The Girl Who Fought Back: Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Joshua M. Greene

Feige Peltel, known by her code name of Vladka, was headed towards Warsaw's wealthier district, hoping to sell ribbons, spools of thread and other sewing goods. Vladka's light brown hair and grey-green eyes, and the fact that she spoke fluent Polish suggested that she was not a Jew. 

It was November 1939, two months since the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Jews now faced unending restrictions. Jews comprised almost thirty percent of Warsaw's one million residents. But now Vladka's family, like other Jews have surrendered their bicycles and radios, and can only shop during specific hours. Vladka, like other Jewish children, no longer attended school and she found her Christian friends suddenly anti-Semitic and willing to report any Jews attempting to hide their identity.

After selling some sewing supplies in Saski Park, Vladka returned to her family's apartment in the suburb of Praga where she lived with her parents, Shlomo and Hanna,  her sister Henia and her thirteen-year-old brother, Chaim. Her father, who had served in the First World War believed the Germans were good people who would not treat the Jews the way Hitler was telling them to. That was not to be.

In the summer of 1940, Jewish workers were forced by German officials to build a ten foot high brick wall around an area that is roughly one square mile. This became the Jewish ghetto. When the wall was completed in November, the Jews of Warsaw were all forced to move from their homes into the ghetto. The ghetto was soon filled with hundreds of thousands of Jews crammed into crumbling buildings. Germans guarded the entrance to the ghetto. As Vladka walked through the ghetto, "...she saw people young and old, emaciated and dying of starvation." 

Vladka found work as a cashier in a barber shop, while Henia worked in a public soup kitchen.Chaim was too young to work so he helped their mother at home. Vladka's father had tried to sell cloth from his business but he was beaten and robbed by the German police. He became depressed and then ill, contracting pneumonia. His illness and hunger eventually took its toll and he slowly died. Vladka and her family struggled to survive in the ghetto. There were reports of Jews being sent to concentration camps by train, where they were murdered.

In July 1942, the Germans announced that all Jews in the ghetto would be deported. The exception was those employed in the German workshops and in various Jewish organizations. While Henia and Vladka had work permits, her brother and mother did not. So Vladka hid them in the cellar of the soup kitchen where Henia worked. After the deportations, her mother and brother returned to their apartment. At this time Vladka lived in a separate apartment from her family in the same building. But the next morning, a second deportation began. Vladka along with the remaining Jews in her building were forced out into the street. Those with acceptable work permits were sent to the right, while those in the line on the left were to be deported. Afterwards, Vladka found her mother's apartment empty. She wept because she knew she would never see her mother or brother again.

In her grief, Vladka wondered what she should do next. She decided to join the underground with other young people who had survived the selections. There were smaller groups under the direction of a larger group called the Jewish Fighting Organization, in Polish, the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB. These groups helped other Jews. At first Vladka helped other Jews learn to find food and clothing or find information about missing family members. But her duties became more dangerous with time.

Vladka had a work permit for the Toebbens factory to keep her safe from deportation. Henia's job however, did not offer that protection so Vladka pleaded with her to come to her apartment overnight. However, Henia refused to abandon the children at the soup kitchen. The next day the kitchen was raided by the Germans and Vladka never saw Henia again.

As Vladka struggled with her grief, she became more involved in the underground. More and more Jews - over sixty thousand during the week of September 6 to 12, 1942, were deported from the Warsaw ghetto. In the fall of 1942, over "...265,00 Jews had been sent by train to the Treblinka death camp."  An old friend, Elie Lindner, had escaped Treblinka and returned to the ghetto. He told Vladka and her roommates about the horrors happening at Treblinka. But when her friend Kubu was deported, Vladka was inspired by Kuba's word "It's not over yet." and decided to fight back. That fight involved working to bring about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the only significant resistance of the Jewish people during World War II.

Discussion

The Girl Who Fought Back tells the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising from the perspective of Vladka Meed, a real member of the Jewish resistance who survived the uprising and Holocaust.

Vladka Meed, whose given name was Feigele Peltel, was born in 1921 in Warsaw to Shlomo and Hanna Peltel. She would be the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. Because  she had what was considered an "Aryan" appearance, and she was fluent in Polish, Vladka was given assignments that were outside the Warsaw ghetto. She was able to pass as a Christian woman for the main purpose of securing weapons for the ZOB. But she also was involved in rescuing Jewish children and placing them with Christian families and in aiding Jews in hiding within the city of Warsaw. 

