Originally posted on Instagram 20th November 2022

WARNING: descriptions of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and Nazi brutality. Please proceed with caution.

The resistance activities of Jewish women during World War Two have faded from historical memory. Yet they played as big a part as any in the various underground movements and were all exceptionally brave. Instagram’s ten slide limit means I can only highlight a few of these women, but I would encourage you to look up the many stories online.

Sara Fortis (1927-present) – Greece

Sara Fortis grew up near Athens, in a family which, despite fully identifying as Greek, still practised their Jewish faith. She left when the Germans invaded in 1941, leaving her mother in the care of some villagers to become an andarte – a resistance fighter. She recruited other women from nearby villages and formed a band of female partisans.

They were a formidable group, using Molotov cocktails to distract the enemy and executing Nazi collaborators. Frustratingly, the male partisans were given credit for numerous missions the women carried out.

Sara was known by the Nazis and there was an order to capture her. Instead, they mistakenly caught her cousin, who was brutally raped and murdered. Sara swore revenge, executing the informer.

Today, she lives in Israel with her husband.

Roza Robota (1921-1945) – Poland

Roza (who often went by her Hebrew name, Shoshanah) was a leader in the resistance movement. After Hitler’s invasion of Poland, she joined the underground movement of a Zionist youth group, operating out of the Ciechanow ghetto. In 1942, however, Roza and her family were arrested and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was assigned to a slave labour force.

Roza created an information network in the camp and was eventually recruited to smuggle gunpowder from the munitions factories to another prisoner named Wrobel.

They did this for a year and a half before discovering that the Nazis planned to liquidate the camp. On 7th October 1944, a riot broke out – 70 SS guards and 450 prisoners died. Roza was discovered, tortured, and hanged. She was 23 years old.

Faye Schulman (1919-1921) – Poland

Faye, born Faigel, was one of seven children in an Orthodox Jewish family in Lenin, Belarus (then Sosnkowicze, Eastern Poland). She spoke four languages and was a skilled photographer, having been taught by her brother, Moshe. In 1941, her family were forced into a ghetto, and a year later, the ghetto was liquidated. 1850 Jews were killed, among them Faye’s parents and all her siblings, save Moshe. Faye was one of 26 survivors, kept alive for her photography talents.

She was ordered by the Nazis to photograph the massacre, and she secretly kept copies for herself – a testament to the brutality. Later, she escaped and joined a partisan group in Belarus, becoming the group’s nurse.

Her brigade raided her hometown for supplies; Faye discovered her camera and so continued to document the partisans’ struggle. She died in Canada on 24th April 2021, aged 101.

Hannah Szenes (1921-1944) – Hungary

Hannah was exposed to anti-Semitism from a young age, which prompted her to learn more about her Jewish roots. She emigrated to Palestine in 1939, but the war soon brought her back to Europe.

She trained with the SOE and was such an exceptional agent that she was recruited for a high-stakes mission in Yugoslavia, into which she parachuted in 1944. There, she joined a Partisan group under Tito, which was incredibly effective. In March, however, Hungary was invaded.

Hannah snuck into her native country, but she was swiftly captured. She was tortured but refused to give up any information, even when her mother – whom she hadn’t seen in five years – was also brought in and used against her. Hannah’s bravery lasted to the end – on the day of her execution, aged 23, she refused a blindfold and looked her killers in the eye, forcing them to do the same.

Niuta Tajtelbaum (1917-1943) – Poland

Niuta was known to the Germans as ‘Little Wanda with the Braids’. She was one of the earliest volunteers for the Warsaw underground and she was incredibly effective, utilising her schoolgirl looks to pull off incredible acts of bravery.

Able to move around without suspicion, Niuta transported weapons and helped other Jews get to safety – but these are far from her most dangerous activities. Posing as a farmgirl, she went to Nazi headquarters and asked to see an officer about a ‘personal matter’. Thinking Niuta was pregnant by said officer, the guards let her in; Niuta then shot the officer dead with a concealed pistol, using a silencer. On her way out, she smiled politely at the guards.

On another occasion, she killed two Nazis and wounded a third; she disguised as a nurse and killed the third in his hospital room. Sadly, Niuta was captured in 1943 and executed that same year, aged 25.

Masha Bruskina (1924-1941) – Belarus

Masha was just a teenager when Belarus was occupied in 1941; she graduated in the same month the Axis forces invaded. Despite her young age, she courageously volunteered as a nurse, where she cared for wounded Soviet soldiers.

Masha would help the wounded soldiers escape by smuggling clothes and fake identity papers into the hospital. But a patient informed the Nazis what she was doing and so she was arrested in October 1941.

The Germans wanted to make an example of Masha. She, along with a 16-year-old boy and a WWI veteran were paraded through the streets of Minsk wearing placards naming them partisans. They were then led to a scaffold where they were publicly hanged, the bodies left on display for three days – harrowing photos of the event are still readily available today. Masha was seventeen.

Eta Wrobel (1918-2008) – Poland

Out of a family of ten, Eta would be the only one to survive the Holocaust. She described herself as ‘born a fighter’, and she was brought up to help people, no matter what. As such, Eta joined the Polish resistance in 1940 alongside her father, where she began by creating false identity papers for Jews.

The ghetto she lived in was liquidated in 1942 and the Jews moved to concentration camps; Eta and her father managed to escape to the woods. There, Eta organised an exclusively Jewish partisan unit, which planted mines to delay German movements and cut off supply lines. Life was exceptionally dangerous, and Eta once had to dig a bullet out of her own leg with a knife. She went on missions with the men in the group and was a good strategist.

Eta survived the war and moved to the US in 1947, where she died aged 89.

Tosia Altman (1919-1943) – Poland

Tosia grew up involved in the Jewish community in her town and she was known as a talented youth group leader. Upon the outbreak of war, youth groups were called to move eastwards. There were difficulties in Soviet-occupied territory, so they ended up in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was a hard journey, mostly taken on foot, yet Tosia was among the first to return to Poland.

She initially worked as a courier, providing resistance groups with news and educational material. She then began smuggling arms into the Warsaw Ghetto and played a key role in the 1943 Uprising.

Tosia survived several capture attempts and was one of just six who lived through a bunker being gassed. She fled, but the attic where she hid caught on fire. Tosia, her whole body on fire, jumped from the window and was handed over to the police. She died in hospital, aged 24, her wounds untreated.

Sources:

• https://jwa.org/
• https://www.accidentaltalmudist.org/category/history/
• https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en

See also:

• Blog post: Madres de Plaza de Mayo
• Blog post: Igbo Women’s War
• Bitesize History: Summary