Women in War
Spies, nurses, resistance fighters, factory workers — the women history nearly left out.
5 articles
Women in War
The Soviet Nurse Who Adopted 17 German War Orphans
After Stalingrad, a nurse began taking in the children of the soldiers on both sides of the battle
After the Battle of Stalingrad, Nadezhda Petrova, a Soviet army nurse, wandered through the ruins of the city looking for wounded soldiers. She found them. But …
Women in War
The Woman Who Raised a Child She Knew Was Not Hers
A Polish nurse hid a Jewish infant for three years, then kept him when the war ended — because it felt wrong to let him go
Halina Szymanska was a 22-year-old nurse in Krakow when a desperate Jewish mother arrived at her door in the winter of 1942, bleeding and carrying an eight-mont…
Women in War
The Mother Who Trained Her Daughter to Forget Her
A Jewish mother told her three-year-old daughter her name was a false one, taught her not to cry, and handed her to strangers — never to see her again
In January 1943, a mother named Rosa Goldstein stood at the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto and kissed her daughter Leah goodbye. Leah was three years old. Rosa had …
Women in War
The Warsaw Uprising: 63 Days of Fighting, and the World Did Nothing
Polish Home Army rose up in 1944. The Red Army watched across the river and waited
On August 1, 1944, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) launched an uprising in Warsaw with the aim of liberating the city before the arriving Soviet forces cou…
Women in War
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team: Go For Broke
The most decorated unit for its size in American military history was made up of the sons of interned families
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was composed almost entirely of second-generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei. Many of these men came from families that had b…