Episode 56: The Light of Days: Judy Batalion

"They were women who carried cash in their garter belts and dynamite in their underwear," says Judy Batalion, the author of The Light of Days, a new book about Jewish women resistance fighters in World War II who "blew up Nazi supply trains and shot and killed Gestapo men." She's also co-writing the screenplay for a Steven Spielberg movie based on the book. In this episode of Can We Talk?, we talk with Judy about what made some women well suited to certain roles in the resistance and why their stories aren't better known today.

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Released April 6, 2021

Photo of Judy Batalion, author of The Light of Days, and the cover of the book. Images via Nicole Dewey of Dewey Decimal Media.
Comrades from the pioneer training commune in Białystok, 1938. Frumka Płotnicka is

standing second from the right. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Photo Archive)
Renia Kukiełka in Budapest, 1944. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman)
Freedom comrades in Budapest, 1944, including Renia Kukiełka (bottom right), Chawka

Lenczner (bottom left), Max Fischer (top left), Yitzhak Fiszman (top row, second from the right,

and “little Muniosh” (Moniek Hopfenberg, bottom center). (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House

Museum, Photo Archive)