Marjorie Bingham, "Women and the Warsaw Ghetto: A Moment to Decide "

Photographs usually depict the women of the Warsaw Ghetto as frightened and scared. Yet there are memoirs left by the women relating experiences filled with instant decisions that might mean the life or death for themselves or others. Some of the decisions turned out to be good and some not. Bingham discusses four major groups: "ordinary women" in the Jewish ghetto; Jewish women in the resistance; the Zegota-Christian aid group and the Polish resistance; and the ordinary Poles, Russians, and others who encountered Jews from the Ghetto. Gunnar S. Paulsson?s Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945 suggests wider sources of support for the Jews than appear in most Holocaust memoirs, though he does not deal with how much of it was the result of women's activities. There has been relatively little done by historians to examine the links to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, let alone describe the choices the surviving Jewish women made in that event. Bingham counteracts the image left by the devastating photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto women by demonstrating how they were highly engaged in choices, bringing to their efforts quick wit, great moral sense, and courage.
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