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Jewish Resistance to Holocaust The Nazi Holocaust, which lasted from 1941 to the end of the Second World War in 1945, was one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind. This mass killing targeted at wide variety of victims like Soviet Prisoners of war, political prisoners, homosexuals, Kashubians and Sorbs. The primary target for the Nazi wrath however was Jews, whose death count by the end of the war was approximated to least 6,000,000 in total.1 This drive to kill the Jews in particular was based on the highly anti-Semetic Nazi ideology. One of the contentious issues concerning the Holocaust is apparent lack of resistance to the Holocaust that was exhibited by the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe. It has in fact been argued that the Jews passively submitted to their fate like sheep to the slaughter. 2 The question that sums up this issue is: Is it surprising that there was so little Jewish resistance to the Holocaust or that there was so much? I would argue that the resistance was neither too much nor too little based on the unique context that surrounded the Jews at the time. I will start by giving a background on the holocaust process, then explaining the argument of passivity then counter by examining what is meant by resistance and the factors that limited Jewish resistance. It is important to have a basic grasp of how the how the Holocaust worked at its Zenith in order to understand the nature of Jewish resistance. The process starts with rounding up of the Jews by the Nazis or their allies and forcing them into tightly packed trains. These trains first took them to concentration camps called ghettos. These were settlements that were walled off with bricks and barbed wire. Examples of ghettos were the Lodz, Vilna and Warsaw Ghetto.It is here that they would be stripped of their wealth and made to engage in forced labour. The Nazis put Jewish Councils, otherwise known as Judenrate, in charge of the direct control of the ghetto population. At some point the order would be given to empty and close the ghetto, a process

know n as liquation. It is at this point that the Jews would be systematically deported by trains to death camps like Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka to be killed in the gas chambers. In Auschwits the old, sick and very young were killed first and those fit enough to work were made to engage in forced labour. In later death camps like Treblinka and Sobibor, however almost everyone was killed immediately. The only exceptions were the Sonderkomando ,the mostly Jewish men, who were assigned to dispose of the dead Jews in the crematorium. The reason why one must start the analysis of Jewish resistance with the argument of Jewish passivity is that the research that has been done on this issue has been done in response to this argument. This argument was championed by Raul Hilberg who argued that the Jews failed to resist the Germans until it was too late due to a culture of submission resulting from two millennia of persecution and subjugation.3 He went on to argue years later that the Jews on average adjusted to their step by step destruction and that the Jews that did otherwise were isolated deviations from the norm. 4 To some extent this idea rings true in that the European Jews were in fact persecuted for centuries and did come to play a low profile but it can be shown that this argument is an over generalization as there were other more important factors at work. The major issue concerning this topic is how to define resistance. Initially the definition was limited to armed resistance but the definition has been expanding to include other behaviors over time. There was a point in time when this expansion was problematic but overtime the trend in the historical community has been to look at the intentions of the Jews in relation to their acts. Wener Rings has what I would argue is a good system. In it Wener states that Jewish resistance was more an attitude than an armed struggle and that in order to understand it one must understand it in terms of the commitments they made and what they accomplished under the

conditions they faced. 5 He divided Jewish resistance into five categories: symbolic, polemic, Defensive, Aggressive and resistance enchained. 6 Symbolic resistance is defined as any system of gestures that communicated opposition with the essential theme being that the Nazis failed to crush their spirits despite their best efforts.7 In other words a good way of viewing this kind of resistance is via the retention of a sense of human dignity and national identity in the face of dehumanization. Yehuda Bauer argues that this was done in the ghettos by attempting as best as possible to retain a sense of normalness as possible within the ghettos. 8 The evidence he uses to make this point is are things such as the creation of libraries and the building of schools within the ghettos.9 The issue of spiritual resistance, the retention of a sense of spiritual identity, despite the harsh conditions and German suppression thereof is another important point. A good example of this is that of Rabbis conducting religious services and protecting copies of the Torah.10 The second level of Jewish resistance, Polemic resistance, can be defined as the overt communication of resistance such as to engage in organize protests or to convince ones peers in the need to resist in word or deed.11 A good example of a protest would be the one at the end of 1940 in response to the dismissal of Jewish civil servants and professors from their posts.12 Due to the presence of Nazi terror made protests, for the most part, a rarity. Another manifestation of this level of resistance came in the form of civil disobedience. An example of this is that when Dutch Jewish dissidents warned the Jewish community against the following of Nazi regulation, 25,000 of them went into hiding and in Holland dissenters caused Jews to disregard the authority of the local Judenrate, The Jooddse Raad, evade taxes and reject calls to go to convoys at Wasterbork. 13

