Introduction
We want to survive so much, to see the pogrom turned on the beast. We want to live to see light triumph over darkness, justice over tyranny, and freedom over oppression and terror. We yearn to live to build a better world. But will we make it? Is it not too late?
STANISLAW SZNAPMAN, diary, Warsaw, 19431
Sznapman expressed in this diary entry the fervent desire to overcome the genocidal system in which he was trapped. Yet, how to resist that system was debated during the Holocaust and ever since. The nature of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust remains a sensitive and controversial topic. The definition of “resistance” itself varies according to the beholder, both scholarly and public. Indeed, the very goal of resistance also has been debated. It has created bitter confrontations between Jews, scholars, and even nations. However, perhaps the most important takeaway from this chapter is that resistance of some kind occurred in almost all places at all times during the Holocaust. One need only look.
This chapter addresses the spectrum of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, beginning with the very definition itself. What is resistance? What was the goal? How did different people, both during and after the Holocaust conceive of resistance? We will then move on to examine the many forms this resistance took and the place of resisting in the minds of Jews.
Of the twenty-four Judenrat members, four decided to meet the Germans and offer themselves as sacrificial victims to deflect the wrath of the enemy. With the ghetto empty and silent, the four men sat and waited for their executioners. While they were waiting one of them faltered. The others told him to go and hide. The three men of Kosów prepared to meet the Nazis on Passover of 1942. Was their act less than firing a gun?
Historian YEHUDA BAUER2
The actions of the Judenrat members in Kosów exemplify almost at once the complexity of defining resistance in the Holocaust. Bauer rightly asks us to question whether the bravery and selfless behavior of those remaining Jews is any less significant than armed battle against the Nazis. In so doing, he engages in a highly contentious debate about Jewish resistance that began during the war and continued to generate heated reactions. For a long time, disputes ensued over whether only armed actions against the Nazis constituted resistance or whether other behaviors could be included? Wrapped up in any discussion of Jewish resistance must be the significant challenges to resistance in the first place.
First, while Jews had faced discrimination and even murder before in the form of pogroms, they had never faced an ideology intent on eliminating them from the face of the earth, supported by all the power of the modern nation state. Previous modes of coping with anti-Jewish violence simply were not effective. Second, Jews were under the complete physical control of that nation state intent on murdering them, with little means to physically resist. Third, decisions about physical resistance in particular were greatly complicated by potential reprisals against family and other members of the community. Fourth, even escape became a difficult choice because it often meant leaving behind young, old, and sick family members who could not survive the rigors of flight. Fifth, location was an important factor for the attitudes of the outside non-Jewish community, and/or the proximity to friendly partisans often dictated whether or not both escape and support for resistance was likely. All of these factors made choosing to resist much more difficult than some might assume.
The unspoken question behind discussions of resistance is often “why did it appear that so many Jews had not taken any action to save themselves?” Even Emanuel Ringelblum, the famed historian imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, lamented in October 1942, “Why didn’t we resist when they began to resettle 300,000 Jews from Warsaw? Why did we allow ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter? Why did everything come so easy to the hangman?”3 Hannah Arendt, writing at the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem in 1961, went further, accusing the trial itself of avoiding asking of wartime Jewish authorities, “Why did you cooperate in the destruction of your own people and, eventually, in your own ruin?”4 Even the noted scholar of Holocaust studies, Raul Hilberg, defined resistance only in terms of violence against Germans. In his pivotal work, he wrote that “the reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance . . . the documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged, is very slight.” He notes there was no large-scale “blueprint for armed action” and goes as far as to quote a high-level SS man as saying that “Never before has a people gone as unsuspectingly to its disaster.”5
Not surprisingly, others disagreed with this quite negative appraisal of Jewish reactions to the Holocaust. They argued for a variety of reasons that limiting resistance to its armed form overlooked many important ways in which Jews struggled against their oppression and eventual annihilation. This view of resistance borrows from the Jewish concept of amidah or “standing against.” One scholar described this amidah as “‘all expressions of Jewish ‘non-conformism’ and for all the forms of resistance and all acts by Jews aimed at thwarting the evil design of the Nazis,’ a design that included not only physical destruction, but also to ‘deprive them of their humanity, and to reduce them to dregs before snuffing out their lives.’”6 This much broader definition reflects the complexity of the situation in which Jews found themselves, as well as the difficulty in even being able to participate in armed resistance. As such, it tends to be a more useful definition (and one which I will follow here.) In short, because the Nazis sought to destroy Jews physically, culturally, and spiritually, one can convincingly argue that anything they did to oppose this annihilation, even the act of staying alive, can be considered to be resistance.
Finally, it is important to note that beyond the value of a definition of resistance for our own understanding, it had important meanings in other contexts. For the perpetrators, portraying the behavior of the victims as passive, organized, and without violence was almost always an attempt to convince others of the “humaneness” of their actions and to, in some way, forget their own trauma and assuage their own guilt. For Jews, particularly those in Israel, a focus on armed resistance against the Nazis and a valorization of those who fought served more utilitarian purposes in the creation of the Jewish state. Many Israeli politicians did not want the world to see the Jews as victims going to their deaths without protest. They wanted Jews, and by extension the new state of Israel, to be seen as a collective of hardened fighters, prepared to defend it against the very real threats it faced from 1948 to 1973. Therefore, the Jewish partisans and those who had risen up in the ghettos, particularly Warsaw, received almost mythic idolization while others and other forms of resistance were marginalized. This often also resulted from the “survivor historians from Warsaw,” who were able to shape the story of the Holocaust as told at Israel’s Holocaust Museum and memorial, Yad Vashem. The law that established the institution in 1954 tasked it with commemorating and “gather[ing] material regarding all those members of the Jewish people who laid down their lives, who fought and rebelled against the Nazi enemy and his collaborators.” While the law recognizes a mission to remember those murdered, three of the nine missions of the memorial were to commemorate:
(4)the fortitude of Jews who gave their lives for their people;
(5)the heroism of Jewish servicemen, and of underground fighters in towns, villages and forests, who staked their lives in the battle against the Nazi oppressors and their collaborators;
(6)the heroic stand of the besieged and fighters of the ghettoes, who rose and kindled the flame of revolt to save the honour of their people;7
For the purposes of this chapter, however, I will adopt a broader view of Jewish resistance along a spectrum from maintaining one’s dignity to armed attacks against Nazi perpetrators.
