Revolts and Resistance

Don’t forget to revise your other notes on this subject from our previous study of Jews in
Nazi Germany, which are part of this unit of study also.

Poland between the two world wars was an independent country which, in theory, guaranteed its
Jews and other minorities equal rights in a constitution drawn up after World War One. In 1931
there were about 3.1 million Jews in Poland, accounting for about 10% of the population.
Warsaw itself had around 350,000 Jews, who comprised about one third of the city's
population. Most Jews were lower middle class; the typical Jew was a craftsman. Shoemaker,
baker, tailor or worked in a shop. Some Jews belonged to the wealthier, upper middle class and
would have been doctors, lawyers or civil servants.

As the 1930s progressed, against a backdrop of economic crisis, the Polish government became
increasingly anti-Semitic. It sought to exclude Jews from those parts of the economy where they
were most active through a series of laws restricting Jews in the workplace. It also actively
encouraged Jews to emigrate from Poland. Some did leave - for America, Palestine or other
places - but immigration quotas made this difficult. In some instances, pogroms broke out, which
increased this pressure.

During the 1930s, Jewish cultural and political activity was very highly developed and the
different parties, such as the Zionists, Jewish Socialists, and the Ultra-Orthodox, competed for
support.

Before 1936, the Zionist parties had done very well, but the British quota on immigration to
Palestine (Britain controlled Palestine under mandate from the League of Nations after WW1)
made the Zionist position less attractive. In the 1936 internal Jewish election, the most
successful party was the Bund, which was Socialist and anti-Zionist. The Bund’s policy of fighting
anti-Semitism together with the Polish socialists, and of promoting secular Yiddish culture,
received increasing support. This policy was known as "Dohkeit" meaning "Hereness", as they
wished to deal with the Jewish question in Poland, rather than in any other country.

In addition, there were many Zionist and Jewish Youth groups in Poland - as elsewhere in Europe
at this time. For example, Akiva, Hashomer Hatzair and Dror He-Halutz. Zionist Youth
Movements did not identify with the adult parties and were concerned with educating their
members towards Aliyah (emigration) to the Land of Israel.

This diversity of political and religious perspectives within the Jewish community made it
impossible to coordinate a response to the Nazi threat. As Gutman points out, those in ghettos
who advocated armed resistance were usually Socialist youth or Zionist (Cesarani 9) yet even
they were divided. The Communists and the Zionists distrusted one another (Communists focused
on Russia and the Zionists on Palestine) and the Bund felt that they wished to coordinate with
the Polish Socialist Movement. Moreover, even where these youth groups did manage to
coordinate activities, they met opposition from older, more conservative Jews, some Rabbis and
the Judenrate, who advocated cooperation out of a misguided belief that contributing to the
Nazi war effort would save the Jews.

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Opposition to resistance from older Jews and the Judenrat was considerable. In the town of
Shavli, the Judenrat actually voted against the suggestion of their chairman that the Jews set
fire to the ghetto if the end was near, remaining unwilling to sacrifice lives. In Vilna, the Jews
demanded that the underground resistance surrender its leader, Yitzhak Witenberg to the Nazis
in 1943, to try to prevent the liquidation of the entire ghetto.

Post-war Polish Historiography also stressed the passivity of the Jews. However, as Cressida
Trew points out, by 1948 Poland was controlled by the Communists and History had to be written
according to the Party line. The Party line on the Holocaust was, of course, determined by the
Marxist doctrine that religion was the opiate of the masses and therefore the passivity of the
Jews was inevitably emphasised. This emphasis on Jewish passivity also served to justify Polish
lack of support for the Jews during the Nazi regime and repaired the Polish sense of national
identity. Thus such interpretation is not entirely reliable.

Hannah Arendt claims that Jewish leaders were not just passive but actively collaborated in the
destruction of the Jews and that, without their help, Nazis would have been too overstretched
to implement such complete annihilation. This is probably true, but we should nevertheless
appreciate the reasons behind such cooperation.

