Women of Valor: Polish Resisters to the Third Reich by Joanne D Gilbert

Author:Joanne D Gilbert [Gilbert, Joanne D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gihon River Press
Published: 2014-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

I have one more story that I want to tell you about brave Jewish fighters. Especially females. For almost seventy years, whenever I speak about the Holocaust, I make sure to tell this story. There was a Jewish girl, who along with ten Russian soldiers, had escaped from a German prison camp, and joined the partisans. One day they were sent to scout out the area for Germans. On the way, however, they were ambushed by Germans who started shooting at them. The Russians turned around and started to run away. They hadn’t been sent to fight—they’d been sent to scout! But the Jewish girl stood still and started to scream at them, “COWARDS! STOP! DON’T RUN! WHAT KIND OF MEN ARE YOU? LET’S FIGHT BACK!” And you might find it hard to believe, but they all stopped running. They turned around, started shooting, and ended up killing all the Germans. Then they continued their scouting mission. She was so brave. In German-occupied territory, a young Jewish girl stopped big, tough, Russian soldiers from running away from danger.

I later learned that she survived until liberation, but that some German soldiers, who were returning home, spotted her and killed her. She was already free. And got killed anyway. The war was over and they still had to kill a Jewish girl. Whenever I hear that the Jews went silently “like sheep to the slaughter,” I am infuriated to know there are so many stories like hers that will never be told. And even though I’m only one person, I will never stop telling her story, or the stories of the other countless other Jewish heroes who never stopped fighting the Germans. I also know that many of the Jews who survived, did so because of Gentiles who helped them. So I never fail to tell about the Gentiles who helped us. They were also heroes.

The human ability to adapt to circumstances is amazing. The bizarre life I had been leading for over two years had actually become routine. Always being out in the weather, always being on the alert, never being safe, never being comfortable, nursing the sick, the scared, and horribly wounded, watching people die—all of this seemed perfectly normal. This was the only life I knew. I never even thought about a “regular” life. What would really have been bizarre, would have been thinking about having a family and a home—with furniture and food. A bath! It would have felt like science fiction to think about going to a café, and then to the theater with friends. I never planned beyond the next few hours, so why would I even think of some vague future? But eventually, the Soviets did push the Germans back, and on July 3, 1944, our region was liberated. For the first time since July 1941, there was no need for partisan fighters in our part of Eastern Europe.

At first we were ecstatic beyond belief—laughing and crying with joy! As we marched into Minsk, we were greeted as heroes, with parades, and bands, and flowers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.