Girl Couriers Essay

The Girl Couriers resisted by illegally smuggling in and out of ghettos and continuously putting themselves in danger. The sealing away of the Jewish population hid them from the rest of the world and kept the rest of society in the dark. However, with the works of the resistance, the horrors that were hidden through censorship were exposed. Some of the resisters led under the name of the group, the Oneg Shabbat. In this, they record their actions and the truth of the ghettos, some of whom were the Girl Couriers. These women lied to Nazis, illegally smuggled, and risked their lives for those in need.

The Girl Couriers were necessary for resistance during the Holocaust. The Girl Couriers were groups of predominantly young women who would forge

All of these women would risk everything in order to save as many people within their time limits. “These girls do not know what it is to rest. They had hardly arrived from Czestochowa, where they took illicit goods, and in a few hours they would move on again: they do it without a moment's hesitation, and without a minute's rest.” (The Girl Couriers of the Underground Movement). These hard-working, persevering young women were eventually sorted into a separate group of women on Oneg Shabbat. The Oneg Shabbat began as a single person's writing. Emanuel Ringlebum. In October 1939, the Oneg Shabbat underground archive became the secret archive inside the Warsaw Ghetto. Among the writings, there was consistent documentation of texts written by Jewish people from all branches of life, reflecting on their daily life in the ghettos and their resistance against the Nazis. The Girl Couriers were lifelines that connected Jewish communities inside confined ghettos, which allowed them to have access to goods and the entirety of their small outside world. In one of the articles found in Ringlebums archives, we

The goals that they accomplished helped save thousands of people inside the ghettos who faced the tragedies of the Holocaust. “Key to these efforts were the women and girls who smuggled weapons, communications, food, medicine, and people, in and out of the ghettos by passing as Aryan or Polish.” (Brenner) The multitude of women that risked their safety and others' lives in order to save as many as they did, shows the true fearlessness that was inside these women. “Yet it is a story of incredible bravery exhibited by a group of Jewish girls – some as young as fifteen years old – and women in their late teens and early twenties. These girls braved danger and death in order to serve as the lifeline between Jewish communities throughout war-torn Europe.” (Ochayon). These women traveled mile by mile on missions to resist German-occupied areas throughout Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. However, these accomplishments weren’t easy to achieve. They had to risk everything by faking their identities, sneaking in and out of ghettos, smuggling, and all in front of German surveillance. They had to hide, and if caught, they would be forced to endure torture for information. Even going through such torture, they were some of the strongest women groups known in history, giving little to no information, even if it cost them their