This is Edna Szurek, nine years old, August 1944—a disguised Jewish girl who picked up a weapon and defied Hitler, smiling into a war that stole her family, her childhood, and her future… and still refusing to disappear.
Most people don’t believe Edna Stefania Brill’s story at first.
Too much happened to one person.
Too many moments that should have killed her.
Too many collisions with history.
But every word is documented.
Testimonies. Archives. Original documents she kept in boxes for decades.
I spent years verifying it all.
But every word is documented.
Here is what one Jewish girl survived:
Born at Mila 18
Edna was born at Mila 18 in Warsaw—the address that would become the command bunker of the Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The basement where her mother once stored wedding linens became the place where Mordechai Anielewicz and the ŻOB fighters made their last stand.
The place of her birth became a mass grave.
Survived the Ghetto
When the Nazis sealed the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, nearly 500,000 Jews were crammed into 2.4 percent of the city. Seven people to a room. Starvation rations. Typhus in the walls.
At seven years old, Edna squeezed through holes in the ghetto wall to smuggle food—a child small enough to slip through, brave enough to try.
Survived the Aryan Side
Of her family of ten, six were murdered during the war. Four survived, but only Edna and her brother Yakov lived to old age and died of natural causes. The others, including her sister Miriam, took their own lives. The war never released them.
Edna and Miriam escaped the ghetto and survived on the Aryan side by assuming Polish Catholic identities. Edna became Stefcia. She memorized prayers, learned to cross herself, attended Mass.
One mistake—a wrong word, a Jewish gesture, eyes that looked too sad—meant death.
She was eight years old.
Performed for the Gestapo
At nine, Edna sang and danced at Aleja Szucha 25, Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw—the most feared address in occupied Poland.
The Nazis applauded her.
They requested encores.
They had no idea they were cheering for a Jewish child who had escaped their ghetto.
Youngest Soldier in the Polish Home Army
In August 1944, Edna joined the Warsaw Uprising as a courier for the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa). She ran messages through sniper fire, carried orders through burning streets, and picked up a weapon when she had to.
She was nine years old—the youngest soldier in the Armia Krajowa.
Youngest Decorated Soldier in Polish Military History
On October 2, 1944—her tenth birthday—the Warsaw Uprising ended in surrender. That same day, Edna received two medals for valor: one for bravery, one for wounds sustained from a grenade blast.
She became the youngest decorated soldier in Polish military history.
She turned ten.
One of the First Female POWs
After the surrender, Edna was taken prisoner. The Warsaw Uprising marked the first time in history that women were granted official prisoner-of-war status.
Edna was among them.
She was ten years old.
Blessed by Pope Pius XII
After the war, Edna was among the “Oberlangen girls,” Polish women liberated from the POW camp, who received an audience with Pope Pius XII.
He blessed her.
He presented her with a medal.
He never knew she was Jewish.
Convent School in England
Edna won a full scholarship to St. Mary’s Convent School in Lowestoft, England, where she spent four years as a celebrated Polish Catholic war hero.
She excelled in her studies.
She was adored by the nuns.
She was still hiding.
Kidnapped to Israel
Her brother Yakov—who had survived the war—tracked her down through the Red Cross. Without authorization, he removed her from the convent and brought her to the newly formed State of Israel.
Pursued by Interpol
British authorities came looking for her. Interpol was involved. She was a minor, taken across international borders without consent.
But by then she was in Israel—beyond their reach—a Jewish girl almost able to stop pretending.
Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz
Edna’s brother became a founding member of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot—the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz—alongside survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, including Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman.
It was there that Edna met her future husband.
Married a Man from the Exodus
Harry Brill had been a passenger on the Exodus 1947, the ship carrying Jewish refugees to Palestine that was turned away by the British.
After they married, they emigrated to America, raised a family, and for decades intermittently spoke of what they had survived.
One Woman. One Life. All of It True.
Edna Stefania Brill died in 2019.
She was my mother-in-law for thirty-seven years.
For most of that time, I knew very little of this.
Now I tell her story so the world will know.
Why This Story. Why Now.
My parents served in World War II—my father in the Army, my mother in the Navy. They were part of a generation that understood what fascism looked like and what it cost to defeat it.
They believed they had secured democracy forever.
They were wrong.
Fascism did not appear fully formed. Genocide did not begin with gas chambers. It began with propaganda, scapegoating, normalized violence, and people looking away.
History does not repeat.
People do.
Through Edna’s life, I explore how societies unravel, how fear becomes policy, how children survive the unthinkable, and how trauma echoes through generations.
I write with deep gratitude for the generation who fought, resisted, and rebuilt. We owe them not only remembrance—but vigilance.
I won’t look away.
And I hope you won’t either.
If You Are Here
If you believe remembering is not enough—and that understanding is required for vigilance—you are welcome here.
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📘 Little Edna’s War will be published January 27, 2026, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Foreword by Dr. Michael Berenbaum.
Edna is my newest hero! I look forward to reading your book.