By Kevin Seabrooke

Led by the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB) (Jewish Combat Organization), the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April/May 1943 against the German SS remains one of the most famous struggles in the annals of the Holocaust. It is a history largely dominated by the story of men, but Holocaust historian and archivist Elizabeth Hyman’s new book highlighting the stories of the five Polish Jewish women such as Zivia Lubetkin, Vladka Meed, Dr. Idina “Inka” Blady-Schweiger, Tema Schneiderman and Tossia Altman, should go a long way toward restoring balance and expanding the understanding of what these women, and many others, went through as they risked their lives to become operatives in the Jewish underground and the Jewish Fighting Organization.

To the resistance, they were known as “the girls.” The Nazis trying to kill them called them “bandits” as they worked in the Jewish resistance as fighters, commanders, couriers, and smugglers.

The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising (Elizabeth R. Hyman, Harper Perennial, New York, NY, 352 pp., Oct. 14, 2025 $19.99 SC)

More World War II Book Reviews for Winter 2026