As Gutman points out, Polish Jews had

had no period of preparation as had
German Jews to plan a confrontation or to
flee from the Nazi menace. Thus the
leaders of Jewish communities found
themselves, bewildered and
uncomprehending, many without any
leadership experience, having to address
immediately the problems which the
ghettoisation of the Polish Jews created.
There were on average 7 to 9 people in a
room, creating overcrowded and squalid
conditions. When supplies of food ran out
in June 1941, the mortality rate reached
four to five thousand each month, compared to 350 deaths per month in pre-war Warsaw,
creating the dual problem of starvation and disposal of bodies.

In addition, the Judenrat was responsible for the financing and operation of schools, hospitals
and clinics and, at times punishing Jewish criminals, often harshly. The ‘collaboration’ of the
Judenrate did actually result in improvements in the material conditions of the ghettos in the
months immediately before FS (Gutman). Even if the Judenrate were mistaken in their
conviction that working for the German war effort would save them, their endeavours did
improve life even if not prolong it.

Moreover, the ghetto Jews didn’t just acquiesce in their ghettoisation. All ghettos maintained an
inner cultural life (underground press, illegal education, theatres, secret religious observances),
organised clandestine political work and maintained economic links with the outside world
through myriad illegal methods. Under the circumstances, surely these factors constitute

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resistance. Nazi regulations allowed Germans 2,613 calories a day; Poles 699 calories; Jews
received 184 calories. Thus food smuggling became one of the most important elements of the
daily struggle for survival. Food was smuggled in by houses that backed on to the Ghetto,
through holes in the fence and along the sewers. Concealment and bribing Nazis were also
common. Although we know now that the Germans tolerated some smuggling to ensure the
whole Ghetto did not die quickly, as they needed the labour, the Jews could not have known this
and, nevertheless, smuggling was punishable by death if caught. In total, 80% of food in Warsaw
Ghetto was obtained illegally, clearly resisting the Nazi starvation of the Jews.

Rav Nussenbaum, in the Ghetto, wrote of the principle of "Kiddush Hechaim" (The Sanctification
of Life). He wrote that, whereas in previous times, there was a principle of "Kiddush Hashem"
(The Sanctification of God), whereby people chose to die, rather then break religious laws or
morals, in the world of the Ghetto, there was a new imperative: the situation demanded Jews
struggle to live, to prove that the Nazis would not be able to destroy them. Thus trying both to
ensure basic needs, like food smuggling and observing Jewish laws where possible, were ways of
sanctifying life and, as such, an imperative.

Admittedly, whilst Jews in the west were probably ignorant of Nazi intentions, Jews in the East
certainly were aware of the emergence of the death camps, probably even as they began in
early 1942. However, as Gutman points out, this awareness didn’t affect their behaviour;
knowledge of mass killings didn’t translate into comprehension that a decision to totally
annihilate all Jews had been made. Yitzhak Zuckerman recalled “we could not believe that a
nation in the twentieth century can pronounce a sentence of death on a whole nation” (cited in
Gilbert, p.314). If we remove our benefit of hindsight, who could have imagined that this was
the totalitarian aim?

Generally speaking, it was the youth who made this leap of understanding most rapidly and the
older generations who refused to accept it. Vilna originally had 55,000 Jews. Only 18,000
remained after Einsatzgruppen operations. On 1 January 1942 a young poet called Abba Kovner
declared that the Nazi aim was annihilation and the only possible response was armed uprising.
The movement spread to Warsaw and Krakow. But the problems and the overall futility of any
revolt meant that armed uprising only ever had minority appeal. The Jews were entirely alone,
and any uprising would inevitably prompt reprisals; the Nazis use of collective responsibility in
both ghettos and camps was a deliberate and effective mechanism for security conformity. For
example, In Dolhyhnov, near the old Lithuanian capital of Vilna, the entire ghetto population
was killed after two young boys escaped and refused to return. The knowledge that they would
not succeed ensured that resistance activities had to be planned for the last possible moment,
that moment at which destruction was anyway assured. This in itself posed another problem;
how to decide when resistance should occur. “without hope, the Jewish rebels were in an
utterly different position from non-Jews, many of whom fought with a post-war future in
mind.” Marrus.

