Resistance Holocaust

Yet, the Nazi occupation created a reality where the Jews were cut off from society in their countries of residence, thus casting the initial acts of persecution upon the Jews. Following the occupation, the Jews of France, the Netherlands, and other countries were subjected to discriminatory legislation that revoked their citizenship and banished them from economic life. Consequently, the Jews had to reorganize themselves separately in order to function as a self-sufficient group. In the course of time, the Jews in these countries, like those in Germany itself, were forced to wear the yellow star or the equivalent of such. Ultimately, Nazi policy became more extreme and Jews of Central and Western Europe were deported to death camps in Eastern Europe.”

The author Elie Wiesel said, “There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win”. People often wonder how there was barely any resistance to the Nazis without realizing that the resistance was hidden just under the Germans nose’s. One such resistance group was called the Jewish Fighting Organization. The group was otherwise known as the ZOB. The Jewish Fighting Organization aimed to gain control of the Warsaw Ghetto because they could no longer stand by and watch their family and friends be deported to concentration camps.

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.

Non-violent resistance began to evolve as the Jews were transported to the concentration camps. Upon their initial arrival in the concentration camps, inmates attempted to aid each other in various ways, such as by giving those that were extremely malnourished extra food or attempting to lessen the workload on those that were weaker by taking their place; these acts, although not aimed directly against the SS, were simply keeping one another alive. These acts can be considered under Bauer’s definition of resistance in that the groups’ motives in sustaining themselves as a whole was in direct opposition to the central idea of the SS to break down and destroy the Jewish population. These acts also helped lead to the later active, armed resistance in that they helped to keep inmates alive and maintain their strength, as well as providing them with a will to resist.

Therefore, the external and internal conditions of the ghettos and concentration camps made it extremely challenging for Jewish resistance. Despite these horrific conditions, the creation of a Jewish military organization, fighting in Partisans bands, the death camp revolts, and the ghetto uprisings negate the argument that the Jews of Europe of were passive before the darkest period in modern history, the Jewish genocide. As a whole, the Jews did not accept their death mutely, as sheep to the slaughter.

Examining any issue pertaining to the Holocaust is accompanied with complexity and the possibility of controversy. This is especially true in dealing with the topic of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. Historians are often divided on this complex issue, debating issues such as how “resistance” is defined and, in accordance with that definition, how much resistance occurred. According to Michael Marrus, “the very term Jewish resistance suggests a point of view.” Many factors, both internal such as differences in opinion on when or what resistance was appropriate, as well as external, such as the lack of arms with which to revolt, contributed to making resistance, particularly armed resistance, extremely difficult. When considering acts

Many people know of the Holocaust and its outcome, but what of its resisters? Resistance in this time was risky because of the dangers of the Nazis finding, torturing, and killing the resisters. Despite these dangers, man people would still resist, armed, unarmed, and verbally. Many of the resisters were not caught because they were indirectly affecting the progress of the “Final Solution” as it was referred to. One such way was to convince others to resist and fight while you get others to aid in the fight. Another was displayed by Yvett Farnoux when “She was in charge of finding safe houses and food for resistance fighters, their families, and Jews in hiding” (Davison).

The Judenrat led the resistance by assisting the rebels to escape from the ghettos. As a result to these resistances Nazi officers would just send attack dogs or perform search parties and eventually led to death.

Armed resistance is the most commonly thought of form of defiance when thinking about the Holocaust. This idea in large part originated from a book published in 1961 by Raul Hilberg, an Austrian historian who was one of the first scholars to examine the topic of resistance. In his book, The Destruction of European Jews, Hilberg argues that only

After an order was sent out by Hitler himself, the S.S. soldiers sent off huge numbers of prisoners to Treblinka, a death camp. Some resisted, resulting in immediate and unavoidable death. The other prisoners remaining were to be sent to labor camps to be worked to death. Not wanting to be sent to their ultimate deaths, a group of young, rebellious prisoners set up the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jews Fighting Organization). The Z.O.B. was led by Mordecai Anielewicz, a 23 year old Jew. He spread word to others to “resist going on railroad cars” when

There were numerous resistance group but today I will be talking about the Jewish combat Organization, ZOB. It all began in July 1942, where 6,000 Jews per day were transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp. The Nazis told the remaining Jews that their relatives and friends were sent to work camps, but word soon reached the ghetto that deportation to the camp meant extermination.

First off, the Jews showed resistance by using armed forces on the Nazis. The way that the Jews showed resistance was by getting weapons and shooting at the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the article it states” other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms” (“Resistance”). The reason they did this was because they did not want to die without trying. The way they got their humanity back was by feeling that they can fight back for their religion. Another way they showed resistance was by causing violence all over Warsaw.

Preparing for the resistance brought up both feelings of terror, and excitement over the fact that the Nazis would not be able to get away with at least one of their plans so easily. Zivia Lubetkin, who was a resistance fighter in the ghetto, describes the feeling of the resistance organization on the 18th of April after getting the news of the final roundup that was to take place the next day. She says “[e]ven though we were prepared, and had even prayed for this hour, we turned pale. A tremor of joy mixed with a shudder of fear passed through all of us. But we suppressed our emotions and reached for our guns” (Gilbert 557). Resistance was a new idea to the Jews. Since the Nazis had taken over, the Jews had found themselves in a rather helpless situation. There was almost no way to escape the ghettos, and those who did manage to make it out knew they were costing the Jews they had left behind. This was the first real attempt at an actual organized armed resistance. Lubetkin tells how the Germans were determined, especially after being forced to retreat in January, but so were the Jews. Determination was certainly something

In “The Phoenix Effect of State Repression: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust,” Evgeny Finkel examines the viability and success of collective action movements, with an emphasis on the particular skills individuals need to organize resistance against oppression. He believes that his paper provides a “new explanation of variation in the sustainability of resistance to state repression” by linking the “sustainability of armed resistance” to “the skills to mount such a resistance” (339). To support this conclusion, he separates state repression into two categories, selective and indiscriminate, contending that selective repression lends itself to skilled resistance, since

In the Warsaw Ghetto, the residents of the ghettos in Poland were the Jews. They were the victims of the attacks by the Germans, SS, the Gestapo and other police units. On the opposition, the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and the Jewish Military Union (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy; ZZW). These two groups, who were against each other had later come together to oppose the Germans. The Nazis were also involved as they were the ones pulling the strings and burnt the ghetto to the