Specifically, I divide resistance into three general categories: social and cultural, non-violent, and violent resistance. Social and cultural resistance covers a wide variety of behaviors, from maintaining dignity before death as the Judenrat members of Kosów did to maintaining religious and artistic life in the face of Nazi oppression. Non-violent resistance constitutes acts aimed directly against the Nazis, but not involving violent attacks upon them. This category includes such actions as documenting, escaping, smuggling, hiding, and sabotaging. Finally, the category of violent resistance requires physical attacks against the Nazis. Each of these kinds of opposition to the Holocaust took place in a variety of places, from concentration and extermination camps to ghettos large and small, to the forest. Certainly, some behaviors do not fit easily into these categories and those that are discussed are not to meant to be a comprehensive list. Rather, the goal is to provide a brief introduction to the complexity and diversity of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Social and Cultural Resistance
For the Germans they were badges of shame and degradation. We proposed to wear them with pride and dignity. Jewish women did their utmost to make the armlets as fine as possible. The best possible material was used, and the blue Star of David was carefully embroidered on it in silk.
ADOLF FOLKMANN, survivor from Lwów8
For Jews like Adolf Folkmann, acts of resistance could be undertaken even in the face of German attempts to marginalize and oppress them. These acts could even take place in the mind. When we discuss social and cultural resistance, it is important to realize that the psychological impact on the individual and community could often be more important than any impact on chances of survival. The Nazis attempted to systematically degrade, humiliate, and disrupt Jewish communities in myriad ways in order to reduce Jews to a substandard existence and deprive them of a “normal” life. However, many Jews fought against this cultural genocide in a variety of ways, some of which will be discussed here. As Chaim Kaplan wrote in the Warsaw Ghetto, “everything is forbidden to us; and yet we do everything! We make our ‘living’ in ways that are forbidden, and not by permission.”9
Socially, Jews under Nazi control fell back on more traditional forms of social support, which became resistance in the context of the Holocaust. The kahal system of communal welfare that had sustained Jewish communities in previous centuries reappeared in the ghettos, albeit in a weakened state. Jewish councils struggled to arrange for services that the modern state had taken over but that were denied under the Nazis. As we have seen, for example, the Warsaw and Łodz´ ghettos contained massive bureaucratic apparatuses to attempt to provide for their malnourished and sick populations. Jews in ghettos large and small faced a daily struggle for food that was at least partly alleviated by the soup kitchens created by the Jewish councils. The same was true for hospitals, where doctors and nurses fought a losing battle against illness and injury with insufficient instruments and perpetual shortages of medical supplies.
Jews in ghettos established orphanages to care for children whose parents had been deported or had died. The most famous of these was the Orphans’ Home in the Warsaw ghetto. Dr. Janusz Korzcak, a renowned children’s writer and educator who had managed orphanages before the war, continued his service in the ghetto. He and his staff cared for 200 children, with Korzcak personally supplying the teaching aids and arranging for different inhabitants of the ghetto to give talks to the children.10 The Orphans’ Home was one of thirty orphanages in the Warsaw ghetto. He even gave public puppet shows depicting “beautiful, gentle fairy tales.”11 Korzcak’s dedication to his profession and to the health and welfare of the orphaned children must be recognized as a selfless act of resistance. In attempting to create as normal a life as possible for the children, Korzcak subverted Nazi oppression. The energy poured into social welfare certainly represents resistance against the Nazis, who were at best indifferent to suffering in the ghettos and at worst, approving of high death rates, particularly of the most vulnerable inhabitants unable to work. Simply staying alive thwarted Nazi plans.
In fact, simply the education itself that Korzcak provided was resistance, as it violated Nazi prohibitions against education. This was a common form of resistance throughout the ghettos of the East. In August 1942, the Nazis outlawed and closed schools in the Kaunas ghetto in Lithuania. The order read, “Existing schools are to be closed immediately; the staff employed in the schools is to be directly integrated into the labor brigades. Any form of instruction as well as conducting religious exercises is immediately prohibited.”12 As inhabitant and historian of the ghetto, Avraham Tory wrote in 1943, “It is often truly heartbreaking to look at the young people. These 16- and 17-year old boys and girls—just children and just developing themselves –their place is on a school bench.”13 However, the authorities in the Kaunas ghetto subverted this order by creating “vocational schools,” ostensibly only to teach trades but, in reality, these schools taught a wide variety of subjects. In the Łodz´ ghetto, Dawid Sierakowiak wrote in 1942, “I still want to read and to study. I borrow books, make plans and have projects, but there is nothing that I can turn into tangible reality. I used to blame it all on the winter, but it’s quite warm now, and those winter obstacles are gone. Unfortunately, hunger is the real reason for my ‘laziness.’”14 The Warsaw ghetto in 1942 had 48,207 children of school age; at least half of them received some kind of education either in clandestine schools, children’s organizations (daycare, orphanages, etc.), or in private lessons at home.15 One survivor who was a student in the ghetto recalled that most of the classes “took place at the homes of pupils, in permanent readiness for visits.”16 In the labor and concentration camps of the East, such education was far more rare, and rarer still in the extermination centers, but did occur. However, in ghettos, the classroom became simultaneously a place of resistance: providing education, and a “normal” life for Jewish children, despite Nazi efforts to the contrary.
