WOMEN OF VALOR

Gilbert provides a necessary, historically rich account of the Polish Jewish resistance via the perspectives of four women.

The author interviewed four Jewish women who survived the Holocaust: Manya Feldman, Faye Schulman, Lola Lieber, and Miriam Brysk. Each went on to live long lives abroad with various careers—a Hebrew School teacher, photographer, research scientist, and artist. In her debut nonfiction work, which borrows its title from a biblical phrase (“A woman of valor is robed in strength and dignity and faces the future with grace”), Gilbert immerses readers in the lives of her interviewees; photographs and helpful notes that provide historical background are interspersed throughout. Gilbert also “interviewed several Polish Gentile women who had been active in the Resistance” who asked that their stories not be included in the text. Each narrative is remarkable in its own right, extensively limning the horrors of World War II. In Manya Feldman’s chapter, for example, she tells Gilbert, “I would learn much later that my mother and precious little sisters were among the fifteen-thousand innocent Jews that were rounded up and sent to Sarny to be ‘liquidated’ during that hideous week in August 1942.” Faye Schulman describes her experiences developing horrific photos for the Nazis (“Before my eyes, appearing like phantoms on the photo paper, I again saw the heinous deaths of my neighbors, my friends…and my own precious family”); Lola Lieber recounts pretending to be Catholic and mimicking "Gentile mannerisms, and speech patterns." The chapter about Lieber includes an anecdote with Adolf Eichmann (“I was struck by how absolutely normal he looked”). Taken together, these recollections are intensely personal and thoughtfully compiled—richly descriptive of the women’s day-to-day experiences during the war while also providing historical context. Miriam Brysk’s story best epitomizes the text’s matter-of-fact style, as when she remembers her family’s arrival at a shared apartment in the town of Lublin: “There was very little furniture, but we felt safe and happy to be in our own apartment. We were especially happy to be able to celebrate our first Passover in six years.”

Well-researched and powerful; challenges readers to consider the heroism and struggles of women’s resistance.