The Untold Story of the Kashariyot: Jewish Women Undercover Agents on the Aryan Side

• In Event: New Perspectives on Jewish Resistance: Reconsidering the Holocaust

Abstract

Drawing primarily on interviews, this paper follows the activities of young women who risked their lives to pass as non-Jews on missions for the Jewish underground outside the ghettos. Their missions began with carrying news and information, but soon expanded to ever more dangerous travel to warn Jews of the mass killings, organize resistance, and smuggle weapons into the ghettos for planned revolts. As the ghettos were being liquidated, they mobilized escape and rescue. At what point should their activities should be considered resistance, and why?

Author

• Lenore J. Weitzman, Jewish Book Council