Bialystok Ghetto Uprising Research Paper

Life in the ghetto was subjected to death. Many took their own lives, and others tried to escape.

They saved Jews from the Nazis Concentration Camps, and death. One example was Varian Fry. Fry was in France during the time the holocaust began. He dislike Hitler and the holocaust. He decided to form the ERC (Emergency Rescue Plan) which was saved 200 refugees (Price 11). Later he made the American Relief Center, which gave refugees money and travel papers. However, the group would be a cover and gave people who were persucated by the nazi’s shelter, false travel papers, and it would help them get out of the country (Price 13). Another was Albert Hirschman who gave people false identity papers who didn’t want to be persecuted and wanted to stay in Europe (Price 14).These are few examples of the many heroes who helped save

No one has survived to tell her story firsthand, but over many years historians have been able to piece together the incredible truth. Karolina Juszczykowska was born in Budków, Poland, in 1898. There is little information on Juszczykowska’s childhood, but we do know that she had a very modest one. During her testimony in court she was quoted as saying, "I never went to school. Until I was 13 years old I lived with my parents, and then went to Germany where I worked for 5 years for a farmer in Mecklenburg [a region in Northern Germany]… then I returned to Budkow, where I stayed with my sister until 1934. I helped my sister with farm work. In 1934 I moved to Tomaschow. Until the outbreak of the war I made a living in road construction. Subsequently I had different jobs, as laundress, maid, etc., and until my arrest I worked in the kitchen of OT (Organization Todt) in Tomaszow.” (http://www.yadvashem.org) Karolina told her interrogators that six weeks prior to her arrest she had met two young men on the street. They asked her to hide them, and they promised to pay her 300 Zloty per week for both of them. She decided to accept their offer. Karolina stated she hid them out of a need for money, not necessarily to help. They slept on the floor at night, and when she would go to work, she locked them in her small apartment. Juszczykowska told her interrogators that one of her

Throughout the Holocaust, Jews organized resistance movements in ghettos, concentration, and extermination camps. Although they had virtually no weapons and faced one of the largest arsenals in the world, the Jewish people fought for their honor and freedom. Without any hope victory and in the face of death, resistance fighters found the courage to take on evil in its purest form. Their efforts must not go in vein; to them we must accord our respect. This is a brief testimony of their fight against the Nazi regime.

When the commanders noticed the men were being affected by the shootings some changes were made. First, the 101st Battalion was assigned to clearing the ghettos and loading people on trains destined for the Treblinka death camp. The SS-trained soldiers were then given the hard work which helped remove the police mentally from the deaths, and made their work much more efficient. Their jobs were clearing the people off of the trains and checking the towns. "By mid-November 1942, following the massacres at Jozefow, Lomzay, Serokomla, Konskowola, and elsewhere, and the liquidation of the ghettos in Miedzyrzec, Luków, Parczew, Radzyn, and Kock, the men of Reserve Battalion 101 had participated in the outright execution of at least 6,500 Polish Jews and the deportation of at least 42,000 more to the gas chambers of Treblinka." (121) After that the police battalion would move through the town checking the houses. They would sweep through the houses many times to make sure no one was hiding in corners. Everything the police did was done many times. They would even stand in line for hours checking the camps to make sure everyone was there. This started the massive hunts for the Jews and the men of the police battalion were forced to

Elie remembers, “‘The time has come… you must leave all this…’ The Hungarian police used their rifle butts, their clubs to indiscriminately strike old men and women, children and cripples” (16). The Hungarian police had been edict and in charge of everyone there. Yitskhok had a similar experience to this when he is standing outside his window and he watches people get beaten. Another example of a similarity is when they stayed in the ghettos. Elie and Yitskhok stayed in the ghettos for quite some time. Elie writes in the book that “The chaos here was even greater than in the large ghetto… [Elie] visited the rooms that had been occupied by my uncle Mendel’s family” (20). Yitskhok also stays in a ghetto, and he wrote in his diary about how in the ghetto where he was it was a mess with people falling; some people’s stuff even fell out of their bundles. Finally, some

“No matter how much you revisit the past, there's nothing new to see,” ~ author unknown (“Deep Quotes”). People think they could change what happened during WWII and the Holocaust by revisiting it. In reality they can’t, they have to live with what happened in the past. For example, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto made a choice to start an uprising. However many times they look back it can’t change. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a deadly part of WWII that has many secrets that people don’t know with nothing being able to be changed.