The primary manifestation of this form of resistance was via the production and distribution of anti-Nazi propaganda. This was done by the various organizations that make up the Jewish underground press in countries all across Europe and this propaganda took the form of newspapers, leaflets, books and periodicals. There quite a few groups that existed in France for example that published anti Nazi propaganda like the Solidarity which in 1942 spread the truth about the holocaust via its main newspapers, Jaccuse and Fraternite. Other groups that published papers in France at this time were communists, other leftist groups and Zionists. The Jewish underground got this information from covert communication with the residents of the ghettos. A good example of this is the case the of the Warsaw Ghetto wherin it was discovered that there were at least 47 periodicals written in Hebrew Yiddish and Polish; 26 were written by Zionists groups and the rest by Bundist and other groups.13 These underground movements were pivotal in relaying the truth about the holocaust to the allied states and the Papacy as a cry for help. The Polish underground for example sent its knowledge of the Holocaust to the Polish Government in exile in Britain. Another category that could be placed under this is category would be suicide. It is clearly difficult if not impossible to determine the motives of the thousands of Jews who killed themselves during the holocaust, although it is clear that many of them would have done so out of a sense of despair, However one clear example of suicide as a form of resistance would be that of Samuel Zygelbojm, a representative of the Bund on the Polish National Committee, in 1943out of frustration with his failure to save the Jews and grieved his by the loss his family. We know this based on his letter to the polish President and Prime Minister which stated that I wish to express my strongest protest against the inactivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the destruction of the Jewish people14

Defensive resistance is defined in this system as acting the defense of those on the run or in danger with the use of force if necessary.15 In practice this translated to the creation of networks to protect one another. One such network was the creation of programs that made life less unbearable within the ghettos. Isaiah Trunk makes this point in the quote: extending from activities permitted by the Occupation, such as soup kitchens, cultural, welfare and medical facilities, to those they tried to eliminate, such as forging documents, smuggling people back and forth, and communicating with the outside world.16 A more contentious and complicated issue with regard to this issue is the role of the Judenrat in resistance. Hannah Arendt harshly criticized the Jewish councils in the quote "To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story." 17 However this depiction is arguably very simplistic as there is strong evidence to suggest that, according to there were in fact Jewish councils leaders who tried to postpone the liquidation date of the Ghettos by making its residents useful to the Nazi regime via productive labor. A good example of this would be Jacob Gens of the Vilna Ghetto. Installed as a leader in 1942, he advanced the policy of work for life as a means of survival and even handed over 406 elderly and ill people for deportation so as to at least save the 1,500 women and children the Nazis asked for.18 The most controversial of these leaders was Mordeheim Chaim Rumkowsky of the Lodz Ghetto. On the one hand he is hated for his brutal egomaniacal rule, he was very obedient to Nazi officials and his rape of young women who capitulated out of the fear of being deported. On the other thanks to him the Lodz ghetto was liquidated in 1944, after the closure of the other Polish ghettos, and its 5,000 to 7,000 survivors in relative terms, constituted the largest number of Holocaust survivors in one ghetto in occupied Poland. 19 This is due to the fact that he made the