Nevertheless, armed uprisings did occur:

Yehuda Bauer identifies armed resistance to the Nazis in 24 ghettos to the west and centre of
Poland, and even more in the East. In some cases these revolts gave cover to Jews escaping to
the forests. Krakowski estimates that more than 50,000 Jews escaped to the forests. Whilst
most were killed in German manhunts, there were sufficient numbers to form ‘family camps’ in

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the forests of Belorussia, and to form their own partisan units, numbering 15000 in western
Belorrusia, according to Bauer.

September 3, 1942 - Tuchin Ghetto: Seven hundred Jewish families escaped from this ghetto in
the Ukraine. They were hunted down, and only 15 survived.

August 16 1943 - Bialystok Ghetto: Jewish paramilitary organizations formed within the ghetto
attacked the German army when it was determined that the Nazis intended to liquidate it. The
battle lasted just one day, until the resisters were killed or captured.

September 1 1943 - Vilna Ghetto: Most participants were killed, although a few escaped
successfully and joined partisan units.

These examples illustrate the utter futility of such armed revolt.

The most famous of uprisings is that in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943.

Chronology of the Warsaw Ghetto and Revolt:

Sep. 27 1939: Poland surrenders to Germany

July 1940 : Last orders permitting Jews from the Generalgouvernment to leave the country were
cancelled.

Sept 1940: Quarantine area, later to be Ghetto, contains 240,000 Jews and 80,000 Chrisitians.

Oct. 16 1940: Decree gives Christian two weeks to move out of quarantine area, and Jews to
move in.

Nov. 15 1940: Warsaw Ghetto sealed off. The geographical area was about 425 acres and the
boundaries of the Ghetto were 18 kilometres, with 3 metre high fencing, topped by barbed wire.

Feb-March 1941: 66,000 Jews from the Warsaw District were transferred to the ghetto.

March 1941: Population of ghetto reaches a peak at 445,000 people.

March 1942: Yakov Grojanowski gave eye-witness account of the disposal of murdered Jews and
Gypsies at Chelmno.

Apr. 14: News of deportations and massacre in Lublin Ghetto published by "Oneg Shabbat." Oneg
Shabbat was a group of intellectuals, historians, writers and others in the Ghetto who
researched, collected and documented everything they could about the Ghetto so that the Nazis
wouldn’t succeed in their bid to totally eradicate the Jews. The leader was Dr. Emanuel
Ringelblum, a historian. As final liquidation drew near, the archives were hidden in three milk
churns under the Ghetto. Almost all the writers were killed, including Ringelblum, but after the
War, two of the three milk churns were recovered; the third has never been found.

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July 22: Jewish Council publishes notice of deportation to East regardless of sex or age.
From July 22 to September 12, 1942. 265,000 Jews were transported to Treblinka, leaving
behind 60,000 devastated, guilt-ridden, terrified people.

July 23: Adam Czernikow, chairman of the Judenrat, committed suicide, probably out of
recognition that he had failed to prevent deportation.

July: Zigmunt Friedrich followed deportees and returned with verified news of the extermination
camp at Treblinka.

July 28: Representatives of three pioneering youth movements- Hashomer Hatzair, Dror He-
Halutz, and Akiva- founded the Jewish Fighting Organization called Zydowska Organizacja
Bojowa (ZOB). By November, the other left and centre Zionist Youth Movements had also joined,
as well as the Bund and the Communists. The leader of Z.O.B. was Mordechai Anielewicz of
Hashomer Hatzair. He was 23 years old. Another youth organization, Betar, didn’t join but
formed the Revisionist Jewish Military Union, the ZZW. The initial emphasis was on gathering
weapons. Little was achieved: the Polish Underground, which did have weapons, was itself fairly
antisemitic and, as Marrus points out, helped to starve the weapon-hungry Jews, leaving them
even more vulnerable than would otherwise be the case. Betar had some useful contacts
amongst Gentile Poles, so they at least had some measure of success.

Ghetto Survivors are divided as to why the groups could not unite before so terrible an enemy.