Greene's account is factual, focusing on the events happening to Vladka, her family and her fellow Jews. However, The Girl Who Fought Back also manages to convey some of the intense emotions Vladka was experiencing as her family suffered through the Holocaust. The fear of being deported to camps was constant as Vladka and her family knew the trains were taking Jews to their deaths. Even the best of plans couldn't save loved ones. The relief of saving her mother and brother from one deportation, only to have them placed on a second surprise deportation was quickly replaced by intense grief. When Vladka races back to her mother's apartment only to find it empty, she weeps because she knows she will never see them again. The inability to convince her sister Henia to hide at her apartment, only to learn later that she too is taken, makes Vladka feel angry at herself for being unable to convince Henia to save herself. Other times, such as witnessing the cold blooded murder of an elderly woman walking, by an German soldier, Vladka simply doesn't react because there is nothing she can do. When she saw the cruelty of the Germans, she struggled to make sense of what she was witnessing. It was as incomprehensible then as it is now.

Vladka's continued survival, despite ongoing deportations, created a deep sense of loss, but also conflict. She wonders, "Why had she not also been deported? Why was she still alive and not them?" She like many of the survivors experienced "...a loss of hope over their fate at the hands of the Nazis."  Her increasing involvement in the resistance gave Vladka a purpose despite her knowing that the odds of dying were very high. 

When Vladka finds herself in relative safety outside the ghetto as the battle begins, she is "furious at herself" but also feels pride and frustration. She could only watch and wait.  "Vladka was one of a small group of Jews who had done everything in their power to fight the Nazis. It was a battle they knew could not be won, and now, watching atrocity after atrocity, she felt isolated, useless, and lonely. Her friends and family had been murdered, the world she once knew was gone forever, and nothing she could do would every bring it back."  Despite this, the words of ZOB Commander Mordecai Anielewicz inspired Vladka to go on, and to someday "tell the story of those who hadn't survived."

Vladka published her memoir in 1948, describing not just the horrors of the Holocaust and her experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto but also the rich life of the Jewish people prior to the war. She felt it was difficult for historians and scholars to understand what the Holocaust survivors had endured. Likewise she felt her own efforts to resist were also misunderstood. "We didn't think of ourselves as heroes. We didn't have a choice. We were doing what needed to be done, responding to what the Germans were doing to us." She felt that being seen as a hero was "...seeing with today's eyes."

The Girl Who Fought Back is a succinct retelling of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that succeeds in portraying the desperation, determination, courage, and resourcefulness of  Vladka Meed. The last three chapters focus on the post-war period and how Vladka continued her work to tell the world about the uprising but also to teach future generations about the Jewish people and to prevent the hatred and indifference that led to the Holocaust.

Book Details:

The Girl Who Fought Back: Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Joshua M. Greene

New York: Scholastic Focus    2024

142 pp.

Uprising by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Lidia Janina Durr wants to join her papa and her older brother Ryszard at the lake on this sunny first day of September. They are at her Grandfather Albin's house in the countryside near Warsaw. Her mother refused to allow her to go, saying the men are busy fishing and won't want her there. After banging out Chopin's "Minute Waltz" in rebellion against her mother, Lidia races out of the house with an egg basket. In the field she hears and then sees a plane with the Nazi cross on its wings and watches as the plane drops a bomb that destroys their barn.

After the attack, they learn from the radio that the German invasion of Poland has begun. Lidia's papa refuses to stay with Grandfather and sells their automobile to grandfather's Jewish neighbor, Mr. Adelstein. He explains that this will be a safer way to travel back to Warsaw as the Nazis will think they are important people if they use the automobile. Before they leave, Grandfather warns Lidia that when the Nazis arrive in Warsaw, she must do whatever she needs to survive. 

They return to Warsaw, where they had moved a year ago so Lidia could study music at the same university as Chopin. They find their home has survived the initial bombing, but after several days hiding in the cellar, one corner has collapsed. Lidia, Ryszard and Mama search the home for clothing and supplies. Papa decides to join the Polish army to fight the Nazis, against the wishes of his family. After Papa leaves, their family maid, Ruth Gollstein whom they call Doda , along with her mother Bubbe arrived seeking shelter. Lidia insists that they accept them, although her mother is reluctant.

On September 17 they learn that Russia has invaded from the east. Then the Nazis announce that they will release poison gas into Warsaw if the city does not surrender. Warsaw falls and the Soviets and Germans sign a treaty dividing Poland in half. With Poland now occupied by the Soviets in the East and Germany in the West, life for Lidia, Ryszard and Mama becomes much more difficult. Their school building is destroyed and then all schools are closed by the Nazis. Jewish shops are targeted, Jews are forced to wear the yellow Star of David, libraries, museums and universities are closed, and Jewish men are put into forced labor.

