Spiritual Resistance During The Holocaust

There have been many atrocious acts that the world has had to endure, but there is not one that stands out as much as the Holocaust . Millions of Jews were used as scapegoats because of the declining economy. This all eventually led to the Germans trying to completely eradicate their race. Even though the Germans did kill 7 million Jews there were many survivors of the Holocaust who live to this day with profound effects in every facet of their life. The effects that we’re looking at are: the psychological abuse that the holocaust kids went through and how it affects them in them in their everyday life in the present, how the adult survivors transmit their trauma unto to their kids, how second generation holocaust are biologically different from the normal human, and how the Jews are starting to go back to their homeland to deal with their stress.

Jewish people were tortured, abused, and subjected through horrific unfathomable situations by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Despite all of the unpragmatic hardships Jews all over Europe faced, many stayed true to their faith and religion. There are numerous stories in which Jewish people tried to keep the roots of their religion well knowing the risk of torture and death. The never ending fear of Jewish people living in the Ghettos and trying to survive concentration camps was difficult, but not impossible for the Jews to keep religion.

While Jewish resistance was a help was big influence to the Holocaust, the non-jewish resistance was substantially bigger. Some of the groups that helped were, the US, USSR, and Germans. All of these groups had many reason why they wanted to fight/rebel against the Axis of Power. Some wanted to keep their country's interest and beliefs.

Spiritual resistance is defined as “attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity, personal integrity, and sense of civilization in the face of Nazi attempts to dehumanize and degrade them” by the United States Holocaust Museum (Spiritual). Spiritual resistance was highly regarded by many Jews, and most actually considered it to be the purest form of resistance because it was non-violent, and kept their spirits from being broken, even while facing horrible degradation. Examples of spiritual resistance include conducting religious services while in ghettos or concentration camps, keeping covert libraries of Jewish works, and establishing secret archives to report about daily life in the ghettos.

Many people believed that the Jews would never survive the concentration camps. However, the Jews managed to stay alive physically and spiritually by working with all the strength they could muster, making the best with the rations they were given, believing in family’s promises, and having faith that they would be free once again. Therefore, people should always stay strong even when it seems like all hope is lost.

Even in the hardest of times, it is in the human nature to find different ways to triumph. The human spirit is strong enough to triumph anytime. There are three vital things that the human spirit uses to survive. For example; During the Holocaust and during World War Two, there were a few amount of people whose spirit triumphed during these terrible happening. The biggest question now is; How does the spirit triumph?

78 years ago, over seven million people were leading normal lives. They woke up in their beds, interacted with their families and friends, and followed their habitual routine. Those millions of people had something in common - they all followed the Jewish faith. When the Holocaust began, the Jews had to fight for their lives. Some were able to hide, and some fled the country. Many were forced into ghettos and concentration camps. Over six million Jews did not survive this terrible fate. Less than one million survived. Every one of their lives was irreversibly changed. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it is revealed how dehumanization leads to loss of faith, proven by the aftermath of the Holocaust on its countless victims.

The Holocaust is known as one of the most devastating, or perhaps even the most devastating incident in human history. On paper, the dizzying statistics are hard to believe. The mass executions, the terrible conditions, the ruthlessness, and the passivity of the majority of witnesses to the traumatic events all seem like a giant, twisted story blown out of proportion to scare children. But the stories are true, the terror really happened, and ordinary citizens were convinced into doing savage deeds against innocent people. How, one must ask? How could anyone be so pitiless towards their neighbors, their friends? In a time of desperation, when a country was on its knees to the rest of the world, one man not only united Germans against a

During the Holocaust, the survivors experienced torturous events that led them to lose their beliefs and identity. In the story Night, Elie Wiesel saw children burning in the crematorium and he commented that “Never shall I forget the flames that consumed my faith”(34). His experience of

The holocaust had a major effect on Judaism as a whole. This conflict between tragedy and faith is not new. Jewish history shows us that the jewish people have undergone the most terrible persecutions and genocide at the hands of many oppressors. Whether it be about the pogroms, crusades, destruction of the Temples, the jewish people have been at the brunt of the most terrible atrocities, and yet this does not shake their faith,Anti-Semitism was nothing new. This became even more evident with the unmasking of the holocaust.The philosophical question of “Shall the Judge of the earth not do justice?” applies just as much to the seemingly useless suffering of an individual as to that of six million individuals. If it could be dealt with on an individual basis before the Holocaust, why couldn 't it be dealt with in the same way afterwards? The difference is one of quantity, but the quality of the question remains the same.

Faith not only remained consistent, but self-preservation kept its relevance through surviving the Holocaust, until the point it was more crucial than fear and family. Self-preservation can be seen as one of the most fundamental of basic instinct, many people would choose their lives over another’s if possible. The Blockälteste tried, sadly,

The Holocaust is widely considered one of the darkest hours in world history. People of Jewish descent were imprisoned and confined to brutal conditions in concentration camps. Author Elie Wisel captures many of the atrocities of these detainments in his literary work, Night. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs describes the needs and motivation of people (Boeree). In Night, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs has a direct impact on the lives of the Jews and their relationships with each other.

Although the Holocaust was a horrific event that caused thousands upon thousands of people to lose faith in their God, some people were able to come out of the holocaust stronger and with more faith in God. Some people thought of it as their God testing them to see how faithful they really are, while others thought of it as a draining situation. Most of the victims had the mindset that a God they had devoted so much of their lives to would not put something like this in their life, which in turn caused them to lose their faith in their God. Some people have to ability to pull positive things out of any situation, no matter how bad it may be, and that is what was really important during the Holocaust. ”We who lived, in concentration camps can

Jews resisted in more ways through unarmed resistance than armed resistance, spiritual resistance was another form of nonviolent

The Hasidic tales (Eliach, 1982) present us with spiritual resistance and faith presented. Spiritual Resistance is the attempts by individuals to maintain personal honesty and humanity in the face of the Nazis' attempt to deprive Jews of all humanity and humiliate them. In the Hasdic tales we are being presented with miracles in the Holocaust, which some sounds moving and inspiring, but some sound even troubling yet they all present strong faith and resistance in different form.