Women Against Tyranny: Poems of Resistance During the Holocaust

In this unusual volume, original and sensitively crafted poetry by Washington poet Davi Walders tells the story of women from different cultural and religious backgrounds, who fought against tyranny during World War II. Some names will be familiar to readers, such as Hannah Senesh; Emilie Schindler, who worked with her husband to save Jews in their factory; and Gisi Fleischmann, who was a leader of the Slovakian resistance. A beautiful poem, centered on a wartime Bar Mitzvah, recreates the world of Recha Sternbuch, an Orthodox mother in Montreux, Switzerland, who, with her husband, headed the Swiss effort to save Jews. Sternbuch missed the Shabbat Bar Mitzvah of her son in order to negotiate for the release of Jewish refugees. Extolling the heroism of non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, a poem gives a vivid picture of a German woman, married to an Albanian Muslim, whose family gave refuge to a Jewish family who had fled to Albania. Another poem recreates the story of a French parson’s wife who shielded thousands of Jewish refugees from the Nazis in the village of LeChambon-Sur-Lignon.