Ask Haviv Anything – Episode 72
The Women Fighters Behind the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with Elizabeth R. Hyman
December 29, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Ask Haviv Anything explores the overlooked history of the Jewish women, known as Kashariyot (couriers), who were vital fighters and organizers in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Host Haviv Rettig Gur (referred to at times as Khalif) interviews Elizabeth R. Hyman, author of The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, about her groundbreaking research into these resistance heroines. The discussion covers their backgrounds, roles, unique capabilities, the evolution of the Jewish resistance, and the postwar erasure of women from the historical narrative.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. Elizabeth R. Hyman – Introduction and Background

• Who is Elizabeth Hyman?
  • Jewish-American historian, whose family escaped Poland in 1939 (03:58)
  • Career as an archivist and public intellectual on Holocaust history (03:58–05:26)
  • Faces online abuse for nuanced takes on the Holocaust and contemporary events (05:33–07:38)
• "Injecting nuance and complexity into my responses, I managed to piss everyone off. Either I'm an evil, right-wing Zionist, fascist baby killer or I'm a self-hating Jew... That's the caliber of responses."
  – Hyman (06:42)

II. The “Lost Generation” of Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland

• Unique generational identity:
  • Born after WWI, came of age with constitutionally guaranteed rights, but increasing exclusion (08:14)
  • Rejected asking for rights; expressed agency as Polish citizens
  • Formed their own political and youth organizations: Zionists (various wings), Bundists, Communists (10:53)
• "They’d say... home with my parents... that's where I slept. But I lived at the party’s headquarters."
  – Hyman (12:58)
• Not just a Zionist impulse: Bundists, often anti-Zionist, also prioritized dignity, self-defense (13:49–14:39)

III. Early Resistance and the Importance of Youth Groups

• Youth organizations became centers for social, political, and, eventually, armed resistance (08:14–13:34)
• Women’s Roles Emerge: Women began serving as couriers, delivering crucial information between Jewish communities

IV. Discovery of the Women Fighters

• Hyman’s journey: Inspired by Vladka Meed’s smuggling testimony, she uncovers a vast network of women couriers (15:40–19:35)
• Key figures: Sivia Lubetkin (only female commander in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), Vladka Meed, Tema Schneiderman, Tosia Altman, Dr. Adina Blady Schweiger (Inka)
• "She [Sivia] was already a leader long before the Nazi period..."
  – Hyman (18:23)

V. Daily Life and Survival in the Ghetto

• Ghetto as "a space of passive murder" (19:55)
  • Overcrowding, starvation, lack of medicines, rampant disease
  • Survival depended on black-market smuggling—“90% of food was smuggled in” (23:20)
  • Collaboration with official and unofficial Jewish organizations, and even “criminal elements” (19:55–22:33)
  • Smuggling routes were maintained with bribed guards and underground strategies (23:20)
• Young girls, especially, became adept at smuggling

VI. The Unique Role of Women Couriers

• Women’s advantage: Could "pass" as non-Jewish due to education, language, and lack of circumcision checks (27:21–30:17)
  • Business savvy rooted in traditional roles and public schooling
  • Could perform "Polishness" in society—critical for clandestine activities
• "They would get on trains full of Nazi officers... have conversations like, 'I hope [the Jews] burn in hell'... jump off the train, sneak into the nearest ghetto, take guns out of their underwear and their Jewish patches out of their bra, and bring news to their comrades..."
  – Hyman (00:00, repeated at 33:55)

VII. The Summer of 1942 and Radicalization

• Gross Aktion: 250,000–300,000 Jews deported from Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka (31:05)
  • Survivors were young, healthy, organized
• Women couriers brought first news of systematic genocide (33:41–33:55)
  • Their reports catalyzed the shift from cultural to armed resistance

VIII. Planning and Outbreak of the Uprising

• Growing realization: Uprising not to win but to die with dignity and leave a mark in history (36:11)
• "The purpose of the uprising was to secure the long-term dignity of the Jewish people. To demonstrate to the world that the Jews would not go, quote, 'like sheep to the slaughter.' "
  – Hyman (36:46)
• Organization: Extensive use of bunkers, underground routes, alliances with sympathetic Polish underground (43:19–44:19)

