Fading Stories

Women’s military contributions to the efforts of World War II have been overlooked for many reasons, the largest of which was that many of the operations and organizations they took part in were top secret in nature. Countries had to ensure that their tactics would not fall into enemy hands, especially during and right after the war. The general public were unaware of most, if not all, the military operations taking place since spies could be anywhere (though civilians were more focused on staying alive). Still, even though their roles were mostly secret in nature, women faced many other barriers in finding recognition for their efforts.

In the case of the Wrens, women had been seen as unfit for military work as their roles usually never went outside those of housekeeping and childrearing. It was only the absence of men in the workforce that prompted a massive influx of women into new roles. However, even when proving themselves time and time again as having the same (or better) work ethic and skill as their male counterparts, most women did not receive awards above the lowest standing in the Honours List as they did not have official military positions due to their secretive work. It was a similar situation for France’s secret agents. Women did not have official positions, nor were there documents on their actual identities and roles for fear of compromising them and leading to their deaths if the documents got into enemy hands.

The women of the Jewish resistance on the other hand, were not recognized for much more heartbreaking reasons. The toll of the Holocaust was neverending even after liberation. The pain of being ripped away from their homes into camps of hard labor and death, of losing family and loved ones, of being humiliated and massacred just for being Jewish. As soon as it was over, there was a need for normalcy. Not many Jews wanted to talk about their experiences, and they wanted their children to grow up without knowing the horrors of what they had experienced. Survivor’s guilt led to suicides, and many who did want to speak of their experiences as resistance fighters were told to keep silent; victim blaming was common, “If they resisted then why did you not do the same? It must have not been as bad as you say. Why did you not fight back to save your people?” Prominent resistance leaders like Zivia gave speeches around the world on their experiences but were often ignored or not believed: it just could not be possible that humans could commit such atrocious acts. Above all, the resistance stories that did get told were mostly about the roles of men, and the more secretive roles that mostly women took on were ignored.

However, women’s roles in the war are now beginning to surface recently as documents on their roles are being released to the public. Many books have been published detailing their important contributions, and just like those authors I hope this book gave a new insight to the successes of the largest conflict that led to the world we have today.