Lidia and her family learn from Henryk Katz who was her papa's driver, that he is in a prison camp in Russia. Lidia's mother is despondent after hearing this as well as having discovered that the Nazis have stolen all their savings. This means that Mama must now work. Then a young Polish boy whose family had been helped by Lidia's parents, comes to warn them that the Nazis are planning to confiscate their home. Although Doda plans a way to save Lidia's beloved piano, they leave it behind and move into Bubbe's old apartment in the Wola district. It has no bathroom and one bedroom and a small kitchen. It is located on the south end of the Vistula River and near Lidia's piano teacher, Madame Kazowska.

In fall of 1940, thirteen-year-old Lidia and her family watch as the Nazis build a wall around the Jewish quarter using forced labour by Jews. One day after visiting the market, Lidia returns home to find Doda and Bubbe have been forcibly taken into the Jewish ghetto behind their apartment. The ghetto is now completely enclosed by a wall and guarded by Nazi soldiers. Lidia attempt to bring them food is cut short when she witnessed a Polish man shot dead for trying to do the same.

In 1941, Lidia learns from her friend, Maryna, that there are underground schools in Warsaw. Determined to attend, Lidia raises the tuition by selling the beautiful porcelain dolls her grandfather gifted her. They also receive a letter from Papa at this time telling that he is in a prison camp on a Russian island. Near the end of 1941, they learn from the underground newspaper, that Ryszard smuggles home, of the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. From a story about mass executions at Chelmno, Lidia learns that the Jews are being sent to camps to be killed. Later when Lidia looks into the ghetto she sees that it is extremely crowded and that many people are desperately thin and are starving. This motivates Lidia to begin helping those in the Jewish ghetto by slipping them food.

Throughout the spring of 1942, with her friend Maryna, Lidia continues passing food into the ghetto by various means. However, when a sign warning that those helping the Jews will be immediately executed, Lidia and Maryna are terrified. They decide they must stop helping with the food. However, the two girls discover the reality of the ghetto as they witness the Polish Jews being loaded into boxcars of a train supposedly to resettlement camps. Hearing what she believes is Bubbe's voice, Lidia attempts to get near the area but she is warned and then slapped by a German soldier who threatens to place them on the train. 

In January of 1943, they awaken to fighting in the ghetto. As Lidia watches a group of young Jewish fighters take on the German soldiers, she is impressed by their courage. She confronts Ryszard, telling him she knows he is part of the resistance and insists that she too is intent on joining. Despite his threat to tell their mother, Lidia begins to reach out to those she knows are involved and soon finds herself undertaking dangerous work as a messenger. 

Discussion

Uprising is based on the real life of Lidia Janina Durr who was a member of the Polish resistance in Warsaw, during World War II. The novel is divided into five parts: Part 1 Invasion, Part 2 Occupation, Part 3 Resistance, Part 4 Uprising and Part 5 The Escape. 

Some details of Lidia's life differ slightly from what is portrayed in Nielsen's book. For example, Lidia was born in 1924 in Warsaw, Poland and was fifteen-years-old, not twelve, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. She joined the resistance two years later when she was seventeen and worked as a messenger. While being active in the Resistance, Lidia managed to complete her high school education at an underground school. She also illegally studied medicine in the underground University of Warsaw and music at the Conservatory of Music, where Chopin once studied Lidia participated in the Warsaw Uprising (August 1 to October 2, 1944) as a messenger. The Warsaw Uprising was led by the Polish resistance as the Germans were retreating from Poland ahead of the Soviets. The Polish Resistance hoped for assistance from the Soviets but instead, Stalin order Soviet troops to halt, allowing the Germans to attack and destroy the Polish Home Army and the city of Warsaw. Almost sixteen thousand resistance fighters were killed and close to two hundred thousand Polish citizens in Warsaw were executed by the Germans. As mentioned in Nielsen's novel, no outside support from the Allies was offered, dooming the resistance to fail.

In her Author's Note, Nielsen writes that she made Lidia a few years younger in her novel. The events portrayed in the novel are taken from Lidia's own journals, writings and stories told to friends. The difficult relationship portrayed in the novel between Lidia and her mother, Janina, was real and only resolved many years later near the end of Janina's life. It's likely the premature death of Janina's first daughter, Krystyna was a factor.