Another form of opposition can be placed under the umbrella of cultural defiance, that is, the maintenance of and creation of art of all kinds from visual art to literature, music, and theater. Accounts of ghetto life abound with references to performances of all kinds. Dawid Sierakowiak wrote in his diary on May 27, 1942: “Today I went to the concert on Krawiecka Street again. It was the first concert worth seeing in the ghetto: a Beethoven evening.”17 Many of the larger ghettos imprisoned nationally and internationally renowned artists and musicians who contributed to the cultural life of the community. The Eldorado Theater in the Warsaw ghetto performed classic and original works. A ghetto newspaper wrote that in the theater “again we are surrounded by an atmosphere of joyful oblivion for a few hours.”18 In Warsaw, there was also a Jewish Symphony Orchestra, many of whose members had previously played for the prestigious Warsaw Philharmonic.19 Poets and writers continued to write, often smuggling their work outside of the ghetto. Underground newspapers provided information and entertainment to ghetto residents. Though the Nazis often closed libraries, underground versions sprang up, where Jews could borrow and read books.
Not all ghettos offered the same opportunities. In Minsk, most intellectuals and artists were gone either as a result of Soviet repression, flight, or Nazi actions. The Nazis themselves were more repressive there, making cultural gatherings much more difficult.20 Even in the concentration camps, some cultural life remained and could sustain inmates. Many had their own orchestras and, while these men were forced to play at official events by the Nazis, they could also play on their own for the prisoners. Even in the Sonderkomando of the Janowska camp in Lwów, responsible for burning bodies, musicians were supplied with a fiddle and harmonica with which to make music.21 The Janowska camp orchestra was led by renowned members of the Lwów musical community until they were all executed, one by one, while still playing.22 Across the Holocaust landscape of the East, Jewish artists, writers, and musicians continued to devote themselves to their art as a form of both personal and communal resistance to Nazi dehumanization.
Not all Jews supported such cultural activities. When the director of the Ghetto Theater in Vilna, Israel Segal, was asked to reopen his theater by the head of the Jewish Council, Jacob Gens, he hesitated. After the war, Segal described the opening of the theater as “a daring beginning to the forced normalization of ghetto life.” Indeed, he remembered the performance had taken place “despite the great protest of various influential persons and community activists.”23 The Socialist Bund reacted even more angrily, posting flyers throughout the ghetto stating that “In a cemetery no theater ought to be performed.”24 Yet, despite such strong initial reluctance, those who attended the performances found them to be enjoyable. One diarist wrote:
people laughed and cried. They cast off the depression that had been weighing on their spirits. The alienation that had hitherto existed among the ghetto population seemed to have been thrown off . . . people awoke from a long, difficult dream.25
The diverse reception of this cultural performance demonstrates the varied ways in which culture was (or was not) seen as resistance by Jews themselves. For many artists and audiences, these events allowed a brief escape from the terrors and privations of daily life.
A final form of cultural resistance (most poignant for us historians) is the act of documenting the Holocaust experience, both by professional and amateur historians. The most famous of these is Emanuel Ringelblum of the Warsaw Ghetto, an historian and social activist before the Holocaust. He had been in Geneva when the war broke out in 1939, but decided to return home to Warsaw. Once in the ghetto, Ringelblum resisted in the best way possible for him: by acting as an historian and documenting every aspect of life and death in the ghetto. Many scholars and diarists in other ghettos also sought to fight the Nazis by documenting and leaving behind evidence of the crimes against them. In Vilna, Hermann Kruk wrote “if I am staying anyway and if I am going to be a victim of fascism, I shall take pen in hand and write a chronicle of a city.”26 Avraham Tory, Secretary of the Jewish Council in Kaunas, also determined to document the Holocaust in the hopes of later retribution. He wrote his Last Will and Testament in December 1942. He began
Driven by a force within me, and out of fear that no remnant of the Jewish community of Kaunas will survive to tell of its final death agony under Nazi rule, I have continued, while in the Ghetto, to record my diary which I began on the first day of the outbreak of the war. Every day I put into writing what my eyes had seen and my ears had heard, and what I had experienced personally.27
Tory also collected German orders and a variety of other documents, which he hid in wooden crates that he buried within the ghetto before his successful escape in 1944. Avraham survived the war and retrieved the crates, which form a vital record of the Holocaust in Kaunas.
