Shana Penn is the author of books and articles including Solidarity’s Secret: The women who defeated communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005) and Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe, co-edited with Jill Massino (Palgrave USA 2009). She is executive director of Taube Philanthropies, based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The testimonies of Jewish women partisans present a more complex gendered picture of partisan activism than the conventional portrayal of an exclusively male arena of armed guerillas. Women smuggled guns and ammunitions, fought in armed combat, engaged in reconnaissance activities, mobilized resistance, documented partisan activities, tended the wounded, and rescued and sheltered fellow Jews.
