1st Edition

Writing Antifascist Resistance, 1939–44 History Through Last Letters

By Mercedes Camino Copyright 2026
184 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

184 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The book, Writing Antifascist Resistance, 1939-44: History Through Last Letters, examines the final letters of five antifascist activists who faced execution during the Second World War, including three teenagers. From Julia Conesa and Guy Môquet, who were given mere hours to write before their executions by firing squad, to Masha Bruskina, Mordechai Anielewicz and Olga Bancic, whose messages... Read more

List of Illustrations

 

Acknowledgements

 

Introduction: Last Letters as Historical Sources

 

Chapter 1. Julia Conesa and Thirteen Red Roses in Franco’s Spain (5 August 1939)

 

Chapter 2. Guy Môquet and the Hostages of Vichy France (22 October 1941)

 

Chapter 3. Masha Bruskina and Jewish ‘Partisans’ in Occupied Byelorussia (26 October 1941)

 

Chapter 4. Mordechai Anielewicz and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (21 April – 16 May 1943)

 

Chapter 5. Olga Bancic and The Manouchian Group (10 May 1944)

 

Conclusion

 

Index

Biography

Mercedes Camino is Professor of History at Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests include film and memory of twentieth-century conflicts. She is the author of Memories of Resistance and the Holocaust on Film (2018) and co-editor of The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century (2017).