The Bielskis had been a Jewish farming family in the nearby village of Stankiewicze, and the brothers knew the region well. They were practicing Jews who ran a water mill and the family celebrated the Sabbath and Jewish holidays with another family, the Dziencielski's, who lived in a nearby village. Their familiarity with its geography, customs, and people helped them elude the German authorities and their Belorussian auxiliaries.2 In June 1941

Due to these horrendous circumstances, resistance forces began to form in the ghettos. These forces, such as the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Fighting Organization, ZOB, fought with homemade bombs and guns smuggled into the ghettos. Others resisted the Nazis by keeping a record of the ordeal. George Kadish was one of the people who kept a record. He made himself a pocket camera so he could get pictures of all the horrific experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. Dawid Sierakowiak was a teenage boy

They were forced to leave all their whole lives behind them and walk 40 miles to stay with relatives in Lodz. One year later they made the Jews wear the Star of David and were forced into ghettos, crammed and poor living conditions. Later on, his father and older brother were chosen to go to a different camp and escaped form leaving causing Arek to go instead. At eleven years old, Arek was taken to Otoschno, leaving his family behind, where he survived by stealing food while cleaning the camp commander’s office. In 1942, he was sent back to Lodz ghetto and upon his arrival many people asked about his relatives, not being able to tell the truth about all the pain, he told them everyone was working. In August, the Nazis liquidated the ghetto causing 400 people to assemble in a church. They were put in the left like for working people and the other side non-working; he was put on the right but ran to the working side causing him to survive. He later found out the non-working were sent to gas chambers. Arek and the other 150 survivors were taken to Lodz. The commander of the ghetto wanted for 10,000 children to be handed over. Arek knew he fell into that category so he managed to hide from the SS officers where as the other children were sent to gas chambers. In 1944, the Germans once again liquidated the ghetto because the Russian army was approaching. The remaining survivors

Unlike Auschwitz, but equally as brutal and horrific, Bialystock was a transition camp/ghetto during World War Two. After the German invasion of Soviet held Poland, Bialystok ghetto was established in 1941. About 500,000 Jews were moved to a small confined section of Bialystok city. The majority of inhabitants worked in textile factories in the city, while some worked on off site projects before they were sent off to other labor camps or death camps. In 1943, in an attempt to deflect the Nazi powers holding the city captive, the prisoners staged an uprising that lasted for five days. The attempt was unsuccessful, more than 100 Jewish fatalities resulted; however, more than 120 people managed to escape. In August 1944, the USSR forces freed

The Jews were able to keep up the resistance for about a month, but the fight was officially ended on May 16 with the destruction of Warsaw’s great synagogue (ushmm.org). About 7,000 Jews were killed during the uprising, and another 7,000 deported, but a few hundred German soldiers fell as well (history.com).

During World War II eastern Europe was vastly controlled and occupied by Nazi forces in the bid of control for the German army to win the war. In a bid to win the war, Germany captured and forced Jewish inhabitants in Eastern Europe at the time and sent away either to

Edward Zwick’s film Defiance is based on the real story of the Jewish Bielski Partisans that fled to the forest during the German occupation of Belorussia in World War Two. The film was praised for shedding light on the little known organization and resistance of Jews against the giant of Nazi Germany. The film used source material from a book by Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. The four Bielski brothers are credited with saving nearly twelve thousand Jews by hiding and establishing a community in the wilderness. The surviving brothers later moved to the United States and became truck drivers living out the rest of their lives in relative anonymity. The film takes direct aim at the typical portrayal of European Jews as victims. When a Red Army captain in the film says, “Jews don’t fight,” the leader of the group, Tuvia Bielski, played by Daniel Craig replies, “These Jews do” This is the sort of heavy-handed dialogue that is typical of the film. The film aims to portray the wide variety of experience among Jews and non-Jewish in Eastern Europe in World War II. However, with such a lofty goal the film falls short.

The Warsaw Uprising began in August 1944 and lasted until October 1944,meaning it lasted for 60 days. It took place in Warsaw, Poland. The Armia Krajowa, also known as the Home Army was the rebellion group in this rebellion, consisting of 40,000 fighters, but only 2,500 weapons. General “Bor” Komorowski led the army faithfully. These noble 40,000 men were up against 15,000 men, which grows to 30,000, armed with planes, tanks, and other