Imagine our teenage sons and daughters--those rap-listening, pizza-gnawing, videogame-pounding goofballs who slouch and grumble under our roofs. Now imagine those same kids living one step ahead of genocide, armed with rifles, forged passports, and grim purpose--members of an underground resistance against unspeakable evil. Interweaving first person narratives, home movies, and truly amazing still photography, Daring to Resist, narrated by Janeane Garafolo, provides a skillfully crafted, tremendously moving portrait of three women who, as teenagers, took decisive action against the Nazi terror, and who, through luck, wile, and determination, survived to tell their stories. Faye Lazebnik Schulman, Barbara Lederman Rodbell, and Shulamit Gara Lack were all girls from comfortably bourgeois Jewish families (Faye from Lenin, Poland, near the Russian border; Barbara from Berlin and eventually Amsterdam; and Shula from Budapest). As Nazi occupation and persecution of local Jewish populations intensified, each of these girls found themselves faced with the choice of either passively submitting (the fate of most of their families), or using their unique talents and considerable intelligence to resist. Faye used her skills as a photographer to dodge death; blond-haired Barbara, a talented dancer, passed as a non-Jew and helped hide refugees in her Amsterdam apartment; Shula took up arms with a group of young Zionist guerillas involved in smuggling Jews across borders. Their stories are ones of almost unbelievable bravery (bolstered at least partially by the recklessness and excitement of youth) coupled with unimaginable terror and loss. While the horrors of the Holocaust have been chronicled and memorialized in innumerable documentaries and feature films over the past 50 years, few have addressed Jewish resistance efforts during these times, and even less have examined the involvement of young people. One simply could not provide better redress for this oversight than this inspiring tribute to these three remarkable women. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)
Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust
(1999) 58 min. $295: colleges & universities; $99: public libraries. Women Make Movies. PPR. Color cover. Vol. 15, Issue 5
Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust
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