Thousands of books, articles, movies, and personal testimonials are now part of the written, visual, and audio records for World War II. Declassified information over the past twenty years has allowed historians to fill in the gaps or correct previous historical accounts of events. Every once and a while, newly discovered information pops up and an author can turn it into a book perhaps on a previously well-covered topic but with a different perspective. Or sometimes an author gathers information on a topic that has not been covered in the past and creates a new opportunity for us to add to our knowledge of a particular event or series of events.
Our story today is based on Judy Batalion’s new book, The Light of Days (see below). Click here to learn more about the book.
Ms. Batalion has written about young Jewish women in Polish ghettos who cleverly resisted the Nazis. Like many resistance fighters during the war, the brave exploits of these women were lost to history until Ms. Batalion stumbled across a long-forgotten book, Freuen in di Ghettos, or Women in the Ghettos (1946). Written in Yiddish, the book’s 185-pages recount the individual stories of dozens of the “ghetto girls” who resisted by supplying arms and ammunition to the fighters inside the ghettos as well as other acts of bravery. Read More Ghetto Girls
There are many iconic images of World War II. One of them is a 1943 photograph of women and children exiting a bunker during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with their hands raised in surrender led by a little boy. Off to the side, holding his machine gun on them, stands SS–Rottenführer Josef Blösche. He was serving as a policeman in the Warsaw Ghetto during the monthlong uprising and according to post-war testimony, carried out his daily duties with such cruelty that Blösche earned the nickname, “Frankenstein.” It also earned him the death sentence twenty-six years later.
A Jewish boy surrenders in Warsaw (original title). Polish Jews are captured by Germans during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Josef Blösche stands (right with goggles on helmet) with machine gun pointed at the young boy. Photo by Franz Konrad or Propaganda Kompanie nr 689 (c. April/May 1943). The Stroop Report. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and Polish Institute of National Remembrance. PD-Expired Copyright. Wikimedia Commons.
Did You Know?
Did you know that the last person executed in the Tower of London was a Nazi spy named Josef Jakobs (1898-1941)? Parachuting into England on 31 January 1941, Jakobs was immediately arrested by the Home Guard. They knew he was coming because the authorities had been tipped off by a double agent working for British intelligence under Operation Double Cross [Read The Double Cross Systemhere]. Found guilty of spying, Jakobs was executed by a firing squad (he was condemned as an enemy combatant and therefore, not hanged). Jakobs’s granddaughter, Giselle Jakobs, began researching her grandfather’s story in the early 1990s. As classified documents were released to the U.K. National Archives, Giselle was able to piece together the story of Josef’s life including his allegiance to Nazi Germany. It was not a pretty story, but it did provide some sort of closure for Giselle as well as for her father, Josef’s son. Her book, The Spy in the Tower: The Untold Story of Joseph Jakobs, the Last Person to be Executed in the Tower of London is available through Amazon.com.
The chair in which Josef Jakobs sat when he was executed by firing squad on 15 August 1941 at the Tower of London. Photo by Hu Nhu (October 2018). PD-CCA-Share Alike 4.0 International. Wikimedia Commons.
The Warsaw Ghetto
Prior to World War II, a quarter of Warsaw’s population were of the Jewish faith. Immediately after the German invasion in 1939, Polish Jews were subjected to the Nazi anti-Jewish laws. In November 1940, the Germans established the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, and it became the largest ghetto in any of the Nazi occupied countries. More than 400,000 Jews were required to live within the 1.3 square mile area surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire. The actual size of the ghetto decreased over time as the population declined due to deportations, executions, and death through disease or starvation along with the deliberate destruction of the ghetto by the Nazis. Beginning in the summer of 1942, approximately a quarter million of the Jews living in the ghetto were rounded up and deported fifty miles to the northeast of Warsaw to the Treblinka extermination camp.
On 15 November 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto is sealed with a wall. Photo by Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce 1939-1945. Poland. No. 75. (c. 1941).
“Another outstanding, well-researched, and presented book by Stew Ross. It gives a detailed guided walking tour full of facts about the activities of the Gestapo during their occupation of Paris during World War II. I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in what life was like during the Nazi occupation in France.”
Richard H.F. Neave, President Royal British Legion Paris branch, member Paris-based Libre Résistance SOE “F” Section and author of SOE: A Life in the Shadows
“Stew blends the dark history of buildings in Paris that are associated with the infamous deeds of the Gestapo with contrasting insights into the bravery of the French people, who, at great risk to themselves and their families, secretly resisted the German Occupation.”
Stanley Booker, MBE, RAF (Ret.), Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur
