Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

Song of the Jewish Partisans

Lyrics by Hersh Glik (1922-1944)

Raul Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1961): Jews aided in their own destruction

Yehuda Bauer, The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness (1979): Jews struggled for survival everywhere

kiddush haShem: Sanctification of G-d's name (martyrdom)

kiddush hachaim: Sanctification of life (survival)

Situations:

• Einsatzgruppen actions
• Ghettoes
• Concentration Camps
• Extermination Camps

Resistance Actions

• Smuggling
• Creation of social services
• Getting news to the outside world
• Flight
• Partisan movements
• Revolts

Partisan movements of other groups: A comparison

• Poland: The AK (Polish Home Army)
• Poland: The PPR (Polish Workers' Party -- Communist)
• Russia: Partisan movements in the forests

A. Jewish Partisan movements: the example of the Parczew forest north of Sobibor

1. Characteristics

• Began as escape; no waiting groups to accept them
• All Jews had the status of escaped prisoners
• No homes or havens; no obvious source of aid
• In danger from local police or partisan groups as well as from the Nazis
• No ready access to weapons for protection

2. The situation in the Parczew forest

• Russian POWs beginning 1941 under Fiodor Kovalov
• Conflicting aims: sabotage or inmate rescue?
• "Jew hunts"
• the Altana Camp, led by Yechiel Greenshpan, captured by Germans in April 1943
• AK "Jew hunts"
• German offensive, May 1944
• Survived to liberation: about 300

B. Death camp uprisings: Sobibor

1. Thomas Toivi Blatt's memoirs

2. The revolt: October 14, 1943

• Rescue aims: to free all 600 prisoners at Sobibor
• Results: escaped to forest -- 320
• Killed in minefields -- 80
• Captured later in dragnets and executed -- approx. 170
• Successful escapes -- 150
• Killed later in hiding by partisans or local inhabitants -- 97
• Survived to liberation -- 48

C. Ghetto uprisings: Warsaw

1. Conflicting goals: rescue, escape, or sabotage?

2. Conflicting goals of the Judenrat (Adam Czerniakow): minimize losses

• Deportation of all ghetto residents ordered July, 1942
• July 23: Czerniakow commits suicide; deportations begin
• Fall, 1942: 35,000 residents left (10% of population)

3. Reassessment: why no resistance from July to October?

• Element of surprise
• Individual concentration on not being taken rather than resistance
• Planning consumed precious time: how to get weapons, explosives?
• Capture of arms cache, August, 1942

4. Plans take shape

• Executions of Judenrat members, Jewish police commander
• Contacts established with Polish underground
• December, 1942: acquistion of a few weapons from the AK
• Attempts to notify outside world

5. Surprise move against the ghetto: January 1943

• Armed groups have no plan, act independently
• Capture of Germans and weapons
• Slaughter in the streets: about 1000 casualties
• Sudden withdrawal

6. The uprising: April 19, 1943

• German resources: 2000 soldiers, 1174 rifles, 135 submachine guns, 69 light guns, 13 heavy guns, cannon, flamethrower, 3 armored cars
• Ghetto resources: 750 fighters, 10-15 rounds of ammunition, 4-5 homemade grenades, 2000 Molotov cocktails, 10 rifles, 1 or 2 machine guns and ammo taken from the Germans, mined entrances
• Duration: 3 weeks
• Result: Ghetto totally razed, survivors sent to extermination camps

Warsaw Ghetto aftermath

Vilna Partisans, 1944