VOICES

Judy Batalion

Writer

Jewish author Judy Batalion was born and raised in Montreal, where she grew up speaking English, French, Yiddish and Hebrew. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vogue, the Forward, Salon and other publications. Batalion’s latest work, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, is based on a neglected book she discovered at London’s British Library – a Yiddish-language thriller entitled Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos), about “ghetto girls” who hid revolvers in teddy bears, bribed Nazis with whiskey and pastry, and blew up German supply trains. Her previous book was White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between, published in 2016. She lives in New York with her family. (Photo: courtesy)