In Uprising, Lidia is often arrogant, stubborn and unwilling to follow advice or direction from the leaders in the Polish Resistance. She is not a likeable protagonist until she grows older and more mature. Whether this is an accurate portrayal of the real Lidia Durr or dramatic license is uncertain. At any rate, it is obvious that under the constant threat of death, amidst the horrors of war, Lidia showed remarkable courage, ingenuity and determination as a member of the resistance. 

Nielsen has included an informative Author's Note the provides more background information on the Warsaw Uprising and the people that Lidia worked with, some of whom are also in the novel, as well as Lidia's life after the war. There are many black and white photographs of Lidia and her family to help readers relate better to the real Lidia Durr. A map detailing the location of Poland, Russia and Germany would have been helpful as well as one of Warsaw to show the location of the Warsaw Ghetto in the city and some of the other landmarks. As Nielsen mentions in her Author's Note, the city was leveled by the Germans as punishment for the uprising.

Uprising is another well-written and engaging historical fiction novel by Jennifer A. Nielsen that focuses on the Polish uprising during World War II.

Book Details:

Uprising by Jennifer A. Nielsen
New York: Scholastic Press   2024
356 pp.

The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax/Illustrated by Caryl Strzelecki

Written by Flemish author, Aline Sax, this short illustrated novel tells about the Warsaw ghetto uprising during the Second World War. All of Aline Sax's novels are historical fiction which is not surprising since she has a doctorate in history and works at the University of Ghent's Institute for Public History.You can find the author's website here.

This beautifully crafted short novel with its stark Chinese ink and conte pencil drawings by illustrator Caryl Strzelecki tells the ugly story of the massacre of Jewish men, women and children, who decided to resist the German soldiers sent to "liquidate" the ghetto - a Nazi euphemism for mass murder.

The story is told in the voice of Misha, opens with the invasion of Poland in 1939 by the Nazis who quickly begin harassing and humiliating the Jewish population. Eventually the area where the Jewish population of Warsaw lived was sealed off, dividing the city into two sectors, the Jewish ghetto and the Aryan section. Jews from Warsaw and the surrounding countryside are forced into the ghetto.

Misha, his younger sister Janina, and their parents are forced to live in cramped rooms, filled with strangers. The Germans do not allow food to be brought into the ghetto and it isn't long before everyone is starving. Misha watches as his mother slowly starves, and his sister becomes listless and quiet. Inside him, anger grows but he knows he must find a way to get for his mother and sister. When tragedy strikes Misha's family, he becomes despondent.

But then he is recruited by Mordecai Anielewicz, the leader of the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa), a resistance group formed to fight the Germans in self-defense.

The prose in The War Within These Walls is sparse but effective. Accompanied by the stark ink drawings, Sax captures the entire range of emotions from horror and terror, to fear, despair and hopelessness that accompanied the annihilation of tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children. 

Misha is an realistic voice for all those who suffered and died in this terrible tragedy, remembering for young generations today. He is a fictional character, but Mordecai Anielewicz was a real person, a very courageous man who believed that the Jewish people should resist the Germans, fight honorably in what inevitably would be to the death,  and let the outside world know what was going on. He was only twenty-three years old when he organized the ZOB.

You can view photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto at  http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto/

The Holocaust Encyclopedia is also a good resource that provides detailed information about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Book Details:
The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax; illustrations by Caryl Strzelecki; translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers        2013
173 pp.

Auslander by Paul Dowswell

This novel tells the fictional story of a young boy, Piotr Bruck, who is taken by the Nazis to Berlin to become a reclaimed German. While Piotr may have the ideal Aryan features, he soon learns his heart and mind do not subscribe to the Aryan ideals of race.

The novel opens with Piotr undergoing a terrifying physical exam in Warsaw where he is singled out because of his ideal Aryan features of blonde hair and blue eyes. In flashback, the reader learns that thirteen year old Piotr lived with his mother and father on their farm outside of Warsaw. For a time after the Germans invaded Poland, they believed they were safe, even though their farm was situated between the Russians and Germans. But when Russian and Germany begin to carve up Poland, his parents were killed and Piotr was driven from his home by German troops. Homeless and hungry, Piotr ends up in an orphanage in Warsaw.

Returning to the present, Piotr is taken from the orphanage along with many other boys and after a physical exam in which his features are measured and examined, he is grouped together boys who are to be sent back to Germany. His blonde hair and blue eyes and his near perfect German mark him as being of German blood -volksdeutsche. He along with others judged to be volkdsdeutsche are taken by Doctor Fischer of the Race and Settlement Office who runs this eugenics program, to be Germanized.