 Z.Z.W. survivors claimed it was because they were not permitted to join as Betar, but
only as individuals.
 Z.O.B. members claim it was because Betar wanted to lead the resistance, refused to
hand over their weapons and propagandized against the Z.O.B. in the Ghetto.

This dispute underlines the difficulties the Jews had in coordinating a response. In the end, in
April 1943, the two groups did unite under Anielewicz's command.

January 9, 1943, Himmler visited the Warsaw Ghetto and ordered the deportation of another
8,000 Jews.

Jan. 18-21 1943: Second mass deportation. This was a surprise raid by the Germans and the
resistance groups had no firm plan and so acted independently. During the round-up Mordechai
Anielewicz led a small group throwing grenades at the Germans. This took the Germans by
surprise and the fighters retreated to Niska street. The tactic was to lure the Germans into a
building and then attack them. The Germans set the building on fire. All but Anielewicz died.
According to Gilbert, the Germans succeeded in rounding up 5000 Jews. However, if the aim was
to round up 8000, then the resistance was successful, accepting of course that success could only
be measured in terms of delaying deportation rather than preventing it. Sporadic raids continued
until 21 January when the Germans withdrew.

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Arguably, this is the point at which the liquidation of the ghetto becomes a certainty, and there
is no longer any point in not resisting. The Polish Underground was so surprised that the Jews
had actually resisted, that they donated a further small amount of arms. In spite of, or perhaps
because of, the hopelessness of the situation, it became clear that the underground movement
was prepared to die fighting rather than to cooperate.

Apr. 19: Warsaw Ghetto Revolt begins. Germans enter the ghetto, under General Jurgen Stroop
and are fired upon by Jewish resistance fighters. Gutman estimates that there were 1000
insurgents out of the remaining population of approximately 40,000 but once the fighting began
many Jews were drawn into the conflict. The main ZOB fighting force was about 500 men.
According to Gilbert, there were 2100 German soldiers against 1200 Jewish fighters, 13 heavy
machine guns against no equivalent, 69 hand held machine guns against no equivalent, 135
submachine guns against 2 in Jewish hands, 1358 rifles against 17 Jewish rifles. The Jews had
about 500 pistols, which were of little or no use in street fighting. The principle Jewish weapons,
therefore, were grenades and homemade incendiaries. Guerilla tactics were successful. The first
day of fighting cost the Germans 6 SS men and 6 Ukranian auxiliaries. Himmler promised Hitler
that the uprising would be quelled in three days, and the ghetto would be destroyed. It took 24
days.

The sewer network was used for moving around the ghetto and the Jewish intention was to fight
the Germans street by street, building by building. In response, the Germans began
systematically burning the ghetto, smoking out Jews or pouring poison gas into the sewers to
force surrender. Surrendering Jews were either killed in the street or rounded up for
deportation.

Benjamin Meed was a Polish Jew who, after the Germans occupied Warsaw, escaped to Soviet-
occupied eastern Poland. However, he returned to his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben
was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto, and helped smuggle people out of the ghetto.
Later, he went into hiding outside the ghetto and posed as a non-Jewish Pole. During the Warsaw
ghetto uprising in 1943, Ben worked with other members of the underground to rescue ghetto
fighters, bringing them out through the sewers and hiding them on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw.
From the "Aryan" side of Warsaw, Ben witnessed the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the
uprising and described what he saw in an interview in 1991. After the uprising, Ben escaped from
Warsaw by posing as a non-Jew.

“The entire sky of Warsaw was red. Completely red. But the flames were so concentrated
around the whole ghetto that it illuminated the whole city. The next week, the same week was
Palm Sunday….I went to Plac Krasinski where there was a church, a very old church, and I felt
that my safest place is in the church. I went to that church and I attended the Mass and the
priest spoke. Not a word was mentioned that across the street people are fighting, dying by the
hundreds, and fire. I was just like a good Christian listening to the whole sermon. Then it is, uh,
traditional in Poland that when the, after the services, the priest goes out in front of the
church and he greets the parish… And he greeted all the Poles and across the street was a
carousel with a playground and the music was playing...the people took the children on the
carousel, beautifully dressed…. and I was standing in that group watching the other side of the
block, of that burning ghetto. From time to time we heard screaming, "Look. Look. People are
jumping from the roofs." Others will make remarks, uh, "Jews are frying." That's just a free