In Warsaw, Ringelblum eventually formed a group known as Oneg Shabbat (Hebrew for “Joy of the Sabbath”). This group brought together a collection of historians, intellectuals, academics, and others to compile an archive, which they hid in milk cartons and buried before the ghetto was liquidated. The work of groups like Oneg Shabbat was not designed only for posterity; indeed, they often served a vital purpose by bringing news of the outside world and the Holocaust into the ghettos. Though only some of the archive was recovered after the war, its documents and studies give us a much better understanding of the experience of the Warsaw Ghetto. The process of recording the life and death of the ghetto was not one of emotional detachment; when one of his friends was murdered by the SS, Ringelblum wrote in his diary about adding that name to the list of those killed:
My hand shakes as I write these words; who knows if a future historian, reviewing this list, will not add my name, Emanuel Ringelblum? But so what, we have become so used to death that it can no longer scare us. If we somehow survive the war, we’ll wander around the world like people from another planet, as if we stayed alive through a miracle or through a mistake.28
Ringelblum escaped the ghetto with his wife and son. They survived in hiding until betrayed and captured by the Nazis. Fellow prisoners in the infamous Pawiak prison offered to save him, but Ringelblum refused when they could not also save his family. His last words to a fellow prisoner were “Is death difficult?” The Nazis shot Ringelblum, his wife, and young son shortly thereafter, in the ruins of the ghetto.29
In most camps and ghettos, Nazi administrators forbade religious practice. This was another form of “cultural genocide”—of destroying another aspect of Jewish life. The prohibitions ranged from outlawing services to banning ritual slaughter of animals to the physical destruction of synagogues. However, many religious Jews fought against these prohibitions. Underground synagogues and religious observances took place in camps and ghettos across Eastern Europe, even in the worst of circumstances. In the Kishinev ghetto (in lands occupied by the Romanians), the chairman of the Jewish Council formally requested (and received) an exemption from forced labor for ghetto inhabitants so that they could observe religious holidays by fasting and not working.30 In the Warsaw ghetto, Ringelblum wrote that “In a Jewish house, they study the holy books . . . The place is disguised; the door is opened only to those who are trusted and know the password.”31 At least four clandestine ritual mikvahs or bathhouses operated within the ghetto.32 The ghetto itself was divided into twenty-eight rabbinical districts with sixteen rabbis to preside over religious affairs.33 Ghettos across Eastern Europe fought to maintain religious opportunities for the believers.
Even in the worst situations, observant Jews fought to practice their religion. Rivka Liebeskind, an Auschwitz survivor, recalled her first Shabbat in Birkenau. “We lit the candles and quietly began singing the songs for the Sabbath. We did not know what was happening around us, but after a few minutes we heard stifled crying from all the shelves around us . . . They gathered around us and listened to our prayer and singing; soon there were those who came off their own shelves and asked to be allowed to bless the candles.”34 One survivor of Treblinka remembered that in the extermination area of the camp, “[weddings] were performed according to Jewish law.”35 Even in the gruesome Janowska “Death Brigade” tasked with burning bodies, Leon Wells recalled that the religious Jews among them “kept to their way of life despite all difficulties.” He added that prayer books and religious materials were “much more dangerous to possess than money or gold.” During Yom Kippur 1944, the non-religious Jews kept watch as the religious Jews observed the holiday.36 Of course, religious experience was not the same everywhere. Renowned rabbi, David Kahane, noted of the Lwów ghetto that, “Religious life has not been resumed. In this respect, the situation in Lwów was worse than in outlying towns . . . when [an underground service] was discovered, all the participants and the apartment owner were taken to the prison, and no one has yet returned from there.”37 The Holocaust deeply affected religious belief, either by destroying it or by deepening it.
A final form of individual, social resistance was the simple maintenance of dignity as recalled by Adolf Folkmann at the beginning of this section. Where the Nazis attempted to humiliate or terrify their victims, Jews could fight back, even at the last moments, by refusing to be degraded. This was naturally a symbolic form of resistance, likely mistaken by the perpetrators and some Jews as acquiescence. Yet, for many, maintaining their composure even in the face of their own violent deaths was clearly important, if only for themselves. We must recognize that some resistance was deeply personal and never meant to serve any larger cause. German factory manager, Hermann Graebe, observed such courage at a mass shooting in Dubno, Ukraine in 1943. He saw a father and son heading toward their imminent deaths. As Graebe recalled in a 1945 affidavit, “The father held the hand of a boy about 10 years old and spoke to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed toward the sky, fondled his hand, and seemed to explain something to him.”38 In this intensely personal moment, the father overcame his own fear to comfort his son, even in the face of the most awful of circumstances.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this kind of comfort and sense of duty can be seen by the actions of Dr. Janusz Korzcak and his staff of the orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. On August 5, 1942, the children were all selected for deportation. Though Korzcak, being a prominent member of Warsaw’s pre-war society, had many Poles willing and desperate to hide him, he chose to stay with his children as they were deported. He wanted to lessen the trauma of the experience as much as possible and so told the children to dress up as they were going on a field trip to the countryside. He then led them to the trains. An eyewitness recalled, “It was a march of a kind that had never taken place before. All the children were formed in fours, with Korzcak at their head, and with his eyes directed upward he held two children by their tiny hands, leading the procession.”39 Other witnesses recalled that the children were singing. Władisław Szlengel, a poet in the ghetto, remembered the event in verse, writing:
He was the only proud soldier
Janusz Korzcak, the orphan’s guardian.40
Korzcak’s extraordinary courage in voluntarily going with his children to his death highlights the power of resistance that ultimately did not affect the killing process. However, for Korzcak (and many other teachers, doctors, and nurses like him), it was essential that he protect his children from being afraid up to the last moment. He saw it as his duty that they not experience their last moments alone and terrified. Korzcak and his two-hundred orphans arrived at Treblinka, likely on August 7, where they were gassed on arrival. While the commandant, Franz Stangl, was allegedly not present in the camp at the time, the story of Korzcak’s arrival must have reached him; when in prison in Germany, a visitor gave him one of Korzcak’s books and “his color changed and he bowed his head.” The visitor left him “a badly shaken man.”41
Non-Violent Resistance
During the trip, some other prisoners and I tore a plank out of the train car and then jumped out. I was naked. The people I met were afraid of me, no one could decide to give me some clothes. A woman finally gave me clothes. At first, I hid myself alone and then returned to the ghetto where I hid myself in the ghetto area.
