Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe
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the Holocaust in occupied Poland | |
Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule | |
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Uprisings |
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Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized
Due to military strength of Nazi Germany and its allies, as well as the administrative system of ghettoization and the hostility of various sections of the civilian population, few Jews were able to effectively resist the Final Solution militarily. Nevertheless, there are many cases of attempts at resistance in one form or another including over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.[2] Historiographically, the study of Jewish resistance to German rule is considered an important aspect of the study of the Holocaust.
Concepts and definitions
The historian
Nechama Tec argues that any of the complex and varying acts of defiance against the restrictive and demoralizing conditions forced upon the Jews of Europe should be considered spiritual resistance.[3] Tec asserts that actions such as ghetto leaders scavenging resources for food and medicine, or the employment and preservation of Jewish art and artists in Germany through the creation of Jewish Cultural Association serve as a passive means of resisting the Nazi aim to destroy the identity and culture of Judaism.[3] Richard Middleton-Kaplan identifies documented acts of spiritual resistance in concentration camps, such as inmates saying prayers for Shabbat and fallen loved ones and making efforts to care for themselves and others.[4]
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 despite the humiliating and inhumane conditions. The scholarly argument surrounding passive and spiritual resistance stems from historian Yehuda Bauer's concept of "amidah", the Hebrew word meaning "to stand up against", which asserts any act of resisting the destruction of Jewish life is an act of defiance.[3] Further historical research and arguments have used "Amidah" to characterize religious observation, the of Jewish resistance to the destruction of one's culture, one's individualism, and one's will to live.
Bauer disputes the popular view that most Jews went to their deaths passively—"like sheep to the slaughter". 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 was present.[citation needed] Middleton-Kaplan calls upon the traditional connotation of "sheep to the slaughter" in both Judaism in Christianity to argue the positive notion in Jewish scripture of facing a looming, existential threat with faith and bravery, succumbing to one's fate without fear.[4] In The Myth of Jewish Passivity, Middleton-Kaplan mentions Jewish resistance leader Abba Kovner, famed for his role in the Vilna ghetto uprising, quoted as early as 1941 using the "sheep to the slaughter" phrase as a call to action, arguing Kovner employed the phrase's original connotation as a call to action towards an unmoving or absent God.[5] Historians such as Patrick Henry have found that the "sheep to the slaughter" myth of Jewish passivity is partly tied to the apparent lack of discussion regarding forms of Jewish resistance outside armed revolt.[5]
Types of resistance
Ghettos across German-occupied Poland
In 1940, the
Jews mainly used unarmed resistance in Eastern Europe; for instance, young Jews smuggled food or secretly took people into the forests in
There were many other major and minor ghetto uprisings, however most were not successful. Some of the ghetto uprisings include the
Concentration camps
There were major resistance efforts in three of the extermination camps.
- In August 1943, an uprising took place at the Treblinka extermination camp. The participants obtained guns and grenades after two young men used forged keys and snuck into the armory unit. The weapons were then distributed around the camp in garbage bins. However, during the distribution of arms, a Nazi guard stopped a prisoner and found contraband money on him. Fearing that the prisoner would be tortured and give away the plan, the organizers decided to launch the revolt ahead of schedule without completing the distribution of weapons, and set off a single grenade—the agreed-upon signal for the uprising. The prisoners then attacked the Nazi guards with guns and grenades. Several German and Ukrainian guards were killed, a fuel tank was set on fire, barracks and warehouses were burned, military vehicles were disabled, and grenades were thrown at the SS headquarters. The guards replied with machine-gun fire, and 1,500 inmates were killed—but 70 inmates escaped to freedom. The guards chased those who had escaped on horseback and in cars, but some of those who escaped were armed, and returned the guards' fire. Gassing operations at the camp were interrupted for a month.[10]
- In October 1943, an uprising took place at SS officers, including the deputy commander, and a number of Ukrainian guards. Although the plan was to kill all of SS members and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the guards discovered the killings and opened fire. The inmates then had to run for freedom under fire, with roughly 300 of the 600 inmates in the camp escaping alive. All but 50–70 of the inmates were killed in the surrounding minefields or recaptured and murdered by the Germans. However, the escape forced the Nazis to close the camp, saving countless lives.[11]
- On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Polish resistanceattack from the outside.