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translation from Polish. But I never heard any sympathy voices. Maybe there were people who
looked in a different way, but I never heard it. And it was very heartbreaking for me that here I
am, helpless, I can do nothing, and I gotta see and watch, and I cannot even protest, I cannot
even show my anger. Sometimes I felt that I have to do something physically, even have to pay
with my life, but I didn't do it. I didn't scream. I didn't do anything. I just was hurt. But that
scene will probably remain with me for all my life.”

May 8 1943: By this point the main resistance was centred on 18 Mila Street (Mila 18), in which
120 fighters were gathered. The Germans blockaded the exits of the ZOB Central bunker. As the
Germans began to pump gas into the bunker, Arie Wilner, Lolek Rotblat and others including
Mordechai Anielewicz shot themselves.

May 16: The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto was declared officially over by S.S. General Stroop
at 8:15 p.m. with the demolition of the Warsaw synagogue. According to Stroop, 7000 Jews had
been killed in the fighting and 30,000 deported to Treblinka. (Many of the Jews who resisted in
Warsaw and were captured also aided the resistance organizations in the Treblinka and Sobibor
revolts.) 631 bunkers had been destroyed. Many Jews chose suicide rather than allowing
themselves to fall into German hands. There were some Jews who continued to live in hiding in
the bunkers. Supple claims that clashes between Jewish fighters and Nazis continued until June
1944 (p.198). This seems like something of an overestimate, as Polish labour battalions were
sent to raze the ghetto in September 1943, and it seems likely that any survivors met their end
then. Several thousand found refuge in ‘Aryan’ Warsaw and about 70 escaped to the Partisans in
the forests, although many of these were betrayed (Gilbert).

According to S.S. General Stroop's report from April 19-May 15, 1943 the Germans suffered 16
dead and 85 wounded, although these figures were probably underplayed by General Stroop out
of concern for Hitler’s reaction, given that Hitler was at this point preoccupied with shoring up
the Eastern front in the wake of the Russian advance. [Stroop was convicted at Nuremberg and
executed for war crimes. Extracts of his diaries, recording the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto
were presented as prosecution evidence.]

Despite Stroop’s inevitable minimizing of the German casualty rate, it is blatantly obvious that
the casualties suffered by the Germans were trivial compared to the fact that the ghetto was
liquidated; an argument to suggest that the revolt was a total failure. Moreover, Gutman
suggests that the revolt actually prompted the Nazis to accelerate the pace of the Final Solution.
However, there had never been any hope of military victory and success cannot be measured in
these traditional terms. The revolt was a victory, on both a symbolic level and a practical level.
Mordecai Anielewicz wrote in his last letter “the dream of my life has come true…armed Jewish
resistance and revenge have become a fact. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic
fighting of Jewish men of battle”. This confirms that to ‘not go gently’ had huge psychological
impact, on both those who died and, undoubtedly, on those who were left. It certainly inspired
further acts of resistance (more details below). It should be noted that the Warsaw Uprising was
probably the largest single resistance operation organized and executed by a partisan body in
World War II. It was certainly the first significant urban revolt against the Nazi occupation in
Europe. The revolt held the Nazis at bay for 4 weeks – the entire French and Polish armies only
held out against the Nazis for six weeks!

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More practically, the German military was heavily committed to the Battle of Kursk (largest tank
battle in history) at this point and the Warsaw uprising diverted resources that should have been
committed to this campaign. Although the Red Army would have won the battle of Kursk anyway,
it was a psychological blow to the Nazis, to be put on the defensive by both of their ideological
enemies at the same time.