Survivor EDMUND SEIDEL describing his escape from a train to Bełzec and his return to the Lwów ghetto42
Edmund’s harrowing escape from certain death at Bełzec is only one form of what we can call non-violent resistance; meaning it did not entail an assault on his oppressors. However, actions such as smuggling, escape, hiding, sabotage, and even suicide were ways in which some Jews chose to fight back against the Nazi program of persecution and, ultimately, extermination. These actions constituted concrete behavior opposing Nazi policy. We have already seen how smuggling was vital to the very survival of Jews in camps and ghettos and can thus be viewed as a form of resistance. However, as one historian has pointed out, “everything in the ghettos was permeated by ambiguity and duplicity. Were the smugglers heroes or merely rapacious exploiters?”43 This is to say that resistance may be the result of activities sometimes designed to only benefit, in this case, the smugglers. By providing food to people who the Nazis were consciously attempting to starve, smugglers were resisting—whether that was their primary intention or not.
Where Jews were forced to perform forced labor, particularly for the German military, sabotage was one method of resistance. These “working Jews” could sometimes create faulty products that would fail when used in combat. This form of resistance was also incredibly dangerous if detected. Sabotage could also entail the theft of food and supplies from the workplace that could be used in the ghetto or for resistance. Therefore, the most important form of sabotage was the theft of weapons that could be smuggled into the camp or ghetto or given to the partisans. An exasperated German official in Belarus reported in 1942 that, “The Jews played a large role in all the destruction and sabotage . . . They were active in supplying stolen weapons and in stealing medicines from hospitals [on behalf of the partisans].”44
Escape was another form of high-risk (but usually non-violent) resistance. Escaping from a camp, a ghetto, or a train was naturally a clear rejection of Nazi attempts to murder Jews. Nazi authorities in Lwów made it policy that Jews like Edmund being sent to the extermination centers be stripped naked in order to impede escape attempts. This was done precisely because there were so many escapes. An official report from the Order Police guarding one train to Bełzec indicates the extent of these train escapes. The company commander wrote that “In the darkness of the night, many Jews escaped, after removing the barbed wire from the air holes” and that “The slow journey was exploited by those Jews who still had strength to slip through the openings and find rescue in escape, which was not dangerous on the slow-moving train.”45 Some Jews escaped from multiple deportation trains and became known as “parachutists.” Often, these escapees found that returning to the ghetto was the only safe course of action.
Escapes took a variety of forms and could be only temporary—as in escaping a selection. In Warsaw, Emanuel Ringelblum would tirelessly wait at the deportation area of the ghetto, using his influence in an attempt to save “a chosen few—intellectuals, writers, teachers, and artists—from among the masses waiting their turn to enter the death trains.”46 He was also able to provide food to those waiting to be deported. In Treblinka, Jews working with the reception of incoming trains could sometimes save others from death, at least temporarily, by hiding them under clothing or secretly adding them to work details.47
Some Jews managed to escape from even the open-air shootings. In Rovno, Leah Bodkier ran from the Sosenki forest near Rovno as guards shot at her. She made it to a haystack and hid inside. She survived the war in hiding with a Pole.48 Lisa and Pola Nussbaum ran from a massacre in the town of Slonim in Belarus, escaping both the Nazis and hostile local children who screamed, ““Jewesses, Jewesses, you took off your yellow stars! The Nazis will kill you! The Nazis will kill you!”49 They collapsed in the barn of a local woman, who hid them until the massacre was over. Not infrequently, victims of these mass shootings would not be hit at all or would be only wounded. They climbed out of the pits and escaped.
Some escapes were more organized. The Jewish Council in Minsk worked closely with the non-Jewish Resistance and managed to send more than 10,000 Jews out of the ghetto and into the forests, where they were taken in by partisan units.50 In 1943, 250 Jews escaped from Novogrudok, Belarus via a tunnel just before the Nazis liquidated the ghetto.51 The chances of success for escapees often depended on local conditions, and whether the non-Jewish population was receptive, or at least not openly hostile to Jews. Unfortunately, in many parts of Eastern Europe, this was not the case. The Minsk ghetto, for example, was so successful in getting Jews out, in part due to the proximity of deep forests and receptive partisan groups.
Others resisted by preparing hiding places in anticipation of Nazi round-ups. These were known as malinas and throughout the ghettos of Eastern Europe, they appeared as the meaning of deportations became clear to the Jews. The malinas or hideouts could range from the simple to the incredibly complex. With sufficient warning, Jews could hide during raids and hope to avoid deportation. Yitzhak Rudashewski described the experience of hiding in the Vilna ghetto in September 1941:
The hiding place was entered through a hole in the wall of the apartment . . . We are like animals surrounded by hunters . . . The knocking of smashed locks, doors creaking, axes . . . Suddenly the sound of a baby crying from somewhere above. A desperate groan issues forth from everyone’s mouth. We’re finished.52
Yitzhak was not, however, discovered and survived the raid. The chances of success in hiding increased greatly if Jews were assisted by non-Jews. In Vilnius, it is estimated that 7,000 Jews survived the first mass killings in hiding.53 For those hiding on their own, refuge was usually only temporary, unless they were able to escape the ghetto permanently. For those in the camps, hiding was only an option when the camps were evacuated; some inmates were able to hide themselves and remain behind to be liberated. In the Starachowice camp (and others), prisoners hid sick inmates and children during selections to protect them from death.54
Perhaps the most personal (and often controversial) mode of resistance for some was suicide. One prominent historian has argued that suicide constitutes resistance because “death itself is a form of rebellion.”55 Many Jews concluded that choosing the time and manner of their own deaths—rather than allowing themselves to be murdered by the Nazis—was their only way to fight back. We have seen that Adam Czerniakow, Chairman of the Jewish Council in Warsaw, chose this course of action when confronted with the deportation of children. However, many ordinary citizens also committed suicide rather than face death at the hands of the Nazis. Not all observers agreed that suicide was resistance. Stefan Ernest, in the Warsaw ghetto, wrote in his diary that “in our circumstances nothing was easier than choosing to die; deciding to survive was harder by far.”56 The decision for suicide and its meaning remained an individual one.
Regardless, it was popular enough that the black market price of poison skyrocketed in ghettos such as Rovno and Lwów in Ukraine where, in the latter, “many people, especially intellectuals, used their last money in order to buy poison.”57 Christine Keren, in hiding with her parents in Lwów, recalled that cyanide was “very valuable in that time,” and that her mother always kept three vials, one for each child, saying that the Germans “will not take us alive.”58 In the camps as well, prisoners often chose suicide as an escape when they could no longer bear the torture of camp life. A survivor of the Janowska camp remembered inmates tied to poles and left to die “yelling to us ‘Cyanide!’ so that they might be delivered from that agony.”59 Finally, some simply found their lives and the things they cared about too irreparably damaged to go on. In the Warsaw ghetto, Lejb Szur dedicated himself to saving as many Jewish books as possible from across the city and ghetto. When ordered to leave his apartment during the large deportation Aktion in August 1942, Lejb chose to remain with his books, hanging himself in front of his bookshelves.60
That is how they took our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, our children.
That is how they took tens of thousands away to their death.
But we will not go!
We will not let them take us like animals to slaughter.
Jews, prepare for armed resistance!
. . .
Jews, we have nothing to lose.
Death is certain. Who can still believe that he will survive when the murderers kill systematically? The hand of the hangman will reach out to each of us. Neither hiding nor cowardice will save lives.
Only armed resistance can save our lives and honor.
Proclamation of the United Partisan Organization, Vilna Ghetto, September 1, 194361
The above call to arms by the underground in the Vilna Ghetto simultaneously highlights the resolve of many Jews to fight and the challenges to armed, violent resistance against the Nazis. The decision to take violent physical action against the Nazi occupiers or camp personnel raised serious concerns that may not always be clear at first glance. However, Eastern European Jews fought their oppressors in ghettos, camps, and with the partisans to an extent rarely recognized. Each situation brought its own challenges and not all armed resistance dramatically affected the overall outcome of the Holocaust, but nonetheless, the ability and will of the Jews to fight deserves recognition.
Several very real factors hampered efforts to organize armed resistance in the ghetto. First, many Jews did not believe that the Nazis intended to murder them. Stansilaw Sznapman reported from the Warsaw ghetto that “Until October 1942, the Jews didn’t know where people were being deported. They held on to the illusion that at least some might survive.”62 Yitzhak Cukierman in the Warsaw ghetto reported “But [the Jews of] Warsaw did not believe it! Common human sense could not understand that it was possible to exterminate tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews.” “More than once,” he went on, “ the reaction to the information we had about the liquidation of the Jews was: ‘that cannot happen to us here.’”63 Though reports of mass murder came into Warsaw, many simply could not comprehend the scale of the danger or make life-changing decisions based on what they often considered rumors or isolated incidents. Even the Jews of Hungary, among the last to be targeted, seemed “almost oblivious to what was happening to the other Jewish communities in Nazi-dominated Europe.”64 Of course, those already in camps knew the truth, but were hampered by other factors.
The second factor that constrained armed resistance was closely linked to the first. For much of the period of the Holocaust, the Jews of Eastern Europe in ghettos lived with their families. The old, young, and infirm could neither escape nor fight and their presence often complicated the decision making of those most capable of resistance, particularly if they were unsure of the realities of Nazi policy. Certainly, few relished the idea of escaping or fighting alone, leaving their families in the hands of the Nazis. The most stark and poignant example of this attitude can be found in Mir, Belarus. A Jewish boy, Oswald Rufeisen, was ordered to work as an interpreter for the German police in the town, as they believed him to be Polish. Rufeisen was thus able to warn the ghetto of the date and time of the coming liquidation. The Jewish council did not believe him; one member stated emphatically that “A liquidation of the ghettos is out of the question!” Others in the ghetto were convinced, but did not want to escape without the permission of the council.65 This is one reason that much armed resistance developed after the young and old had already been killed and Nazi plans became abundantly clear.
Third, many Jewish councils themselves were not only reluctant to support resistance movements, but actively worked against them. They feared German reprisals against the community that would target everyone or even lead to the liquidation of the ghetto. Jacob Gens in Vilna believed that the Nazis needed Jews to work and so opposed the smuggling of arms into the ghetto for fear of retaliation. He told his leadership in 1943 regarding attempted smuggling of pistols, “Don’t cause trouble yourselves. If they do not provoke us, then we must not do it ourselves. Because it is we alone who pay!”66 He was not alone in this stance. Many ghetto leaders, drawing on historical Jewish responses to persecution, pursued a policy of accommodation intended not to further antagonize the Nazis and cause potentially greater killing. While this policy may have been successful during pogroms in the past, it was doomed against the intended extermination of all Jews. It also hamstrung efforts by underground groups to prepare to fight the Nazis. Not all ghetto leaders took this approach. Dr. Elkes and his police force in Kaunas supported the underground, providing information and money for weapons.67 A former Kaunas partisan recalled that “An atmosphere of solidarity with the underground was created in Kaunas . . . different than the atmosphere in Vilna.”68 The Minsk ghetto leadership also worked closely in providing fighters for the partisans outside the ghetto and weapons.
Lastly, those in the ghettos often found it extremely difficult and dangerous to acquire the weapons necessary to fight invariably better armed and organized Nazi forces. Local underground groups were often reluctant to provide arms from their own supplies to Jews either out of self-interest or due to antisemitism. This was the general rule, but there were exceptions, such as the Minsk ghetto’s relationship with the non-Jewish underground.