IX. The Diaries and Memory

• Memoirs and diaries often written decades later, frequently for family, not public history
• Memoir writing seen as a male act; women’s accounts still underrepresented
• "Women didn’t believe...they were writing for history. They were writing within the domestic sphere."
  – Hyman (39:44–41:42)

X. The Fighting and Aftermath

• Uprising Timeline:
  • Jan 1943: "Little Uprising"—Nazis meet unexpected armed resistance (42:11)
  • April–May 1943: Full uprising; careful planning, brutal crackdown
• Dangerous dilemma for couriers: Survive to bear witness, or return to likely death (45:01)
  • Many experienced trauma watching destruction from outside the ghetto, unable to visibly mourn (45:01–48:03)
  • Later escapes via sewers with Polish help (49:20)
• Final stand: Not a single moment, but a series of last stands with groups surviving into autumn 1943 (49:20–52:30)

XI. Fate of the Women Fighters

• Three survived (Vladka Meed, Dr. Dina Blady Schweiger, Sivia Lubetkin), two killed (Tema Schneiderman, Tosia Altman) (52:46)
• Vladka immigrated to the U.S., dedicated her life to Holocaust education (52:46)
• Sivia helped found Kibbutz Yad Mordechai (Ghetto Fighters') in Israel (54:35–54:43)
• Survivors faced difficult postwar returns, persistent antisemitism, and unacknowledged trauma

XII. Erasure of Women’s Role Postwar

• Wartime gave women agency; peace restored "hardcore patriarchy" (55:00)

  • Women were pressured to return to domestic roles after the war
  • Even in memorials, art, and canonical works (Maus, Mila 18), women are erased or depicted only as passive victims (59:53–61:45)

• "This erasure, this misogynistic erasure, is baked into the foundations of Holocaust commemoration."
  – Hyman (61:36)

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "They would get on trains full of Nazi officers... jump off the train, sneak into the nearest ghetto, take guns out of their underwear... and bring news to their comrades in the Vilna Ghetto, the Bialystok ghetto..."
  – Elizabeth R. Hyman (00:00, see also 33:55)
• "Injecting nuance and complexity into my responses, I managed to piss everyone off. Either I’m an evil, right-wing Zionist, fascist baby killer or I’m a self-hating Jew..."
  – Hyman (06:42)
• "We don’t know her name. That was the point for me, I hadn’t heard of them."
  – Host (26:22)
• "If any of these young women were caught on their messenger duties... there was nothing on their body which would denote their Jewishness... There was no way to tell. It was not inscribed on your body."
  – Hyman (27:21)
• "It was those women who brought back to Warsaw, brought back to the youth groups, eyewitness accounts of these organized massacres of Jews."
  – Hyman (33:55)
• "The purpose of the uprising was to secure the long-term dignity of the Jewish people... to demonstrate to the world that the Jews would not go, quote, 'like sheep to the slaughter.'"
  – Hyman (36:46)
• "Women didn’t believe...they were writing for history. They were writing within the domestic sphere."
  – Hyman (39:44)
• "This erasure, this misogynistic erasure, is baked into the foundations of Holocaust commemoration."
  – Hyman (61:36)

Important Segment Timestamps

• 03:58 – Hyman’s personal background and entry to Holocaust history
• 13:49 – Political youth movements and non-Zionist resistance
• 19:55 – Explanation of ghetto life, starvation as policy
• 23:20 – The mechanics and necessity of smuggling
• 27:21 – Women’s unique skills and ability to “pass”
• 33:55 – Couriers as lifelines and first bearers of grim news
• 36:46 – Moral purpose of the uprising
• 39:44 – The gendered difference in writing Holocaust memoirs
• 45:01 – The couriers' trauma and impossible choices during the uprising
• 49:20 – The final escape, lingering resistance, and survivor guilt
• 52:46 – Fates of the five women
• 55:00 – Postwar return to patriarchy and suppression of women’s stories
• 61:36 – How women's stories were written out of public memory

Conclusion

Elizabeth R. Hyman’s research and storytelling led to a vital reevaluation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—one that recognizes the courage, agency, and leadership of dozens of Jewish women. The episode highlights both heroic action and the postwar forces that obscured women’s contributions. Hyman’s aim, brilliantly realized in this conversation, is to restore these women to their rightful place in Jewish and world history.

"Some of the greatest heroes in the history of the Jews are not known in an ordinary run-of-the-mill way to the Jews."
– Host (59:06)