Judy Batalion, who is also the author of White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood And The Mess In Between, is a winner of a National Jewish Book Award and a Canadian Jewish Literary Award for The Light Of Days. The Last Woman Of Warsaw is set in 1938, a period of increasing danger for the Jewish population (and others), but also one of thriving music, fashion and creativity.
Shani R. Friedman: A little background – you’re from Canada, raised in Montreal. Did you grow up in a Jewish household?
Judy Batalion: Most of my community was not particularly observant. My family was Kosher: that was rare, in fact. We always lit candles, said Kiddish, ate Challah, but weren’t Shomer Shabbos. It was an intimate Jewish community. Many people knew each other. My mother had been to Leonard Cohen’s apartment a few times.
The Montreal Jewish community has a high number of Holocaust Survivors. All four of my grandparents were born and raised in Poland. My father’s family came over before WWII; on my mother’s side, Survivors. I lived with my mother’s parents for a lot of my childhood. Yiddish was my very first language. My bubbe raised me: she was home with me in my young years. I went to a Jewish day school, which was very unique to Montreal. It was a secular Jewish day school that focused on Hebrew and Yiddish language and literature. It was a mix of Leftist and Bundist minds that came together. I learned Yiddish all through high school. Who knew Yiddish would become my cash cow?!
I learned about Hannah Senesh in school. She was the only [Jewish female resistance fighter] I learned about. I just happened to find a dusty, old Yiddish book Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos – a Yiddish thriller about “ghetto girls” who hid revolvers in teddy bears, bribed Nazis with whiskey and pastry, and blew up German supply trains) 20 years ago in the British Library, and it changed the trajectory of my life and work.
SRF: What influence did the stories and experiences of your Survivor grandparents have on you as a kid?
JB: The majority of people I went to school with came from Survivor families. It was very normal to me. As an adult, I realized that most peoples’ families didn’t survive. When I understood that, I started to explore more of my personality, and peccadilloes based on my heritage. I’m a very anxious person and really started to think about how much of that came from my family background. Trauma trickles through generations. My first book was about the trauma in my family.
In terms of my grandparents’ actual stories, I know very little. That’s what pushed me to research their stories: a lack of understanding of where I came from. I think that was from a fear of provoking more trauma and pain. Survivors didn’t want to trouble their children. With later generations there’s been more conversation, there’s more distance. And survivors themselves began to tell their stories.
SRF: The Light Of Days came out in 2021 after you spent more than 15 years conducting research. Did the germ of the idea for The Last Woman Of Warsaw take root then, or only after you’d put TLOD to bed?
JB: The whole time I was writing, these incredible stories of the Jewish women in the underground, running schools, kitchens, shooting Nazis in the head: these women were incredible, brave and daring. I wanted to understand the world they came from. What world had created these bold, courageous women? It didn’t jibe with my idea of Warsaw. I thought of shetls and Fiddler. Warsaw was a cultural hub. But I didn’t have a lot of time to write about it. A few things were left dangling [with TLOD]. Audiences were interested in these modern, sophisticated, fashionable women. I knew there was something I wanted to explore in this. I knew there was something there. I was really drawn to the setting.
[I’m reminded of] one Family legend: my grandmother came to NY in the 50s and said it was nice, but no Warsaw! It was a family joke. As soon as I started to research pre-war Warsaw, I was stunned to find photographs, artistic relics and memoirs. It was really surprising to me. Warsaw was of course completely destroyed. I felt excited to recreate it for readers.
SRF: You describe Warsaw as being the Paris of the North in the late 1930s. It sounds like the city shared some similarities to Weimar-era Berlin or Vienna). What made you want to immerse yourself in and write about this incredibly dark time in world history,
JB: Warsaw had been more Jewish. Warsaw’s population was over 30% Jewish: much higher than these other cities. It was a complicated period. It was dark in retrospect. At the time, actual newspapers were writing about an “epidemic of lunacy”: there was so much nightlife, cabaret and entertainment. In fact, ’38 was a bit of a positive year in Warsaw. The feeling was that the poverty of the Depression was easing, there was less anti-Semitism than in previous years, and people had a good feeling about the future. In that moment, people were aware of political instability, of course, and the difficulties of being Jewish, but it was also a very creative and exciting time. I was drawn to this moment on the brink.
SRF: The novel centers on two female characters, the wealthy and privileged Fanny who lives in the city, and the working-class Zosia, who has left her religious, shetl life for Warsaw. The two meet as they search for Wanda, a woman from Zosai’s youth movement group who is also Fanny’s photography instructor. What made you want to write about female friendship?
JB: I think I’ve always focused on female friendships. I spent many, many years reading the memoirs of women of this period for The Light of Days. I had all these women’s stories in my head: they lived in me for a long time. I was interested in the idea of the odd couple kind of friendship: that people from very different backgrounds and politics can come together. I was interested in how different people can shape you. It’s forcing people to have a conversation.
SRF: How was writing nonfiction different than creating a work of fiction? Do you have a preference?
JB: They both satisfy curiosities in a different way. With fiction, you can create characters and dialogue, and play with time. This is historical fiction based on real events. It’s not completely imagined. In fiction, I was able to give them internal lives that writing historical nonfiction, I couldn’t. With nonfiction, it’s exciting to make sense of the world: figuring out the chronology of what these [women] were doing at the time. It was a puzzle to solve. With fiction, the puzzle is plot. What will bring them together? What will push them? It felt more free, which I enjoyed. Light had 75 pages of endnotes. I was really proving a case. I had ethical concerns writing fiction, but not as pressured
SRF: Do the characters in the book have any real-life counterparts? Were there figures you’d come across in your research for TLOD who you didn’t want to let go, or you found yourself imagining what their lives could have been like in 1930s Poland?
JB: They’re all based on people I had been reading: the memoirs. They’re composites. Frumka, Zvia,. Stuff that had lived in me and emerged in these characters.
SRF: What are you working on next? Is it going to be something frothy and research-free?
JB: I have another book coming out: a totally different project. It’s a humorous book about bowel disease. I wrote it with the NBC correspondent. We both have ulcerative colitis. There’s been a massive increase [in the number of diagnoses] of bowel disease, especially among women. That will be out Nov. 10, 2026.
SRF: What’s been the response to Last Woman and what are you hoping for with the book?
JB: One of the most interesting responses were people coming up and saying “I finally understand my grandmother.” It wasn’t just me. People said their grandmothers were always talking about the fashions in Warsaw and they didn’t get it. It’s very moving. That’s what I was doing: trying to make sense of my grandmothers’ lives that I never saw.
We spend a lot of time talking about the death of Jews in Poland. But also there was a lot of life. Jews lived continuously in Poland for over 1000 years and I wanted to shed light on that. And I wanted to commemorate this lost world of art and Jewish imagination. It’s very sad to me that it was never properly mourned. I always had had this idea that they were primitive but they were sophisticated. Many of the women spoke five or six languages. These were characters who fought for truth and justice.
For more information on the author, books and virtual and in-person events with Batalion, go to https://www.judybatalion.com/events
The Last Woman Of Warsaw is available now.