Piotr is sent to the Lebensborn hostel in Landsberg to await adoption by a German family. Meanwhile, Doctor Fischer contacts Professor Franz Kaltenbach who lives in Berlin with his wife, Liese, and their three daughters, twenty year old Elsbeth, thirteen year old Traudl and eight year old Charlotte. He encourages the Kaltenbachs to take Piotr into their home to raise him as a German citizen despite Kaltenbach's reservations about Piotr's Polish ancestry. Kaltenbach's reluctance is based on his work for the Nazi party.

Kaltenbach works at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Dahlem-Dorft, Berlin where he has been nvolved in a number of tasks that dealt with eugenics and racial purity. He had to determine the racial purity of the children from the Ostarbeiters (Eastern workers from Poland) as well as confirm the authenticity of the Ancestral Passports of candidates for the SS. Kaltenbach achieved his post at the Institute after the ethnic cleansing of all Jewish academics.

When Piotr returns home to Berlin with the Kaltenbachs, he is renamed Peter and is expected to hold the same views as his foster family regarding Jews and Slavs as well as politically support the Nazis.Peter is uncertain as to what to believe because his parents were divided on supporting the Nazis.  At first it seems that Peter and the Professor will have as good relationship as they share an interest in aircraft. Excited to finally have a safe place to live, Peter joins the Hitler-Jugend, attends school and even begins to see a girl in his neighbourhood, Anna Reiter. Peter even dreams of one day becoming a Luftwaffe pilot.

But Peter's comfort zone is challenged by the reality of life in Berlin when he sees Polish boys, the Ostarbeiters,  being overworked and starved, when he finds he cannot accept the German's blind faith in Hitler and when the Nazis ban anything different from what the party deems acceptable. Torn between his disgust at what the Nazis are doing and his fear of working against, Peter must decide make a choice - one that could cost ultimately cost him his life.

Discussion

Told from the third person omniscient point of view, Auslander provides a unique look a life in Berlin during the Second World War. Although most of the narration is from Peter's point of view, Dowswell also includes the perspectives of many other characters in the novel including Anna, Ula and Otto Reiter, Gerhart Segur and Franz Kaltenbach. It is precisely the use of different narrators that gives this novel its balanced approach. There are German characters who are "one hundred percenters" - those who completely believe in the Nazi propaganda such as Professor Kaltenbach and his wife. The Reiters represent those Germans who did not agree with the Nazi racial policies and who worked to mitigate the suffering of the Jews and those who were part of the resistance. Also portrayed are those such as Elsbeth who originally supported the Nazis but when the learned the truth of what they were doing, tried desperately to extricate themselves. And then of course there were many German citizens such as Segur who were terrorized by the Nazis into betraying neighbours and friends.

The fanaticism of the Nazis is well portrayed in the novel and Dowswell includes parts of speeches and texts used by the Nazis to foment hatred against Jews and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable and to promote war. Dowswell captures the time period brilliantly, showing how beautiful and sophisticated Berlin was in 1941 and yet how poisoned its people were with the rabid ideology of genetics and race. This was initially deceiving to someone like Peter who did not yet recognize the iron grip the Nazis had on life in Germany. As the tide in the war begins to turn, the rationalization of German citizens and their reluctance to doubt the Nazis is demonstrated. Even the bombing of Berlin doesn't seem to sway them.

One of the major themes in the novel is that of identity. Because Peter has lost his parents, he dearly wants to fit into German society. It is a classic search for identity but one which is even more poignant because of his circumstances. Peter is not allowed to be himself, nor to express his own views about what is happening. Instead, whether he agrees or not with Nazi policy, he must conform to the Nazi way of thinking or risk being sent to a work camp or perhaps worse. Gradually, as Peter's eyes are opened to what the Nazis are doing to ordinary people simply because they are different, Peter comes to understand the price of conformity both personally and for the country. Despite being very conflicted he begins to resist in subtle secret ways that lead to him becoming part of the resistance and risking everything.

This novel is well written and thrilling from beginning to end with a likable male protagonist - something not found in many historical fiction novels. The author based the character of Ula Reiter on two German women who heroically defied the Nazi regime in Berlin during the war. He also explains the origins of some of the ideas, speeches and events portrayed in the novel in a note at the back of the novel. This is historical fiction at it's very best - effectively providing readers with a sense of what life was like during this terrible conflict.
Highly recommended.

Book Details:
Auslander by Paul Dowswell
London: Bloomsbury            2009
295 pp.