Jewish resistance during the Holocaust

The Jewish resistance during the Holocaust was the resistance of the Jewish people against Nazi Germany leading up to and through World War II. Due to the careful organization and overwhelming military might of the Nazi German State and its supporters, many Jews were unable to resist the killings. There were, however, many cases of attempts at resistance in one form or another, and over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.

Types of resistance

In his book "The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy", Martin Gilbert describes the types of resistance:

"In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to gloat over panic and despair.

Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit.""Gilbert, Martin. London: St Edmundsbury Press 1986"]

This view is supported by Yehuda Bauer who wrote that resistance to the Nazis comprised not only physical opposition, but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and humanity in the most humiliating and inhumane conditions. Bauer disputes the popular view that most Jews went to their deaths passively. He argues that, given the conditions in which the Jews of Eastern Europe had to live under and endure, what is surprising is not how little resistance there was, but rather how much.

Resistance in the ghettos

Resistance in the concentration camps

There were also major resistance efforts in three of the extermination camps.

*In August 1943, an uprising took place at the Treblinka extermination camp. Many buildings were burnt to the ground, and 70 inmates escaped to freedom, but 1,500 were killed. Gassing operations were interrupted for a month.

*In October 1943, another uprising took place at Sobibór extermination camp. This uprising was more successful; 11 German SS commanding officers, including deputy commander, were killed, and roughly 300 of the 700 inmates in the camp escaped, with about 50 surviving the war. The escape forced the Nazis to close the camp.

*On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (those inmates kept separate from the main camp and put to work in the gas chambers and crematoria) at Auschwitz staged an uprising. Female inmates had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and Crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. At this stage they were joined by the Birkenau One Kommando, which also overpowered their guards and broke out of the compound. The inmates then attempted a mass escape, but almost all of 250 were killed soon after. (There were also international plans for a general uprising in Auschwitz, coordinated with an Allied air raid and a Polish resistance attack from the outside.)

Partisan groups

There were a number of Jewish partisan groups operating in many countries. Jewish partisans were most numerous in Eastern Europe. See Eugenio Calò for the story of a Jewish Italian partisan. Jewish volunteers from Mandate Palestine, most famously Hannah Szenes, parachuted into Europe in an attempt to organize resistance.

Resistance in Germany

Jewish resistance within Germany itself during the Nazi era took a variety of forms, from sabotage and disruptions to providing intelligence to Allied forces, distributing anti-Nazi propaganda, as well as participating in attempts to assist Jewish emigration out of Nazi-controlled territories. It has been argued that, for Jews during the Holocaust, given the intent of the Nazi regime to exterminate Jews, survival itself constituted an act considered a form of resistance. [Ruby Rohrlich, ed. "Resisting the Holocaust". Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1998.] Jewish participation in the German resistance was largely confined to the underground activities of left-wing Zionist groups such as Werkleute, Hashomer Hatzair and Ha-bonim, and the German Social Democrats, German Communists, and independent left-wing groups such as New Beginning. Much of the non-left wing and non-Jewish opposition to Hitler in Germany (i.e., conservative and religious forces), although often opposed to the Nazi plans for extermination of German and European Jewry, in many instances itself harbored anti-Jewish sentiments. [Theodore S. Hamerow. "On the Road to the Wolfs Lair: German Resistance to Hitler". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997]

A celebrated case involved the arrest and execution of Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish architectural student originally from Stuttgart, in connection with a plot to bomb Nazi Party headquarters in Nuremberg. Hirsch became in involved in the Black Front, a breakaway faction from the Nazi Party led by Otto Strasser. After being captured by the Gestapo in December 1936, Hirsch confessed to planning to murder Julius Streicher, a leading Nazi official and editor of the virulently anti-Semitic "Der Stürmer" newspaper, on behalf of Strasser and the Black Front. Hirsch was sentenced to death on March 8, 1937, and on June 4 was beheaded with an axe.

