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Women of Peace and Those Sided the Wrong of World War II

Khalid Elhassan November 20, 2020 32 min

World War II - Italian resistance movement — Women of the resistance in Italy. Wall Street Journal

16. Eta Wrobel Survived the War to Become Mayor of Her Town

WWII Jewish partisans. Encyclopedia Britannica

In the depths of the woods near her hometown, Eta Wrobel helped organize a Jewish partisan group of about 80 people, and took the fight to the Nazi occupiers. Her partisans ambushed German supply convoys, mined roads, and conducted hit-and-run raids. It was a harsh existence, without adequate shelter, supplies, or medical care. On one occasion, she was shot in the leg, but the group’s sole doctor was busy with others more seriously injured. So Eta extracted the bullet herself, digging it out of her leg with a knife, then sterilizing the wound with vodka.

When the Nazis retreated in 1944, Eta was asked to become mayor of her town. She got married later that year, and moved to the US in 1947, where she raised a family. Looking back at her partisan years, Eta reasoned that: “The biggest resistance that we could have done to the Germans was to survive“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.