Uprisings also erupted in at least 18 forced labor camps.[9]
Partisan groups
There were a number of Jewish partisan groups operating in many countries, especially in places like Poland. Jews also joined existing partisan movements. The most notable Jewish partisan group is the Bielski partisans, whom the movie Defiance portrays, and the Parczew partisans in the forests near Lublin. Hundreds of Jews escaped the ghettoes and joined the Partisan resistance groups.[2] Some Jews liberated from the Gęsiówka concentration camp participated in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. In France, up to 20% of the French Resistance was Jewish despite Jews making up only about 1% of the French population, and there was a Jewish resistance unit, the Armée Juive.[12] About 10% of Soviet partisans were Jews.[13] Thousands of Jews also joined the Yugoslav Partisans. One Yugoslav Partisan unit, Rab battalion, was composed of entirely of Jews liberated from the Rab concentration camp.
Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe by country
Belgium
The resistance was responsible for the assassination of Robert Holzinger, the head of the deportation program, in 1942.[20] Holzinger, an active collaborator, was an Austrian Jew selected by the Germans for the role.[20] The assassination led to a change in leadership of the AJB. Five Jewish leaders, including the head of the AJB, were arrested and interned in Breendonk, but were released after public outcry.[15] A sixth was deported directly to Auschwitz.[15]
The Belgian resistance was unusually well informed on the fate of the deported Jews. In August 1942 (two months after the start of the Belgian deportations), the underground newspaper De Vrijschutter reported that "They [the deported Jews] are being killed in groups by gas, and others are killed by salvos of machinegun fire."[21]
In early 1943, the Front de l'Indépendance sent Victor Martin, an academic economist at the Catholic University of Louvain, to gather information on the fate of deported Belgian Jews using the cover of his research post at the University of Cologne.[22] Martin visited Auschwitz and witnessed the crematoria. Arrested by the Germans, he escaped, and was able to report his findings to the CDJ in May 1943.[22]
France
Despite amounting to only 1% of the French population, Jews accounted for about 15–20% of the French Resistance.[23] Some of the Jewish resistance members were refugees from Germany, Poland and other central European states.[24]
Although the majority of the French and foreign Jews involved in the French Resistance participated in the general Resistance movements, some Jews also set up their own armed resistance movement: the Armée Juive (Jewish Army), a Zionist organization, which at its height, numbered some 2,000 fighters. Operating throughout France, it smuggled hundreds of Jews to Spain and Switzerland, launched attacks against occupying German forces, and targeted Nazi informants and Gestapo agents. Armee Juive participated in the general French uprising of August 1944, fighting in Paris, Lyon, and Toulouse.[25]
Germany
Jewish resistance within Germany itself during the Nazi era took a variety of forms, from sabotage and disruptions to providing intelligence to
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 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. Its 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 non-confrontational with the hopes of maximizing survival.[28]
Netherlands
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 organization, much bigger than all other organizations put 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. About 1,000 Dutch Jews took part in resisting the Germans, and of those, 500 perished in doing so. In 1988, a monument to their memory was unveiled by the then mayor of Amsterdam, Ed van Thijn.[29]
Among the first Jewish resisters was the German fugitive Ernst Cahn, owner of an ice cream parlor. Together with his partner, Kohn, he had an ammonia gas cylinder installed in the parlor to stave off attacks from the militant arm of the fascist NSB, the so-called "Weerafdeling"("WA"). One day in February 1941 the German police forced their entrance into the parlor, and were gassed. Later, Cahn was caught and on March 3, 1941, he became the first civilian to be executed by a Nazi firing squad in the Netherlands.[citation needed]
Benny Bluhm, a boxer, organized Jewish fighting parties consisting of members of his boxing school to resist attacks. One of these brawls led to the death of a WA-member, H. Koot, and subsequently the Germans ordered the first Dutch
Numerous Jews participated in resisting the Germans. The Jewish director of the assembly center in the "Hollandsche Schouwburg", a former theatre, Walter Süskind, was instrumental in smuggling children out of his centre. He was aided by his assistant Jacques van de Kar and the director of the nearby crèche, Mrs Pimentel.[30]
Within the underground communist party, a militant group was formed: de Nederlandse Volksmilitie (NVM, Dutch Peoples Militia). The leader was Sally (Samuel) Dormits, who had military experience from guerrilla warfare in Brazil and participation in the
Jewish resistance in Allied militaries
Approximately 1.5 million Jews served in the regular Allied militaries during World War II, among them roughly 550,000 in the United States Armed Forces (including those who served in the Pacific theater) and 500,000 in the Red Army. About 100,000 served in the Polish Army during the German invasion and thousands served in the Free Polish Forces including about 10,000 in Anders' Army. About 60,000 British Jews and 30,000 Jews from Mandatory Palestine served in the British Armed Forces during the war. Another 17,000 Jews served in the Canadian Armed Forces.[31][32][33]