Despite these challenges, a significant number of Jews did take the fight to the enemy. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that ghetto uprisings broke out in one hundred Eastern European ghettos, or about 25 percent of the ghettos there.69 Certainly, the most famous of these revolts was in Warsaw. The first attacks on German forces took place in January 1943, effectively stopping a deportation action. Although only around twelve Germans were killed, the resistance was shocking enough to cause them to avoid the ghetto until April. During this time, the ZOB, or Jewish Fighting Organization, prepared for the coming German assault. They trained fighters, and the noncombatants prepared bunkers and hiding places. The ZOB, led by Mordecai Anielewicz, a twenty-three year old youth group leader, also tried to acquire weapons from the Polish Home Army (AK) resistance group, but without much success. The ZOB wrote to the AK in March 1943 requesting more weapons and commenting acidly that “Sending us guns without ammunition gives the impression of a cynical playing with our fate and confirms the suspicion that the poison of antisemitism still affects Polish governing circles despite the cruel, tragic experiences of the past three years.”70
Nonetheless, the larger ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943, as German forces entered to round up the remaining Jews. A ghetto fighter described their entrance saying, “Tanks, armored cars, cannon, and columns of SS-men on motorcycles. ‘They look as though they were going to war,’ I said to the girl standing beside me. I felt then how very weak we were, how insignificant our forces were. We had only revolvers and hand grenades.”71 Regardless, 750 Jews of the fighting forces fought bravely for almost a month against overwhelming odds. Even Nazi propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, exclaimed in his diary, “the Jews are putting up a desperate resistance.”72 In the end, the Germans crushed the uprising. They suffered at least sixteen killed and eighty-five wounded, though the actual casualty count is likely much higher. The commander of German forces, SS General Jürgen Stroop, reported 7,000 Jews killed during the fighting and 56,065 captured. The Nazis deported the remaining 42,000 Jews of Warsaw to the Majdanek and other camps, where most perished.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest armed ghetto revolt, but there were many others in ghettos of all sizes. In the ghetto of Baranovichi in Belarus, an underground headed by the Jewish police commander determined to break out if the Nazis attempted to liquidate the ghetto. They stole German weapons and prepared. Then, on September 22, 1942, when the Germans came, they fought back and, as a result, 450 people escaped to the deep forests nearby.73 Similarly, inhabitants of the Lwów ghetto in Ukraine prepared to fight. A survivor recalled that “There were men who were determined to organize resistance at the last.” They bought weapons from sympathetic Italian and Hungarian soldiers who were “always willing to sell whatever arms they could get hold of.”74 This small resistance group attacked German forces during the liquidation in June 1943. Jürgen Stroop, who had liquidated the Warsaw ghetto, was called in to help. Stroop noted that the Jews were “excellent military engineers” and almost admiringly praised them, saying they were “courageous, strong and imaginative” and “the Jews fought like tigers . . . none surrendered.”75 The Higher SS and Police Leader for Galicia, Friedrich Katzmann, reported eight dead and twenty-three wounded, but this may have been low given Stroop’s comments.76
Opportunities for resistance in the extermination centers and at killing sites were scarce, yet serious revolts occurred in four out of the six extermination centers, and individual attacks occurred at both type of sites.77 Jews arriving in these camps and at killing sites often fought back individually, with no hope of success. A survivor from Treblinka recalled that “people resisted, they refused to undress, they attacked the Germans with their fists.”78 Also in Treblinka, a prisoner named Meir Berliner hid a knife and attacked an SS guard, killing him. It was an “act of heroism and despair” that “aroused shock and fear amongst the SS personnel.”79 Even at mass killing sites, individual Jews both escaped and attacked their killers in their final moments. During the mass shooting of Jews from Slonim, Belarus, a German soldier witnessed a Jew attack a German policeman with a knife, wounding him in the face.80 Members of SK1005 units in Lwów, Kaunas, Vilna and elsewhere attacked and killed guards during escapes.
In Sobibor, Treblinka, and even Auschwitz, inmates planned carefully orchestrated revolts. Prisoners in the small working sections of Sobibor and Treblinka were most successful. By October 1943, prisoners at Sobibor believed that they soon would be murdered and Alexander Pechersky, a Jewish Red Army prisoner of war, planned and led a revolt. Jewish prisoners lured individual SS guards to their workshops and then killed them, before storming the fences and running through a minefield into the forests. Survivor Thomas Blatt recalled, “I was behind the last of the fugitives. I went down a few times, each time thinking I had been hit. Each time I got up and ran farther . . . Behind us, blood and and ashes. In the grayness of the approaching evening, the tower’s machine guns shot down their last victims.”81 Around half the camp, three hundred Jews, survived the escape and made it to the forest. The prisoners killed twelve SS men and two Ukrainian guards. Forty-seven of the escapees survived the war, including Blatt.82 In Treblinka, prisoners took advantage of the absence of a large number of guards (who had gone swimming) to rise up in August 1943. While only one SS man was wounded and five or six Ukrainian guards killed, 200 out of 700 managed to escape and it is thought that seventy survived the war.83In Auschwitz, 450 members of the Sonderkommando, believing themselves about to be killed, rose up in October 1944. They were able to kill a kapo and three SS men and to destroy one crematorium, but all were killed.84 Despite the low survival rates of those who fought at these extermination centers, the very fact of resistance in these extremely oppressive environments powerfully illustrates the Jewish will to resist.