In June 1944 the Polish Home Army revolted against the Nazis. The revolt lasted 63 days. One
could suggest that if the Polish Underground was so prepared to act openly against the Nazis, the
fact that they didn’t assist the Ghetto revolt must be evidence of rampant anti-semitism on the
part of the Poles. There is undoubtedly an element of this. It was only at the start of 1943 that
the Polish underground recognised and helped Zegota, the organisation to rescue Jews. Even
then, this assistance was not a concerted effort, especially in face of many informers. However,
the Polish delay in launching their own revolt also confirms the fact that resistance, generally,
had to be weighed against the chances of success. In 1943 this seemed slim, particularly in
alliance with the doomed Jews, whereas in 1944 the Soviet army was liberating Poland from the
East. It seems likely that the Poles expected Russian support for their rising and, although they
didn’t get it, it is obvious that the risk of armed rebellion was weighed against the chances of
success. This is exactly the same preoccupation as the Judenrat had when advocating
cooperation with the regime, which makes Jewish ‘complicity’ or ‘passivity’ easier to
comprehend.

Resistance in the camps

As with the wider issue of resistance, resistance in the camps took many forms other than armed
uprising.

Clandestine Political Organizations and Meetings: Clandestine resistance groups formed in

many concentration camps with political prisoners and captured members of national resistance
groups often providing the leadership. For example, in 1940 many Communists and captured
French resistance fighters united to form a resistance organization at Ravensbrück, a camp for
women prisoners situated north of Berlin. To raise the spirits of prisoners and give hope for
eventual escape or liberation, the resisters traded newspapers, battle maps, and war
information. They also held secret political meetings to share news and information about the
camp. All these activities were extremely dangerous.

Attempts to Alleviate Suffering of Camp Inmates: These included gathering food, money, and
medical supplies for those in need. For example, the Auschwitz underground sought to steal
medical supplies from warehouses that also held victims' belongings. A group of Poles who
worked for the underground in the Rajsko clinic, near the main camp at Auschwitz, also

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organized an operation to smuggle medicine into the concentration camp. Although these
attempts didn’t solve the problems, they were attempts to minimise ill-treatment by the Nazis.

Attempts to Inform the Outside World about the Camps:

On April 7, 1944, two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Wetzler and Walter Rosenberg (who later took the
name Rudolf Vrba), escaped from Birkenau. The motive for their escape was to warn the
Hungarian Jews of the Germans' plans for their destruction. They hid in bunkers outside the
camp fence near places where prisoners worked for three days, the length of the state of alert
the SS imposed after any escape. After a journey of several days on foot, Wetzler and Vrba
reached Slovakia, where they presented to Jewish leaders a long report illustrated with sketches
describing installations at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including details about the gas chambers.

These reports and news of the first gassings of Hungarians at Auschwitz were confirmed in late
May by two Polish Jewish escapees, Arnost Rosin and Czelaw Mordowicz. That summer, the
reports reached the Allies, who had earlier (in late 1942) confirmed the news of the mass murder
of Jews. The allies, however, failed to bomb the railway lines leading to the camp, as requested.

(You must ensure you can discuss this issue, using your notes on responsibility for the Holocaust
based on various readings in the library!)

Armed Resistance

1. Treblinka: Seven hundred Jews were successful in blowing up the camp on August 2, 1943. All
but 150-200 Jews perished, as well as over 20 Germans. Only 12 survived the war.

2. Sobibor: Jewish and Russian prisoners mounted an escape attempt on October 14, 1943.
German and Ukrainian guards opened fire on the prisoners, who were unable to reach the main
gate and thus had to try and escape through the minefield around the camp; about 300 escaped.
Most of these were either recaptured and shot, or shot by Polish partisans. About 60 or 70
prisoners survived the war. Yet even this was successful, given that the Nazis had been winding
up the operation at Sobibor and liquidating the camp. Ten S.S. guards were killed and one
wounded.

