Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust
Updated 2023-11-17
Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust During the Holocaust, Jewish partisan groups and underground resistance networks launched attacks, sabotage operations and rescue missions. Resistance groups in ghettos organised social, religious, cultural and educational activities and armed uprisings in defiance of their oppressors. In death camps, in the most extreme circumstances, resisters gathered evidence of Nazi atrocities and even mounted armed rebellions.
The Wiener Holocaust Library’s exhibition draws upon the Library’s unique archival collections to tell the story of the Jewish men and women who, as the Holocaust unfolded around them and at great risk to themselves, resisted the Nazis and their collaborators.
In this exhibition, The Wiener Holocaust Library reveals stories of incredible endurance and bravery, including that of Tosia Altman in German-occupied Poland, who moved in and out of ghettos distributing information and organising armed revolt; the Jewish slave workers at Auschwitz who worked secretly to smuggle evidence out of the death camp, and the Bielski brothers in the forests of Belorussia whose partisan groups rescued 1200 men, women and children.
The exhibition also explores individual acts of resistance: the maintenance of secret diaries by Ruth Wiener in a concentration camp and Anne Frank in hiding in Amsterdam; the clandestine religious worship practiced in ghettos, and the testimonies buried in Auschwitz by victims of Nazi persecution.
During the Holocaust Jews resisted whenever they had the opportunity, in dangerous and even impossible circumstances. https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/jewish-resistance-to-the-holocaust/
Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis (book) One aim of our volume is to demonstrate definitively that Jews during the Holocaust did not go passively like sheep to slaughter. One might ask why such a project is necessary given the voluminous evidence attesting to the fact that Jews resisted the Nazis whenever, wherever, and however it was possible. The compelling evidence has simply done little to change a nearly universal perception. Built from stereotypes and simplifications, reinforced by the ever-looming iconography of emaciated victims staring out helplessly from behind concentration camp barbed wire, and perpetuated through cinema, the muddled supposition that Jews went like sheep to slaughter… https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zswcf
Resistance During the Holocaust How could so many people—six million Jews and five million others, a number impossible to imagine— from all over Europe be murdered in so short a time? Did anyone oppose the Nazis? Did anyone come to assist the Jews or other victims of the Nazis? Did the Jews try to fight back?
Resistance, in many ways, was near impossible for Jews, and it was also extremely difficult for citizens in the occupied countries. There was little access to weapons, almost no ability to move about freely, and a majority of the population that for various reasons was uninterested in resisting the Nazis. Furthermore, open conflict was not a wise alternative, since it most often resulted in death for oneself and others.
Until it became perfectly clear that the Nazis intended to murder every Jew in Europe, people hung on to the hope that perhaps their own lives would be spared. Perhaps by being compliant, doing what the Nazis were ordering them to do, they could survive to the end of the war. The Nazis encouraged that sense of hope in order to keep the Jews obedient and orderly. They intentionally deceived the Jews, leading them to believe the relocations and separation of their families were only temporary, and that they were vital, valued workers for the German war effort. While the Nazis were masterminding ways to deceptively give Jews hope, they were also planning and executing their mass murder.
However, it would be a grave mistake to believe that all Jews went to their death like “sheep to slaughter.” It would be equally wrong to think that all non-Jews in Europe did nothing. Despite the odds, many Jews practiced some form of resistance, whether it was cultural and spiritual, or armed and active. In addition, a small number of non-Jews were involved in resistance, though they were the exception to the rule.
In approximately one hundred ghettos, in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and Ukraine, underground organizations were formed. The purpose of such organizations was to wage armed struggle, that is, to stage an uprising in the ghetto or to break out of the closed ghetto by the use of force in order to engage in partisan operations on the outside.
While preparing for armed resistance, secret groups in the ghettos faced extremely difficult problems, such as smuggling arms into the ghetto, training the fighters under ghetto conditions, and establishing a method for putting the fighters on battle alert in case of a surprise action by the Germans. No less difficult was the task of gaining the ghetto residents’ support for the fighting underground. It was clear that the insurgents did not have the slightest chance of forcing the Germans to put a stop to the extermination, and it was equally clear that only a handful of fighters could actually succeed in breaking out of the ghetto to join partisan units in order to continue the fight against the Germans. This made the ghetto underground the only organization of its kind in recorded history to call for an uprising whose primary purpose was to offer resistance for its own sake. https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/education-outreach/Resistance-During-the-Holocaust-NYLM-Guide.pdf
JEWISH RESISTANCE Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass murder fueled resistance to the Germans in the Third Reich itself and throughout occupied Europe. Although Jews were the Nazis’ primary victims, they too resisted Nazi oppression in a variety of ways, both collectively and as individuals.
Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.
In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. For months after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, individual Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.
During the same year, ghetto inhabitants rose against the Germans in Vilna (Vilnius), Bialystok, and a number of other ghettos. Many ghetto fighters took up arms in the knowledge that the majority of ghetto inhabitants had already been deported to the killing centers; and also in the knowledge that their resistance even now could not save from destruction the remaining Jews who could not fight. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the slaughter of so many Jews.
Thousands of young Jews resisted by escaping from the ghettos into the forests. There they joined Soviet partisan units or formed separate partisan units to harass the German occupiers. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-resistance
WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Jewish insurgents inside the ghetto resisted these efforts. This was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first significant urban revolt against German occupation in Europe. By May 16, 1943, the Germans had crushed the uprising and deported surviving ghetto residents to concentration camps and killing centers.
several Jewish underground organizations banded together on July 28, 1942. They created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ŻOB). It is estimated that ŻOB had roughly 200 members at the time of its formation.
There was also a second force organized by the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement, especially its youth group, Betar. View This Term in the Glossary This second force was called the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy; ŻZW).
On April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto began their final act of armed resistance against the Germans. Lasting twenty-seven days, this act of resistance came to be known as the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
About 700 young Jewish fighters clashed with German forces, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat. These fighters were poorly equipped and lacked military training and experience. The ŻOB did have the advantage of waging a guerilla war. They would strike, and then retreat, to the safety of ghetto buildings, bunkers, and underground tunnels. The general ghetto population likewise thwarted German deportation efforts, refusing to assemble at collection points and burrowing in underground bunkers.
In the end, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground. They burned and demolished this part of Warsaw, block by block, in order to smoke out their prey.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest and, symbolically, most important Jewish uprising during World War II. It was also the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe. The Jewish resistance in Warsaw inspired uprisings in other ghettos such as in Bialystok.
Today, Days of Remembrance ceremonies to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust are linked to the dates of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising
2020-08-02 Untold stories of Jewish resistance revealed in London Holocaust exhibition From quiet acts of bravery, to overt acts of rebellion, Jewish resistance to the Holocaust took many forms, yet research shows they remain largely unacknowledged in traditional UK teachings about the genocide. A new exhibition, drawing on thousands of previously unseen documents and manuscripts, is placing some of the little-known personal stories of heroism, active armed resistance, and rescue networks in the extermination camps and ghettos at the forefront.
“In camps and ghettos, the Nazis’ aim was to destroy Jewish community and lives. People tried to subvert it by continuing with education, social services, religious practices, and by keeping their own diaries even though they weren’t supposed to, so maintaining a sense of their own humanity,” she added. “There is all sort of resistance, from the armed partisan groups in Berlin, and Paris, but also in Soviet territories where about 30,000 Jews are thought to have joined armed partisan groups, to people writing diaries trying to maintain a sense of themselves. “There is just a huge variety of different ways Jews responded.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/untold-stories-of-jewish-resistance-revealed-in-london-holocaust-exhibition
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