The final (and most extreme) version of armed resistance was fighting German military and police forces in guerilla groups operating in the forests and villages of Eastern Europe. Like their counterparts within the ghettos and camps, those Jews wishing to fight Germans in a more military fashion faced several obstacles. Thomas Blatt, who had escaped from the Sobibor extermination camp, realized that “daily life for a prisoner in Sobibor was actually in some ways more secure than that of Jews who were . . . in the forest . . . In Sobibor we knew what to expect.”85
The transformation from civilian to partisan was fraught with many difficulties even before a Jewish fighter fired his or her first shot. First, Jews had to successfully escape captivity and survive long enough outside the ghetto or camp to find a partisan group. The geography of the surrounding areas could complicate this. Ghettos and camps closer to forests offered better chances for hiding and survival than those in areas that were more populated with non-Jews, many of whom were antisemitic and hostile. Second, most partisan groups were reluctant to take additional members who could not fight. Therefore, potential new members were expected to arrive with weapons, those same weapons being difficult to acquire in the ghetto or camp. Women were at a particular disadvantage in this regard. Lastly, Jews wishing to join the partisans had to find the right group of fighters. Throughout Eastern Europe, multiple groups of guerillas of various political ideologies fought the Nazis. Those that were nationalist often killed Jews as willingly as they killed Germans. Communist and official Soviet groups were less likely to do so, but still did on occasion. A Soviet intelligence officer reported on Jews in the forests in Belarus in November 1942: “The partisans do not help them, and they accept Jewish youngsters into their ranks unwillingly. There were cases of partisans from the Bogatirev unit . . . taking weapons from the Jews who came to them and sending them back. Anti-Semitism among the partisans is quite strongly developed.”86 Regardless, Belarus remained one of the areas that were more friendly to Jewish partisans.
With its deep forests and important German supply routes, it formed the heart of the partisan movement, though groups existed throughout the occupied Soviet Union. Jews typically joined either Soviet units or the less numerous Jewish partisan groups. After her family was murdered, twenty-year old Faye Schulman, joined a Soviet group where she was initially forced to do “women’s work,” serving as a nurse. However, she later was allowed to fight the Germans.87 In Belarus, women made up 16 percent of non-Jewish partisan units and 26.5 percent of Jewish units.88 Treatment of Jews in Soviet units varied depending on the commander, but was usually better than in nationalist units, where Jews often had to hide their identity. One member of such a group recalled that during an attack, he started taking fire from behind and that “I had a . . . sneaky suspicion that they were shooting not at them, they were shooting at me.”89 Unsurprisingly, he left that unit as soon he could.
FIGURE 23Jewish partisan Faye Schulman in the forest. Near Pinsk, Belarus (Winter 1943)
Source: Second Story Press.
Perhaps the clearest form of armed resistance during the Holocaust was that of Jewish partisan units. Historian Yitzhak Arad estimates that there were between 18,000 and 20,000 Jewish partisans operating in the forests of the occupied Soviet Union. A further 10,000–13,000 non-fighters lived in family camps hidden deep within the forests with underground bunkers.90 The most famous of these was the family camp operated by the Bielski brothers in Belarus. While the group did fight, its leader, Tuvia Bielski, maintained, “Don’t rush to fight and die. So few of us are left, we need to save lives. It is more important to save Jews than to kill Germans.”91 The Bielski partisans entered ghettos and brought Jews out to the forest. When the Red Army arrived in the region, the Bielski camp contained 1,200 Jews, making it “the largest partisan group in the Soviet Union and all of German- occupied territory [and] one of the largest rescue of Jews by fellow Jews during WWII.”92
Other Jewish partisan groups dedicated all their efforts to killing Nazis. One good example is the 51st Brigade, formed initially from the ghetto underground in Slonim, Belarus. Just establishing the unit was difficult. Jewish men and women from the ghetto began escaping to the forest before the major liquidation on June 29, 1942. On that day, the Germans burned the ghetto and rounded up survivors. In the forest, the survivors joined the 51st Brigade, which had been created after Soviet units refused to accept Jews. Relations were not exactly cordial between the Soviet and Jewish partisans. Non-Jews who had been in the 51st fled on July 1, 1942, stealing weapons that the Jews themselves had smuggled out of the Slonim ghetto when they escaped.93 Typical of a partisan operation was the Battle of the Tenth Dam on September 13, 1942. The 51st desperately sought to escape a German anti-partisan operation near Pinsk in Belarus. They found a crossing point across the Oginski canal at the tenth dam. Believing it lightly guarded, the partisans advanced, only to discover that the dam had been reinforced with more German troops. A vicious firefight followed in which at least 100 Germans were killed. The 51st’s commander, Feodorovitch, was mortally wounded, however. One survivor recalled his final words as he was dying: “Very few of you will survive, but you will be heroes.”94 The 51st eventually dissolved and dispersed among three Soviet units. However, the Jews of Slonim continued to serve. Indicative of the fierce fighting they carried out is the award certificate for Jacob Shepetinski, awarded June 22, 1944:
He participated in 22 major battles against the German forces and police. He took part 5 times in blowing up railroad ties and in sabotage of telephone and telegraph lines, and has derailed three enemy military trains . . . In all these actions he exhibited daring and bravery.95
Indeed, the Jews who fought the Nazis in battle paid a heavy price for their bravery. According to one study, “Jews served in disproportionately high numbers” in the partisans. Around 20,000–30,000 served in Soviet partisan units, where 80 percent died. Throughout the course of the war, there were at least thirty Jewish partisan groups.96
Jews in the occupied Soviet Union during the Holocaust continually faced “choiceless choices.” Certainly, some of the most difficult involved the timing and manner of resistance in the face of overwhelming odds in opposing a structure of systematic oppression set against a background of often unsympathetic non-Jews. Resistance took many forms. What is, perhaps, most important is how Jews at the time viewed their actions through the lens of resistance. If we allow ourselves to examine resistance from their perspective, we find that many modes of behavior, public and private, violent and non-violent, represented the will of the Jewish community to fight against its persecutors.
Selected Readings
Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997.
Epstein, Barbara Leslie. The Minsk Ghetto, 1941–1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
Marrus, Michael Robert, ed. The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews: Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust. Vol. 7. Westport: Meckler, 1989.
Tec, Nechama. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.