Esther Raab, was a Polish Jew. In December 1942, she was deported from a work camp to the
Sobibor killing center in occupied Poland. Upon arrival at Sobibor, Esther was selected to work in
a sorting shed. She sorted clothing and the possessions of the people killed at the camp. During
the summer and fall of 1943, Esther was among a group of prisoners in the Sobibor camp who
planned an uprising and escape. Leon Feldhendler and Aleksandr (Sasha) Pechersky were the
leaders of the group. Esther was among those who escaped and survived.
Here she describes planning for the uprising in Sobibor [1992 interview]

We were so deep in the woods that nobody could even know that something goes on there. So,
we started thinking about uprising and about revenge, and I think that kept us going, although
it was a silly thought, but, you know, that gave us the courage to survive…. And we tried,
started planning, and going to a meeting, which only a few went because you had to be very
careful, and coming back, you felt like you're doing something, you're planning something,

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you're trying something. If you'll succeed it would be wonderful. If not, you'll get a bullet in the
back--it's better than going to the gas chambers. I promised myself I'll never go to the gas
chambers, I'll start running, …they have to waste a bullet on me. And we started organizing and
talking and, it, it kept us alive again, you know, that maybe we'll be able to take revenge for all
those who can't.

3. Auschwitz: On October 7, 1944, one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz was blown up by
Sonderkommandos. These were workers, mostly Jews, whose job it was to clear away the bodies
of gas chamber victims. The workers were all caught and killed.

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Key questions:
You should plan answers to the following, providing examples

 What were the obstacles to resistance?

o Superior firepower of the Germans
o The Jews were not a homogenous group who acted together
o The problem of timing, when resistance has no chance of obtaining freedom
o The problem of collective responsibility
o Isolation of the Jews and collaboration of occupied countries
o Secrecy that surrounded the Holocaust - enabled many Jews to think that
cooperating would save them and arguably affected resistance in civilian
population (no public outcry).
o Religious tradition
o Lack of military tradition in Jewish community
o Pre-war emigration of many Jewish leaders
o Progressively deteriorating physical condition of the Jews

 What constitutes resistance in this context? (check your other notes)

o Armed rebellion Raul Hilberg
o Maintenance of religious traditions and culture Dawidowicz
o Simply surviving Yehuda Bauer
o To die with dignity Martin Gilbert
o Maintaining a sense of self in face of dehumanization Bettelheim
o Not to hate or despair Fackenheim

 Why is it difficult to define resistance in the context of the Holocaust?

o Defies our conventional understanding of resistance as armed uprising. We have no
points of comparison. Therefore ‘passive’ resistance has to be part of the spectrum
o Difficulty of making judgments about possibilities/obligations/motivations within
the context of the Holocaust
o –add to this

 How successful was Jewish resistance?

o Success depends on the objective remember! Warsaw Ghetto Revolt had no chance
of military defeat of the Germans but was success in symbolic terms.
o Difficult to assess - History is written by the victors – evidence of resistance
activities may have been destroyed
o –add to this

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Non-Jewish resistance to the Holocaust

Aug 1941 ONE pastor Galen of Munster publicly denounced T4. H wouldn’t martyr him and
therefore stopped killings (at least in public). If one accepts that T4 provided the technical
knowledge that made the Holocaust possible, resistance to T4 euthanasia programme could also
be seen as resistance to the Holocaust.

Schindler’s Jews – and fact that his factory made shells which wouldn’t fire, so he wouldn’t be
helping the war effort

Denmark resisted German requests to surrender Danish Jews until August 1943 when Germans
insisted on deportation. Ordinary Danes helped almost 8000 Danish Jews escape by boat to
Sweden in autumn of 1943 (and Sweden accepted them).

Until the Germans occupied Italy in late 1943 there was no persecution of Jews within Italy. In
fact, Italian occupied southern France a haven for Jews from Vichy.

Farmer points out that Britain & Empire accepted 160,000 Jews in the period 1938-9 and
allowed Jews free access to Palestine up to 1936. Rubinstein calls this ‘one of the greatest
rescues of any beleaguered group in history’. However, this was pre-war; Britain did little once
the Holocaust actually started.

In Slovakia, Gisi Fleschmann, the head of the Slovakian ‘Jewish Centre’ (judenrat equivalent)
received coded communications from the American Joint Distribution Committee and was able to
establish an ‘underground railway’ to smuggle Jews to Budapest.

The Bielski partisans in Belorussia accepted into their group all Jews regardless of sex, age, or
any other characteristic. Not only did the Bielski partisans take in all Jews who reached them,
they also sent special guides into the ghettos to rescue Jews who were then incorporated into
their organization.

The Eclaireurs Israeliens, a French Jewish scouting organization, was active in the French
resistance. Members helped find non-Jewish homes for several thousand Jewish children, forged
bogus identity papers, and smuggled children to safety
across the borders of France.

The Jewish community of Palestine contributed volunteers to the British army, and sent
parachute teams and commandos behind German lines to organize resistance efforts, although
the Palestinians were always torn between helping or concentrating on creating a viable Jewish
state for future security. Palestinian Jews failed to provide money for the ransom of Slovakian
and Hungarian Jews, requested by the Germans, although these schemes may not have been
serious anyway.

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Resistance by non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust:

In May 1944, SS men ordered Roma (Gypsies) prisoners to leave their barracks at the Auschwitz
Gypsy family camp (presumably to be sent to death in the gas chambers). Armed with knives and
axes, the Roma refused to leave. The SS men retreated.

Unlike other groups of Holocaust victims, Jehovah Witnesses could escape persecution by simply
signing a declaration renouncing their faith, but almost none did, even when tortured. An
estimated 2,500 to 5,000 Witnesses died in the camps or prisons from hunger, disease,
exhaustion, exposure, and brutal treatment. The regime executed more than 200 men for
refusing military service. Is this spiritual resistance or a foolhardy gesture?

Be careful of examples of resistance which are resistance to the Nazi state/regime, rather than
to the Holocaust specifically: e.g 1944 Army Bomb Plot, organized by Stauffenberg

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½ million inmates in about 1 square mile of territory

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The Call for Resistance by the Z.Z.W. in the Warsaw Ghetto, January 1943*

We are rising up for war!

We are of those who have set themselves the aim of awakening the people. Our wish is to take this watchword
to our people:
Awake and fight!
Do not despair of the road to escape!
Know that escape is not to be found by walking to your death passively, like sheep to the slaughter. It is to be
found in something much greater: in war!
Whoever defends himself has a chance of being saved! Whoever gives up self-defense from the outset - he has
lost already!
Nothing awaits him except only a hideous death in the suffocation-machine of Treblinka.
Let the people awaken to war!
Find the courage in your soul for desperate action!
Put an end to our terrible acceptance of such phrases as:
We are all under sentence of death!
It is a lie!!!
We also were destined to live! We too have a right to life!
One only needs to know how to fight for it!
It is no great art to live when life is given to you willingly!
But there is an art to life just when they are trying to rob you of this life.
Let the people awaken and fight for its life!
Let every mother be a lioness defending her young!
Let no father stand by and see the blood of his children in silence!
Let not the first act of our destruction be repeated!
An end to despair and lack of faith!
An end to the spirit of slavery amongst us!
Let the tyrant pay with the blood of his body for every soul in Israel!
Let every house become a fortress for us!
Let the people awaken to war!
In war lies your salvation!
Whoever defends himself has a hope of escape!
We are rising in the name of the war for the lives of the helpless masses whom we seek to save, whom we
must arouse to action!
It is not for ourselves alone that we wish to fight. We will be entitled to save ourselves only when we have
completed our duty! As long as the life of a Jew is still in danger, even one, single, life, we have to be ready
to fight!!!
Our watchword is:
Not even one more Jew is to find his end in Treblinka!
Out with the traitors to the people!
War for life or death on the conqueror to our last breath!
Be prepared to act!
Be ready

• This call for resistance by the Z.Z.W., the Betar Military Underground, was written in January 1943, just
before or during the first major attack on the Nazis who came to take Jews away.

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Bibliography:

http://artfuljesus.0catch.com/judaica/shoah.html
http://cghs.dadeschools.net/holocaust/armed_warsaw.htm
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005213&MediaId=1126
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/festivls/yshoa/mered/2a.html
http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1998-no-frames/resistance.htm
http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/warsaw%20ghetto.html

Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust

Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History, Penguin 1987
Supple, From Prejudice to Genocide, Trentham 1993
Cesarani, The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation
Farmer, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust

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