56 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa BarrThe Goddess of Warsaw
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Content Warning: This section discusses the Holocaust and antisemitism.
In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. The Nazis intended to erode Polish culture and exploit the Poles for forced labor. They also enacted policies of antisemitic persecution and violence, eventually establishing the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, where all the Jews in Warsaw were sent to be confined. However, rather than destroy the Polish spirit, Nazi efforts in the country only led to the formation of an underground resistance force. This spirit of resistance is represented in the book through covert organizations like Żegota. This same spirit of resistance also emerged in the ghetto, which witnessed the largest revolt ever carried out by the Jews during WWII: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a resistance movement by Polish Jews in retaliation for the deportation of their people to the Treblinka extermination camp. A number of the characters in the book meet their end there, including both Bina Blonksi’s and Dina Behrman’s family members; it is the place from which Jakub miraculously manages to escape. A Jewish group called the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB), which means “Jewish Fighting Organization,” was responsible for the revolt. While Zelda leads the ZOB in the book, in reality the resistance group was organized under a young commander named Mordecai Anielewicz. However, like Zelda, he, too, died fighting the Nazis in the uprising.
The revolt took place on April 19, 1943, as detailed in the book. Despite the ghetto’s limited ammunition and manpower, the residents successfully resisted the Nazis for four weeks until the revolt was crushed on May 16 of the same year. Other works of fiction set in the context of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Polish resistance include Jennifer Nielsen’s young adult novels Resistance (2018) and Uprising (2024).
Historical Context: The Oyneg Shabbos Archives
Lisa Barr uses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to explore one form of resistance in the face of violent oppression; another form of resistance is highlighted through the Oyneg Shabbos Archives. Also known as the Oneg Shabbat or Ringelblum Archives, the Oyneg Shabbos was a secret, underground archive within the Warsaw Ghetto founded by Jewish historian and social welfare worker Emanuel Ringelblum (“Emanuel Ringelblum and the Creation of the Oneg Shabbat Archive.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Ringelblum invited multiple contributors to the archive, wishing to maintain a record of the Jewish experience under Nazi occupation.
Ringelblum is not mentioned in the book, with the archives presented as Jakub’s brainchild; however, Jakub’s character appears to be based in part on Ringelblum. Like Jakub, Ringelblum managed to escape the ghetto, but he returned to it during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Ringelblum was also deported to a labor camp at one point but managed to escape. He did not survive the war, as he was caught and killed in 1944. However, Ringelblum’s archives did survive—the documentation carried out within the ghetto was buried in three separate parts, and two of these were eventually recovered in time (“The Oneg Shabbat Archive.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Another work of fiction that features the Oyneg Shabbos Archives is Lauren Grodstein’s novel We Must Not Think of Ourselves (2018).
