It took me a long time (yes, two weeks is a long time for me) to finish reading The Light of Days for two reasons:

1. I have been very tired this December. I do most of my reading before bedtime, and lately I have barely made it through one chapter before I fall asleep on the couch with the cats.
2. This book can, at times, be difficult to read. There are some passages in this book that depict the most inhumane, depraved human behaviour I have ever heard about, that it was nauseating for me to read. I almost did not finish reading The Light of Days because of this.

Jewish people have been depicted as passive victims of the Holocaust, but some Jewish people fought back against the Nazis. They knew they could not stop the Nazi genocide machine, but they were not going to make it easy for the Nazis and they tried to save as many Jewish people as they could.

The Light of Days is about the real-life Jewish women resistance fighters in Poland. In the past, stories of World War II were all about men who fought and died in the trenches: the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the storming of Normandy beaches on D-Day, etc. I certainly did not learn about women’s roles in World War II or the Jewish resistance in my high school history class. But lately there has been a resurgence of these forgotten or buried stories of people who fought in World War II who were not white, Christian men.

The women featured in The Light of Days were incredibly brave and resourceful. They worked as “courier girls” which meant they were responsible for sneaking out of the ghettos and travelling around Poland to move forged identity papers, food, weapons, and even people. They did this at great personal risk. If they were caught by the Nazis, they could be shot dead on the spot, or worse, arrested and tortured before being send to Auschwitz, Treblinka or any of the other death camps where they would most likely end up dead through hard labour or the gas chambers. Other Jewish women organized within the ghettos and helped lead armed battles against the Nazis when they came to the ghettos to round up the inhabitants for deportation to the death camps. The number of Nazis killed by Jewish people was just a small drop in the bucket compared to the millions of Jewish people killed by the Nazis, but at least they fought back, even if in the end they died. These women went willingly to their deaths if it meant saving another Jewish person or getting revenge on the Nazis and were not given enough credit for it even when they were alive. They were not officially recognized as leaders within the resistance groups, but they did inspire people to follow their lead.

As inspirational as it is to read about these courageous women fighters, The Light of Days is a brutally honest book about the realities of World War II. It does not mince details in Nazi violence towards Jewish people. The depictions of violence against children and sexual violence against women are especially disgusting. Knowing that most of these women died horrible deaths and did not live long enough to see the end of the war is despairing. I found this book to be a rather bleak read at a time when I am struggling with my anxiety over the pandemic, climate change and the rise of white supremacy in the US, among other things. I hope that people will never debase themselves and do what the Nazis did ever again, but the reality is, people have an incredible capacity for wickedness and cruelty, and an incredibly short memory.

I know this is not a glowing endorsement for The Light of Days, but it really is an interesting book; you just need a strong stomach to read it.