In her book The Days of Destruction and Revolt, author Zivia Lubetkin, co-founder of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acknowledges the contributions of female couriers in organizing Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. She asserts that without their efforts, the resistance groups would have been unable to perform all of their activities across the German-occupied zone: “Lonka Kozibrodska, Tema Schneiderman, Havka Folman, Rysia, and Frania Beatus from Dror, Tosia Altman from Hashomer Hatzair, Soyka Ehrlichman from Gordonia, Hela Schipper from Akiva, and others, served as liaisons between the ghettos and the various provinces. They risked their lives scores of times as they traveled from place to place. After each mission, they rested for a few days and then set out once more. One cannot possibly describe this work of organizing Jewish resistance, or the uprising itself, without mentioning the role of these valiant women.”

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