ghetto productive by establishing 120 factories. 20 It should also be noted that he established schools, cultural centers and welfare organizations. Offensive resistance is defined as engaging in combat of the oppressor in a on the battlefield, typically in an unconventional manner. 21 The Jews that engaged in this fighting were either in the underground or in Partisan formations. It should be noted that these groups engaged in other forms of resistance as well like distributing propaganda, organizing protests and smuggling people to safety. The manifestation of offensive resistance on the Eastern and Western fronts were different and therefore deserved special attention. In Western Europe it was relatively rare for Jews to fight in Jewish resistance groups. Instead rather they tended to fight for the freedom of their respective countries alongside their fellow non Jewish countrymen. There are a few exceptions however like the Jewish Boy Scout movement in France or the Committee for the Protection of Jews in Belgium. In Eastern Europe a major form of resistance was to group up into irregular militia bands known as partisans. These units would either be created by Jews independently or they would join soviet partisan groups, Titos partisan army in Yugoslavia or they were affiliated with the underground resistance movements of their respective nations. The Polish Home guard, perhaps the most important of the underground movements, had a membership of 268,000 women and men at its zenith22. Along with attacking the Nazis and their collaborators, the Jewish partisans were also known for attempting to rescue and protect fleeing Jews who escaped into the forest. 23 Many of these Jewish men, women and children came to form what are known as family camps in the forest. The number of Jewish partisans who fought in forests of the western Ukraine and Byelorussia estimated to be between 20,000 and 30,000.24 One of the more famous partisan units was the 300 man Bielski Otriad.25 Lead by Alexander Bielski the engaged in a guerrilla

campaign involving attacks on Nazi infrastructure like the railway lines and electric power stations. The final level, resistance enchained, is defined as the desparate act of fighting back in the face of inevitable defeat. 26 These desparate acts occurred when it was clear to the Jews that there was absolutely no hope of not being killed. These acts of resistance occurred in the all of ghettos at the point of liquidation and the death camps at the point where the extermination was almost complete. A good example of a major ghetto revolt was the Warsaw revolt. The trigger for this was the large scale liquidation of the ghetto to the point where the population dropped from 380,000 to 70,000.26 The response was that by October 1942 the Zionists, the socialist Bundists and the Communists founded the Coordinating Committee (K.K), a coalition of these groups towards the ends of stopping the liquidation. Later that month they found the Jewish Fighting Force, ZOD, as their military wing. The Zionist Betar doesnt join and instead founds its own fighting force. Both groups then contact the Polish Underground to supply them with weapons and ZOD establishes branches in other ghettos. On January 18, 1943 resistance fighters engage the Germans in combat as they were trying to continue the liquidation. The Germans managed to deport 5,000-6,000 Jews before they had to stop the liquidation on January 22. 27In response Himmler ordered the completed dissolution of the ghetto and on April 19,1943 the SS surrounds the area and engage in intense street battles with the resistance. Despite their valiant efforts, the Germans have effectively defeated the resistance by April 19 and by May 16 the Destruction is complete. An important example of a death camp revolt was the Sonderkommando revolt of October 6,1944 in the Auschwitz death camp. They rebelled at this point because the extermination of the Hungarian Jews was coming to an end and they knew that it would not be

