18. Taking the Fight to the Nazis
After fleeing from Lokov, Eta Wrobel helped organize a Jewish partisan group of about 80 people, and took the fight to the Nazis. They harried the occupiers by ambushing supply convoys, mining roads, and conducting 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 sole doctor around was busy with somebody more seriously injured. So Eta extracted the bullet herself: she dug it out of her leg with a knife, then sterilized the wound with vodka.
After 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“.