Perhaps the most significant Jewish resistance group within Germany for which records survive was the Berlin-based Baum Group (Baum-Gruppe), which was active from 1937 to 1942. Largely young Jewish women and men, the group disseminated anti-Nazi leaflets, and organized semi-public demonstrations. It's most notable action was the bombing of an anti-Soviet exhibit organized by Joseph Goebbels in Berlin's Lustgarten. The action resulted in mass arrests, executions, and reprisals against German Jews. Because of the reprisals it provoked, the bombing led to debate within opposition circles similar to those that took place elsewhere where the Jewish resistance was active--taking action and risking murderous reprisals vs. being nonconfrontational with the hopes of maximizing survival. [See, e.g., Herbert Lindenberger. [http://www.stanford.edu/group/HSP/GPH/Lindenberge_Heroic_or_Foolish.pdf Heroic Or Foolish? The 1942 Bombing of a Nazi Anti-Soviet Exhibit.] "Telos". 135 (Summer 2006):127–154.]

Resistance in the occupied countries

In the Netherlands the only pre-war group that immediately started resistance against the German occupation was the communist party. During the first two war years it was by far the biggest resistance organisation, much bigger than all other organisations together. A major act of resistance was the organisation of the February strike in 1941 in protest against anti-Jewish measures. In this resistance many Jews participated. Within the underground communist party a militant group was formed: de Nederlandse Volksmilitie (NVM, Dutch Peoples Militia). The leader was the Jewish Sally (Samuel) Dormits, who had military experience from guerrilla in Brazil and participation in the Spanish civil war. This organisation was formed in first instance in The Hague but became mainly located in Rotterdam. It counted more about 200 mainly Jewish participants. They made for instance several bomb attacks on German trains with troops and arson attacks on cinemas, which all were forbidden for Jews. Sally Dormits was caught after stealing a handbag of a woman in order to obtain an identification card for his Jewish girl friend, who also participated in the resistance. Dormits committed suicide in the police station by shooting himself through the head. From a cash ticket of a shop the police could find the hiding place of Dormits and the police discovered bombs, arson material, illegal papers, reports about resistance actions and a list of participants. The GESTAPO was warned immediately and the day two hundred people were arrested and in the following months many more connected people of the communist resistance in Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam were arrested. The Dutch police participated in torturing the Jewish communists. After a trial more than 20 were shot to death, the most others died in concentration camps or were gassed in Auschwitz, only a few survived. The war grave of Dormits has recently been destroyed by municipal authorities in Rotterdam.

Organizations

*American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
*Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa
*Betar
*Fareinigte Partizaner Organizacje
*HaShomer HaTzair
*Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
*Zionist youth movement
*Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
*Zydowski Zwiazek Walki

Jewish resistance fighters

*Mordechaj Anielewicz
*Dawid Apfelbaum
*Yitzhak Arad
*Herbert Baum
*Bielski partisans
*Masha Bruskina
*Eugenio Calò
*Franco Cesana
*Icchak Cukierman
*Szymon Datner
*Marek Edelman
*Abba Kovner
*Zivia Lubetkin
*Dov Lopatyn
*Moše Pijade
*Haviva Reik
*Hannah Szenes
*Dawid Wdowiński
*Shalom Yoran
*Simcha Zorin

See also

*Anti-fascism
*History of the Jews during World War II
*Jewish Brigade
*Resistance during World War II
*Rosenstrasse protest
*Special Interrogation Group (SIG)

External links

* [http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/lerman/bibliography/ “Jewish Resistance: A Working Bibliography.”] The Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance. Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC. PDF version available [http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/lerman/bibliography/pdf/bibliography.pdf here]
* [http://isurvived.org/TOC-IV.html#Resistance Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust] from Holocaust Remembrance Network
* [http://www.holocaustcenter.org/Holocaust/resistance.shtml About the Holocaust]
* [http://www.jewishpartisans.org/ Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation]
* [http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/p517.htm Jewish Partisan Group Near Vilna]
* [http://www.juden-in-europa.de/baltikum/vilna/biographien.htm Kurzbiographien]
* [http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/cgi-bin/data.show.pl?di=record&da=photos&ke=98 Partisan Rachel Rudnitzky After Liberation]
* [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Vilna3.html Partisans in Vilna]
* [http://www.hankgreenbergfilm.org/partisans.htm Partisans of Vilna]
* [http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/gallery/pg19/pg7/pg19787.html Rozka Korczak & Abba Kovner with members of the United Partisan Organization (FPO)]
* [http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vilna/vilna_pages/vilna_partisans.html Vilna Partisans]
* [http://www.jewishpartisans.net "Interviews from the Underground:" Eyewitness accounts of Russia's Jewish resistance during World War II] documentary film and website (www.jewishpartisans.net)
*United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005441 Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans]

Notes and references