The Light of Days is a nonfiction historical WW2 novel telling the stories of brave Polish Jewish young women as resistance fighters. I listened to the audiobook which was extremely well researched. The narration is precise in the retelling of these ladies lives. Each of these women’s stories are told separately. The book is not for the light hearted. The author does a great job detailing the histories of the women who each volunteered to fight against the Nazis and the horrific events they endured. I will look forward to seeing how Steven Spielberg turns this story into a movie of these spectacular women.

Thank you #NetGally, #HarperAudio and #JudyBatalion for the advance audiobook copy for my honest review.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book. I listened to an audio version of The Light of Days.

When I read historical fiction I often gravitate towards anything about WWII. Our book club always jokes that this is a typical topic for us and we have to consciously try to select something that is not about WWII. I really wanted to like this book and I wonder if I would have if I had read it myself and not listened to it on audiobook. The narrator was not my favorite. Her voice was a bit monotone and didn't have a ton of inflection. It made me bored with the story and did not keep my attention well.

I did enjoy that this book was focused on the women on WWII and how they did some AMAZING things to keep their families and loved ones alive, as well as how they worked against the Nazis to survive. Again, I think I would have gotten more out of this had I read it and not listened to it.

I loved everything about this. I've read a lot of historical nonfiction about World War 2, but none of it has addressed the female resistance fighters. Batalion had the perfect mix of historical narrative and informative facts. I felt emotionally connected to these characters and I was so invested. At one point I sat on my bed doing nothing for two hours straight without realizing any time had passed while I was listening to this. It was beautifully written and researched and this is a story that absolutely needed to be told.

Lately I have been reading a lot of nonfiction books on WWII. Most WWII books are written by men, and are about the accomplishments of men. The books I have been reading are about the contributions women made to support the war effort.

The Light of Days ( to be published in April 2021) is about the Jewish women, really teenagers, who took it upon themselves to help the resistance fight the Nazis. This book showed how determined and strong women are in the face of conflict. They were willing to risk their lives to save their fellow Jews.

I was in awe of the risks these women took to fight the Nazis. They understood the dangers, that they could lose their lives, but it was worth it to save others.

Judy Batalion is a superb writer. I felt like I was there in the ghetto with Renia and the other ghetto girls. This book shows that females are capable of doing anything. This book is an inspiration. I highly recommend it. #NetGalley #The Light of Days" #JudyBatalion.

2.5 stars

I guess when I requested this audiobook, I was expecting a flowing story with warmth and heroism. Although the author delivered on the latter, the former was lacking. The narrative was extremely well researched but read more like history than historical fiction. This may have been the intent of the author and I misunderstood what I was requesting. My rating is based solely on my enjoyment and does not reflect the quality of information and detailed accounts of how these brave Jewish women fought and resisted during the Holocaust in WW2. Just know going in that it is comprised of various stories written as factual historical accounts not a plot driven historical fiction novel. The narrator's performance was well suited to the nature of the book.

Thank you to Harper Audio and Netgalley for an advanced audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

For the most part, war histories have been written by men, and brave women have been given short shrift. Judy Batalion helps correct this by telling the stories of Jewish women in Poland who resisted the Nazis during World War II. These women served as couriers, caretakers, and fighters, especially in Będzin, Krakow, Warsaw and other cities that had relatively large Jewish communities.

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Jews in cities were relegated to cramped ghettos where living space, food, medicine, clothing, money, sanitation, work papers, etc. were in short supply. Women smugglers who could pass for Polish Christians would sneak out, round up supplies, pass messages, and do what had to be done....with no thought to their own safety.

A female memoirist describes the girls in a diary: 'Heroic girls; boldly they travel back and forth through the cities and towns of Poland. They are in mortal danger every day. They rely entirely on their Aryan faces and on the peasant kerchiefs that cover their heads. Without a murmur, without a second's hesitation, they accept and carry out the most dangerous missions. If someone needed to travel to Vilna, Białystok, Lemberg [or other cities], to smuggle in contraband such as illegal publications, goods, money, the girls volunteer as though it's the most natural thing in the world. If comrades have to be rescued, they undertake the mission. Nothing stands in their way. The missions are dangerous; the women are often arrested and searched. But they are indefatigable.'

The book, which is almost 600 pages long, contains the stories of many women - all of them memorable. To provide a feel for the narrative, I'll briefly summarize one woman's tale.

In 1942, Renia Kukielkher was a 17-year-old girl living in the Warsaw Ghetto with her family. Jews who made their way to the ghetto from outside told horrible tales. Renia heard the story of a German, foaming at the mouth who killed two infants by kicking them with spiked boots. The mother was ordered to watch, then dig them graves. The German finally crushed the mother's skull with the butt of his rifle.

On another day Renia saw a group of half-insane women - raggedy, pale, blue-lipped, and shaking - who told her that their town had been surrounded. Gunshots flew and the Nazis beat their children to death.

Other women told stories of Poles adding to the persecution, blackmailing Jews for money and possessions, under threat of turning them in.

When the Nazis began liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, and deporting Jews to work camps and concentration camps (extermination camps), Renia's family decided to leave. Renia made it to a Nazi-run Jewish labor camp, where the workers hoped to be safe from deportation. The camp wasn't safe, however, and Renia left and began wandering around Poland. Renia was caught by police with dogs, but looked Aryan enough to pass for a Christian, and got away.

At a train station, Renia found a woman's purse with some money and a Polish passport, which was her ticket to travel. After a harrowing journey - during which Renia lived in constant fear of being exposed as a Jew - she got a job as a housekeeper in the home of a half-German family called the Hollanders. There Renia pretended to be Catholic, went to church with the family, was careful to speak like a Pole, etc....all the time fearful of being outed as a Jew, and suffering from anxiety and insomnia.

Renia received letters from her sister, and learned that her family was living in the woods and suffering. Though it was very dangerous, Renia made up her mind to join them. Renia told the Hollanders her aunt was sick, and got permission to visit her. A smuggler helped Renia travel, with her Jewishness deeply buried. Renia finally made it to a Jewish enclave in Będzin, but all her relatives - except for one sister - was lost.

Wanting to help the Jewish cause, Renia became a courier for the resistance. If caught by Germans, couriers were imprisoned in filthy conditions, raped, beaten, starved, and either transported to concentration camps or killed. But Renia survived to tell her story.

Other women have tales similar to Renia's, and some even took part in armed rebellions. Women fought during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, for example, and German soldiers were amazed to see women hand-to-hand fighting, shooting guns, and throwing grenades.

The book is hard to read because the disgusting, vicious, stomach-churning atrocities committed by the Nazis and (many) Poles are described in detail. Still, the bravery of the featured women is uplifting and inspiring, and it's good to see their stories told.

In an afterward, Judy Batalion writes that she took 12 years to write the book, most of it spent researching diaries, memoirs, testimonies, books, and writings in a variety of languages, including English, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Polish and Russian. Battalion also traveled around the world to meet the descendants of the featured women, sifted through photographs and letters, and learned how the ladies lived during the post-war phase of their lives. Many of the women suffered from survivor's guilt and/or mental illness, and some committed suicide.

The book tells an important story of remarkable women, and is well worth reading.

Thanks to Netgalley, Judy Battalion, and William Morrow Publishers for a copy of the book.

What a well-research, vivid retelling of the lives of such brave Jewish women in Poland during World War II. The obstinance, bravery, and sheer will of each young woman radiated from the pages. The author did an amazing job of sharing each young woman's journey, values, and risk taking. This story is nothing short of amazing. And to hear it has been optioned by Steven Spielberg is not surprising. This is a story that needs to be shared and read by all. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

This book was the perfect follow up to my recent read, The Invisible Woman. While TIW was historical fiction, The Light of Days is nonfiction. It delves deeply into the lives of several brave women who resisted the Nazis in Poland. The acts of resistance took various forms and yielded numerous results. Few of the women’s survivor stories were ever told and even fewer recorded. This book does not tread lightly on the topics of horrific torture and violence specific to women during WWII. The author did a wonderful job of bringing these women’s heroic and devastating stories to life. The Light of Days was thoroughly researched and well-written. The narrator read this story with an appropriately serious tone.

Thank you NetGalley, author, publisher, and narrator for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook. The opinions in this review are entirely my own.

This is a wonderful audiobook and offers the chance to learn some new things regarding the history of Jewish people being ostracized, ridiculed, looked down upon even before the WWII/Holocaust began.

This book is a detailed history, with some reading from letters, diaries, notes from various (approximately 20) women who were courageous enough to join the resistance no matter the cost. There is no dialogue between characters.

I highly recommend reading & thinking/talking about this book with others. People have been lying to manipulate/influence the way others act, think, or treat those who are somehow different from themselves. The levels that some will go to just to promote hate is, unfortunately, just as rampant today as it ever has been. Having books such as this can help only if these tough topics are talked about & all people recognize that hate, oppression, violence is never the answer to making positive choices.

Author Judy Batalion grew up in Canada and was educated in northeastern United States, but it wasn’t until she was living and working in London that she felt a pervasive rejection of her Jewish-ness. Her ethnicity and religion seemed offensive to those around her.
This set Batalion on a research quest to discover strong Jewish female role models. She stumbled across a book in Yiddish about Jewish women resistance workers in Poland during World War II. Some of the women actually fought alongside their male counterparts with guns, knives, and any other weapon they could obtain. They helped to organize and carry out the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Some of these brave women naturally ascended to strategic and leadership positions in these underground cells, but the majority worked as curriers. This was possible especially if their looks did not betray their ethnicity. The women were better suited for this role than men, who were often challenged to prove they weren’t Jewish by revealing a lack of circumcision.
Males were frequently given the costly traditional Hebrew education, while girls were publicly schooled with Catholic and Christian girls. This helped the Jewish girls more easily assimilate into society as a non-Jew, having already experienced the culture and customs of non-Jews.
Even so it was dangerous work, and many died when their true identity was discovered. Some were shot. Others perished in work camps or extermination camps. Torture of political prisoners was especially brutal.
This can be a hard book to read – emotionally – especially with the backdrop of America’s current upheaval. It isn’t easy to read about murder, starvation, betrayal, rape, brutality, torture, and the unabashed evil that perpetuated it. Sometimes hard truths have to be taken in smaller bites. I consumed this book in three-days-time and it has affected me powerfully.
Thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC of The Light of Days for review.

#TheLightofDays #NetGalley #ResistanceMovement #JewishWomen

The Light of Days is an extremely well researched non-fiction book telling the stories of some of the women resistance fighters in Poland during WWII. It i a difficult read. The details of the atrocities committed by one human being to another are not spared by author Judy Batalion. It is also a difficult read because the material is very dense with historical information, much as a history text book would be written. This may have been complicated by the fact that I was listening to the audio book and not seeing the text I can see the being incredible source material for students and for further development in to a screen play.
Heroic is a word that has lost meaning in today's world. It is casually applied to lesser actions. These women were truly heroic. It is important to know their stories and to honor their lives. My four star rating is for the importance of the material as well as how well researched it is . if I was just going to rate on ease of read, it would be 3.
My thanks to NetGalley and publisher William Morrow for the advanced Audio copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This story begins in 1939 Poland. World War II is underway. While German soldiers begin to overtake the country by torture, extermination, and relocation, teenager Renia Kukielkher enlists the help of girls and other youth from the Polish ghettos to form a resistance against the Nazi occupation. These truly harrowing and often graphic tales from the survivors themselves, is downright horrific and yet inspirational. For those who read Band of Brothers and A Woman of No Importance.

This is a realistic, detailed history of the horrors Jewish people endured and the resistance measures they attempted. There were stories after stories of death, torture, medical experiments, rape, graphic descriptions of the states of found corpses etc. Everything was vaguely linked together by following several women in the resistance movement.

This is also one of the few books I’ve ever read about Jewish survivors that follows them after the war. Survivors struggled with PTSD and adapting and the next generation had issues with guilt and living up to the expectations of the survivors. It’s something that gets eclipsed in the focus on the victory and it was enlightening to hear about the “next steps”.

This is an incredibly important story to remember and tell. It’s important not to gloss over these horrors and forget what evil people are capable of. It also really puts our current struggles into perspective.

The more that I read of WW2 the more I can't understand the level of madness and craziness of these people?????

The Light of Days is the true story of the Jewish women in Poland who were a HUGE key in WW2 but as always being a woman our stories always get forgotten or they really don't matter to the world.. this is exactly the case of all these magnificent women who fought so hard to help and did many courageous things to help but they were never recognized or even known about. Friendship, loyalty, and faith even strength is what permeates the whole book.

they lived so many terrible things, some of them were only teenagers and had to grow in a matter of hours, they saw many cruel things, evil things that will stay forever with them, hunting them like a horror movie on repeat..

The Jewish Women In Poland, their stories were shadowed by many political agendas, they were hidden or erase, Judy really did an amazing job not only bringing the stories to life but recognizing the true value of these magnificent women, women that should be recognized in museums and history books but with time man has erased or even not talked about.

I cried so much with every story, I really didn't know many of the things in The Light of the Days, I heard so many atrocities but the ones in these stories are just too much, I still in shock with the evilness, how they really didn't have a piece of heart in them, what they did to the babies, that was too much way too much, I literally spend the whole book crying and screaming and swearing to every Nazi, I still can't believe some of them still alive how could they live with themselves?

I'm so glad Karma is so real I bet these guys will have to reincarnate like 1000000 times and not even with that many lifetimes they will pay for what they did.

This is a great book, if you're looking to get inspired by true courageous women, women who will give everything to survive and help their families and loves ones even friends to survive this is a great book.

I was going to write a very different review as I was so angry reading the madness of those people but I'm glad I waited as I wanted to focus all my love on these women rather than expressing my anger and hate toward the evilness.

The narration by Mozhan Marno were great i really love how she brought each story and thought and character and everything to life, i really enjoy so much this book because of her.

to the author Judy Batalion, thank you for writing this book, for letting us know the stories of these wonderful women who deserve so much more, thank you for giving them a voice.

The Light of Days is the first book I have encountered that tells the stories of heroic young Jewish women in Poland who fought the oppression and subsequent Holocaust of their people with fervor and an undeniable braveness that I cannot imagine. It is immediately evident how well researched this book was by Judy Batalion and how important is was to her to tell these stories with as much respect and accuracy as possible. Her forward and authors notes were my most favourite parts of the book. I approached this read thinking it would be a semi-fictional "based on real stories and real women" story, a "The Secrets we Kept" style novel, but it really is a non-fiction piece almost reading like a research paper, with authors thoughts and the use of interjections like, "in one instance" and "it is reported that she said" woven through the accounts.

The audiobook was narrated by Mozhan Marno whose voice was very soothing yet strong and was the perfect compliment to tell these stories. It has quite a long running time at 16.25 hours. I am hopeful that, when released, Harper sets up an accessible webpage with a list of names, maps and photos to accompany the audiobook to round out the experience.

There are many young women featured here, all of whom sacrificed everything, even opportunities for personal freedom, to keep fighting in an attempt to secure those freedoms for others in the face of unspeakable brutality. I feel very well read on the atrocities of the Holocaust but had read very little about female freedom fighters in this time so was very interested to hear about these women. There were many tears shed listening to this, and many moments of thankfulness that my own life hasn't been subject to trials such as these women faced. Batalion does not shirk the atrocities here, the horrible sexual, depraved, barbaric, animalistic treatments are described in full.

There is a lot of information and full stories of each of the women's lives included. It was really a different read and at times changed it's mind as to whether it was telling a story or detailing an historical event but that didn't detract in my opinion as the author clearly felt both after committing so much of her life to tell the stories of these women. When I was done the book and hearing the author tell her own stories of traveling to the birth homes of these women in Poland and meeting with their present day families, I felt so emotional and connected and she made some really wonderful points about why some of these stories were never told, reasons both political and personal. She also remarked that none of these heroic women who lived and grew old were given assistance dealing with the fact that they survived and what that left them with to deal with, especially after the tortures they had endured and the loss of their young adult lives. I wished she had been comfortable with weaving her thoughts throughout the book as her voice was so welcomed at the end. I do feel that she wanted to respect these women's stories and wanted to give them a vessel and a voice and not overlay her own.

She did all of these women proud, they are portrayed with strength and compassion but still as women and although a dark and difficult read, I am grateful to Judy Batalion for telling their stories.

I am thankful to NetGalley and Harper Audio for an Advanced Reader Copy of this Audiobook, it will be released in April 2021 and and has also already been optioned for movie production by Steven Spielberg.

This is a non-fiction work regarding Jewish Polish Resistance WOMEN fighters in WWII.

There are several different women that were researched and included in this book. There was definitely a lot of work that went into this book. I'm now interested in finding additional information/books about these amazing women.

Rounding up to 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author/Judy Batalion for an advance read copy in exchange for an honest review.