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Make 2025 your year to read diverse books and authors! 🙌 Join Rebel Readers Cleveland in celebrating building bridges through books. 📕 Expand your reading list and journey into diverse narratives that inspire and empower. 🚀January’s Book Pick
"The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos" by Judy Batalion
Time & Location
Jan 19, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Loganberry Books (13015 Larchmere Blvd, Cleveland, OH 44120)
About the event
Every month, we invite a guest speaker with expertise on the book's topic, to deepen our understanding of the narrative.
This month, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are discussing, "The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos" by Judy Batalion, an instant New York Times Bestseller and named one of the Best Audiobooks about Women by Reader's Digest.
One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children.
Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown.
As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, Band of Brothers, and A Train in Winter, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond.
Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.
Get 10% OFF Rebel Reads when you purchase through Loganberry Books, online or in-store.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Loganberry Books, 13015 Larchmere Blvd,Shaker Heights, Ohio, United States
Tickets