The
The British government formed the Jewish Brigade, an all-Jewish unit of the British Army for Jews from Palestine, in July 1944. It consisted of about 5,500 Jewish volunteers from Palestine led by British-Jewish officers, and was organized into three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and supporting units. They were attached to the British Eighth Army in Italy from November 1944, taking part to the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy. After the end of the war in Europe the Brigade was moved to Belgium and the Netherlands in July 1945. As well as participating in combat operations against German forces, the brigade assisted and protected Holocaust survivors.[35][36]
The
Notable Jewish resistance fighters
- Mordechaj Anielewicz, leader of the Jewish Combat Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, killed in action in 1943
- Polish Jewish youth leader in Warsaw and a senior commander of the Jewish Military Union, killed in action defending the JMU headquarters
- Yitzhak Arad, a former Soviet partisan
- National Socialism, tortured to death by the Gestapo
- western Belarus
- Polish-Jewishleader of Jewish resistance
- Sobibór extermination campin October 1943
- Jewishmember of the Minsk Resistance, executed by the Nazis
- Eugenio Calò, an Italian partisan, executed by the Nazis
- Franco Cesana, an Italian Jew who joined a partisan group, killed by the Nazis at age 13
- Icchak Cukierman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 1943 and fighter in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
- Szymon Datner helped smuggle several people out of Białystok Ghetto in 1943
- Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- Sobibór extermination campwho escaped and survived
- Sobibór extermination camp
- Dov Freiberg, a participant in the Sobibór prisoners' revolt who joined Joseph Serchuk's partisan unit
- Munyo Gruber, a member of the Parczew partisanswho fought the Germans while attempting to save as many Jewish lives as possible
- United Partisan Organization, one of the first armed underground organizations in the Jewish ghettos under Nazi occupation
- Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
- ghetto uprisings of the war and member of a partisanunit, killed in action
- Vladka Meed, a member of Jewish resistance in Poland who smuggled dynamite into the Warsaw Ghetto and also helped children escape out of the ghetto
- Parczew partisans, fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement
- Alexander Pechersky, one of the organizers, and the leader of the most successful uprising and mass-escape of Jews from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II; which occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943
- Frumka Płotnicka, leader of the Sosnowiec and Będzin Ghetto uprisings.[38]
- Moše Pijade, one of the leaders of the uprising in Montenegro against the Italian occupation forces in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia
- Jewish Agency and Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) on military missions in Nazi-occupied Europe; she was captured and executed
- Joseph Serchuk, commander of the Jewish partisan unit in the Lublin area in Poland
- , she was captured, tortured, and executed by the Nazis
- Lelio Vittorio Valobra, leader of DELASEM, which helped Jewish refugees to escape the Holocaust
- Dawid Wdowiński, founder of the ŻZW group in the Warsaw Ghetto who served as its political leader
- Yitzhak Wittenberg, a Jewish resistance fighter in Vilnius; after he was captured by the Gestapo, he committed suicide in his jail cell
- their collaborators
- Simcha Zorin, a Jewish Soviet partisan commander in Minsk of a group that consisted of 800 Jewish fighters
Aftermath
The Nokmim
In the aftermath of the war, Holocaust survivors led by former members of Jewish resistance groups banded together. Calling themselves
Nokmim also travelled to places such as Latin America, Canada, and Spain to track down and kill Nazis who had settled there. In one instance, they are believed to have confronted Aleksander Laak, responsible for killing 8,500 Jews at Jägala concentration camp, at his suburban Winnipeg home, and after telling him that they intended to kill him, allowed him to commit suicide.
In 1946, the Nokmim carried out a mass poisoning attack against former
See also
- Righteous Among the Nations
- Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis (book)
- Anti-fascism
- Defiance (2008 film)
- Uprising (2001 film)
- Resistance during World War II
- Like sheep to the slaughter
- Armenian resistance during the Armenian Genocide
Notes and references
- ^ Yehuda Bauer, "Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews", Jewish Resistance and Passivity in the Face of the Holocaust, 1989, p. 237
- ^ a b Jewish Partisan Education Foundation, Accessed 22 December 2013.
- ^ JSTOR j.ctt7zswcf.7.
- ^ JSTOR j.ctt7zswcf.
- ^ JSTOR j.ctt7zswcf.
- ^ Leni Yahil. "The Warsaw Ghetto Underground Press". In Robert Moses Shapiro, ed., Why Didn't the Press Shout? Yeshiva University Press, 2003. pp. 457–490
- ^ Yehuda Bauer, "Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews", Jewish Resistance and Passivity in the Face of the Holocaust, 1989, p. 243
- ISBN 978-0-8022-2486-6. Note: Chariton and Lazar were never co-authors of Wdowiński's memoir. Wdowiński is considered the single author.
