Essay2_BrieannaDeBellis

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1 Jewish Womens’ Resistance to Nazism Brieanna DeBellis HST-425: The Holocaust in Its History Dr. Kathryn Hubler February 25, 2024

2 Jewish women practiced diverse forms of resistance against Nazism during the Holocaust, which were frequently different from their male counterparts, due to their unique perceptions and experiences based on gender. In addition to fulfilling their more traditional roles, such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare, they also engaged in negotiating for the release of male family members, actively participating in armed resistance, designing emigration plans, sustaining cultural and religious practices, providing aid to fellow Jews, and contributing to the preservation of historical records. This multifaceted resistance displays the strength, adaptability, and resilience of Jewish women as they navigated the impossible situations they were forced into. One of the multiple ways that women resisted during the Holocaust was to work tirelessly trying to have male loved ones freed from the prisons or death camps. In Between Dignity and Despair , Marion Kaplan wrote, “… at the beginning Jewish women saw their men arrested – whether for political affiliations or on trumped-up charges – and tried to rescue them,” 1 “women anguished as their men disappeared into concentration camps and many strove, heroically, to free them” 2 . This required learning to navigate persuading Nazi officials and/or giving bribes to ensure their men were freed and had appropriate paperwork for their release. In chapter five of Between Dignity and Despair , Kaplan wrote about several women who experienced this. One of them, Charlotte Stein-Peck, had to continuously search for any connection to people that could get her husband freed 3 . Another woman, Ruth Abraham, brought her fiancé out from his hiding place during the November Pogrom and then continued to Dachau to attempt to get her future father-in-law released 4 . In subsequent survivor memoirs, men wrote about the stoic calmness and strength of their women, such as a Jewish community leader who stated, “The highest praise … 1 Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 1999), 7. 2 Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany , 126. 3 Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany , 127–28. 4 Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany , 127–28.

3 goes to our wives who, without shedding one tear, inspired the hordes, some of whom had beaten their men bloody, to respect them. Unbroken, these women … did everything to have their men freed” 5 . Another form of resistance that some Jewish women chose during the Holocaust was that of armed resistance. This took many forms: the Warsaw ghetto uprising 6 , Sobibor 7 and Auschwitz 8 revolts 9 , participating in the FPO and other oppositional organizations 10 , joining and fighting alongside partisan groups in the forests 11 , and acting in the liberation of Vilna 12 . Women played various roles in these resistance attempts, but often were fighting alongside the men. One of the main figures in the Warsaw ghetto uprising was Zivia Lubetkin, an FPO member who later testified against Eichmann at the Nuremberg Trials as well 13 , continuing to fight for justice well after World War II ended. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the “largest armed resistance by any targets of Nazi mass murder during World War II” 14 . Several women were major parts of the liberation of Vilna as well, such as Sara Ginaite and Ida Vilenchiuk, members of the partisan group, “Death to the Occupiers” 15 . The film Defiance also depicts women within the Bielski otriad, a partisan group that operated in Belorussia. While most women in the group took on work such as laundry, cooking, sanitation, and teaching children 16 , some did join food missions 5 Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany , 128. 6 Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , Third Edition (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016), 269. 7 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Esther Raab Describes the Uprising in Sobibor,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, accessed February 22, 2024, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/esther-raab- describes-the-uprising-in-sobibor. 8 USC Shoah Foundation, “Anna Heilman,” accessed February 22, 2024, https://sfi.usc.edu/content/anna-heilman. 9 Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , 288. 10 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Eichmann Trial Testimony of Zivia Lubetkin,” Experiencing History: Holocaust Sources in Context, accessed February 22, 2024, https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/eichmann- trial-testimony-of-zivia-lubetkin%C2%A0. 11 Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , 267. 12 Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , 289. 13 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Eichmann Trial Testimony of Zivia Lubetkin.” 14 Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , 269. 15 Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust , 268. 16 Yad Vashem, “Cyla (Tzila) Yoffan Describes Daily Life in the Tuvia Bielski Family Camp,” January 29, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ZJYhD-L9A.

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