long before they get killed as well. When their earlier pleas to the Auschwitz underground group failed they took matters into their own hands and blew up crematorium 3. The SS crushed the revolt and killed the participants. The next step in analyzing this issue is to look at the factors that undermined resistance. One of the factors that undermined resistance was the deception of the Nazis . What is meant by deception is that the Nazis had been fooling the Jews into thinking that they were not going to be killed in a very systematic way. For example upon the Jews were never told about the death camps but rather upon being deported were told that they were being resettled. 28 To kill them the Germans would make them strip give each person a bar of soap and told them to go to take a shower in the gas chambers that were made to resemble showers. Another important issue is the poor health of most Jews due to the holocaust process. They were cramped into open trams in the trains to encourage suffocation, disease and exposure to the elements. The Ghettos were deliberately overcrowded, food rations cut short and sanitation discouraged by law to encourage disease and starvation. Anyone who managed to survive this would be very hungry and very ill and thus less able to resist. The next obstacle was the ruthless military efficiency and terror of the Nazi war machine. It was so effective that rebel armies, Jewish and non Jewish, spent most of their time bidding their time until the near the end of the war when the allied armies approached before choosing to attempt a to overthrow the Nazi occupiers. An example of how devastating miscalculating such a move was is seen when the Polish Home Army launched its uprising in Warsaw in 1944, convinced that victory was assured, and suffered a crushing defeat with close to 200,000 casualties on the Polish side .29The next obstacle was the German policy of collective responsibility, namely the punishment of innocent people as retaliation against any dissent. An

example of this is that When Jacob Gens had the opportunity to escape he refused on the basis that the Germans would immediately liquidate the camp. This was an effective tactic as it resulted in the rebels would be less inclined to resist out of fear of the collateral damage. The next issue that held back Jewish resistance was the diversity of the various Jewish Groups. The Jews that went to the Ghettos and the death camps came from all over Europe and therefore spoke many languages, thus creating a language barrier problem. There is also the fact that these Jews came from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds as well as religious backgrounds thus undermining a sense of solidarity. One important distinction that existed amongst them was the diversity of political persuasions. As we have seen in the Warsaw revolt there were a wide variety of groups that only agreed to help each other in the face of certain doom. One obstacle that is of extreme importance is that the Jews were stateless until 1948. This is significant as this means that Jewish resistance groups did get the access to allied support that other national groups like the French, the Poles or the Belgians received. This means therefore that Jewish resistance groups typically lacked the arms and training required to battle effectively on a consistent basis. Another problem that was faced by the Jews was the problem of anti-Semitism among the non Jewish population in Eastern Europe. Eastern European culture in general by the break out of the war had long been established as very anti-Semetic and the result of that is that Eastern European peasants often turned Jewish rebels over to the authorities. An example of this is in the case of 4 Ukrainian families who tried to escape into the forest east of Zamolodycze to get avoid deportation, and found other families in the process but they were quickly captured by non Jewish Ukrainian Peasants and turned over to the Germans.30 There were cases like this all over Nazi occupied Europe but this was not as frequent in Western Europe as that region was less

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antisemetic. The last issue to mention is that of time. The ability of the resistance groups to form and develop escape networks or any other form of resistance for that matter to save the Jews from the ghettos was only as effective as the time it took to for a given ghetto to be liquidated. The sooner a ghetto was liquidated the less effective those Jews who were interested in resistance were at engaging therein.

In order to prove my thesis statement I will counter the notions that it should be surprising that there was either so much or so little evidence on the part of Jews in response to the Holocaust based on an analysis of the evidence. The claim that there was very little resistance is clearly false based on Rings redefinition of resistance. This redefinition is sound because it takes into account the intention of the Jews towards their actions and it the types of resistance is divided into a sensible intuitive spectrum. It is quite clear to see that based on the evidence the Jews were in a uniquely disadvantageous context, thus explaining the ineffectiveness of their armed resistance. The idea that there was a surprisingly high amount of resistance is also fallacious as there does not seem to be a clear measure of how much resistance can be considered to be a standard amount or even how to make said measurement. Furthermore the Jews appear to be acting in a typically human manner in that when free people become oppressed they will have the tendency to react negatively to said oppression but they will react in different ways based on factors that shape their personalities. We see this clearly in the literature as there is a clear spectrum from those who resisted in mild ways to those who resisted in more violent way. There is no reason to believe that any other group in the same context would have acted any differently.

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In conclusion it can be clearly seen that, based on the evidence at hand, that the idea that there was either surprisingly so much or so little Jewish resistance to the Holocaust are both incorrect as the Jews acted in a manner that could be expected of any group in that context.