- ^ a b "Map of the Jewish uprisings in World War II" (PDF file, direct download 169 KB). Yad Vashem. 2013.
- ^ Omer-Man, Michael. "This Week in History: Prisoners revolt at Treblinka" The Jerusalem Post, August 5, 2011. Accessed 23 December 2013.
- ^ Raschke, Richard. Escape from Sobibor. New York: Avon, 1982.
- ^ Bartrop, Paul R. and Dickerman, Michael: The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection [4 volumes], p. 535
- ^ Martin Gilbert, 'The Holocaust' (1986), p. 515.
- ^ ISBN 978-965-308-068-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9.
- ^ Williams, Althea; Ehrlich, Sarah (19 April 2013). "Escaping the train to Auschwitz". BBC News. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
- ^ Various (1991). "Préface". Partisans Armés Juifs, 38 Témoignages. Brussels: Les Enfants des Partisans Juifs de Belgique.
- ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9.
- ISBN 978-965-308-068-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9.
- ISBN 978-0-8021-1766-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8021-1766-3.
- Mont-Valérien, near Paris, or 17,4%. Quoted by Monique-Lise Cohen et Jean-Louis Dufour in "Les Juifs dans la Résistance", Publisher: Tirésias, 2001)
- ^ "Les étrangers dans la Résistance". Chemins de mémoire. Government of France.
- ^ "August 1944: A Jewish partisan in Southern France". This Month in Holocaust History. Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 3 December 2009. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
- ^ Ruby Rohrlich, ed. Resisting the Holocaust. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1998.
- ISBN 0674636805. [page needed]
- ^ See, e.g., Herbert Lindenberger. Heroic Or Foolish? The 1942 Bombing of a Nazi Anti-Soviet Exhibit. Telos. 135 (Summer 2006):127–154.
- ^ "Amsterdam, 'Monument Joods Verzet 1940-1945'" (in Dutch). Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei. Archived from the original on 22 March 2011. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
- ^ Dr. L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Amsterdam, RIOD/Staatsuitgeverij 1975
- ^ Jewish Soldiers in the Allied Armies – Yad Vashem
- ^ Veteran Films: A Window on the War – Jewish Museum London
- ^ Jewish Canadian service in the Second World War
- ^ a b Hecht, Ben. Perfidy, first published by Julian Messner, 1961; this edition Milah Press, 1997, pp. 118–133. Hecht cites Bar Adon, Dorothy and Pessach. The Seven who Fell. Sefer Press, 1947, and "The Return of Hanna Senesh" in Pioneer Woman, XXV, No. 5, May 1950.
- ^ Beckman, Morris: The Jewish Brigade
- ^ "'We proved to the world that we can fight'". The Jerusalem Post.
- ^ Holocaust in Belorussia – pages 427–428, JewishGen
- ^ Aharon Brandes (1959) [1945]. "The demise of the Jews in Western Poland". In the Bunkers. A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Będzin (in Hebrew and Yiddish). Translated by Lance Ackerfeld. pp. 364–365 – via Jewishgen.org.
- ^ Freedland, Jonathan (2008-07-25). "The Jewish avengers who survived the death camps and tracked down their tormentors". The Guardian.
Further reading
- Ginsberg, Benjamin (2013). How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-2238-0.
- Dov Levin. Fighting Back: Lithuanian Jewry's Armed Resistance to the Nazis, 1941–1945. (Holmes and Meier, 1985). ISBN 0-8419-0831-1
- Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown. The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews of Kovno in the Second World War. (Gefen Publishing, 2014). ISBN 978-965-229-616-0
- Finkel, E. (2015). "The Phoenix Effect of State Repression: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust." American Political Science Review, 109(2), 339–353.
- Braber, Ben (2013). This Cannot Happen Here: Integration and Jewish Resistance in the Netherlands, 1940–1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. JSTOR j.ctt6wp7hh.
- Poznanski, Renée; Aleksov, Bojan; Gildea, Gildea (2020). "Transnational Perspectives on Jews in the Resistance". In Gildea, Robert; Tames, Ismee (eds.). Fighters across Frontiers: Transnational Resistance in Europe, 1936–48. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 109–131. ISBN 978-1-5261-5124-7.
External links
- Jewish Armed Resistance and Rebellions Archived 2012-01-13 at the Wayback Machine on the Yad Vashem website
- "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, D.C. PDF version Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
- Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project
- About the Holocaust Archived 2006-06-18 at the Wayback Machine
- Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
- Interviews from the Underground: Eyewitness accounts of Russia's Jewish resistance during World War II documentary film and website (jewishpartisans.net)
- Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust, Organization of Partizans Underground and Ghetto Fighters
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans