"Writing by women victims and survivors of Nazi persecution is discussed by scholars—if at all—largely as testimony, rarely as thought. . . . By looking at the thinking of Stein, Weil, Frank, and Hillesum, Brenner has helped reverse this."—Sara R. Horowitz, Modern Fiction Studies

"Brenner writes a compelling book that is both informative and engaging. . . . Writing as Resistance is exactly what good work in the humanities should be: accessible yet challenging."—Maurice Hamington, National Catholic Reporter

"A very challenging and rewarding piece of work. The reader comes away with a knowledge of the four women under review deeper than the one that a straightforward biography would give."—Jewish Affairs

In this moving account of the life, work, and ethics of four Jewish women intellectuals in the world of the Holocaust, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores the ways in which these women sought to maintain their faith in humanity while aware of intensifying destruction. She argues that through their written responses of autobiographical self-assertion, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum resisted the Nazi terror in ways that defy its horrifying dehumanization.

By focusing on the four women's accomplishments as intellectuals, writers, and thinkers, Brenner's account liberates them from other posthumous treatments that depict them as symbols of altruism, sanctity, and victimization. Her approach also elucidates the particular predicament of Western Jewish intellectuals who trusted the ideals of the Enlightenment and believed in human fellowship. While suffering the terror of physical annihilation decreed by the Final Solution, these Jews had to contend with their exclusion from the world that they considered theirs.