The Pianist's Depictions of Historical Events

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.

This group was created from branches of the Polish underground resistance, who realized that the entire Jewish population was in grave danger and that unless groups were organized and coordinated to help

This was the Nazi’s policy to murder Jews in Europe. The Nazis believed that the Aryan German race were superior to Jews, which were a threat to German community. There were however other victims including the Roma(Gypsies), disabled, Slavic, Jehovah’s witnesses, war prisoners, etc. Ghettos were created to segregate the Jews from the rest of the world. There were three different types of ghettos; closed, open and destruction. Most ghettos were temporary, but some lasted for several years. Inside the ghetto people were forced to wear badges to be easily identified. Many died inside the ghetto from either disease, or starvation. The ghettos also were used to temporarily hold Jews, and they would later be deported to either a concentration camp or a killing center (ushmm.org).

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.

was a World War II ghetto established by the Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews

Firstly, the Jews in Europe organized a Jewish military league to resist the Nazi brutality. In Vilna, the first organized Jewish armed resistance arose from the youth movements. After the invasion of the Soviet Union is 1941, two-thirds of the Jewish population of Vilna were deported by the Nazis (“Jewish Combat Organization.”). Those who survived warned the other Jews of the ordeal awaiting them, which paved the way for the “First Manifesto”. This document called out for Jewish resistance and was written by Abba Kovner, a future leader of the ghetto fighters in Vilna. The manifesto was directed at the Jews of Vilna and the youth movements, and explained the fate of the ghetto deportees (that they were all killed), Hitler’s plot to “destroy all the Jews of Europe”, and called for Jewish resistance. This manifesto was significant, as it was the first call for the Jews to arm themselves and resist the Nazis. Not soon after,

70 years ago (Ochayon) a new Ghetto was established. The Germans built Ghetto’s to hold Jews before they could take them out to a camp. They could be taken to a Death camp, Work camp, or a concentration camp. All the camps had a different reasons for different Jews. The Ghetto was located in Warsaw, Poland and became the largest Ghetto in Europe. It was opened in September, 1939 (“Ghetto”). The German soldiers created it in Warsaw for a certain reason. Usually people think that the Germans build Ghetto’s to take up space in a town. Because Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe pre World War II (Ochayon), they held Jews throughout Poland (“Ghetto”).

The ghettos were used as a means to hold the Jews captive, and isolate what Heydrich had termed the “plague” until they could find a what to eradicate the problem. This made it appear that the Nazi’s were helping the Jews, and was a way to cover up the “final solution.”

“You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine” (Shakespeare 34). Groups and people have helped resist during the Holocaust which helped the affected people and it may be important for young people to learn from these responses.The Armee Juive were a French Jewish partisan group during the Holocaust who participated in the 1944 uprising and smuggled money from Switzerland to help Jews escape and hide into neutral Spain. The Jewish resistance groups were the most direct form of Jewish opposition against the Nazis during the Holocaust. Attacking the German military trucks and trains, the Armee Juive conducted missions to sabotage Nazis and rescue Jews. The warsaw ghetto uprisings where hundreds of Jews fought against Germans and disobeyed them is an example of a resistance effort that was employed during the Holocaust.

Units carried out precision hit and run attacks, espionage, revolutions, and rescue and aid for the Jews. One such revolt occurred in a newly established ghetto in Minsk, Belarus, July 20th 1941. Upon construction of the ghetto, thousands of Jews were being killed daily. Resistance members founded a printing press and newspaper to distribute what they knew of the Nazi’s works, and contact resistance outside the ghetto for knowledge of hiding places for those in the ghetto. In March, the Germans carried out an act killing thousands more in a very short period of time. As a result, many Jews began attempting escape of the ghetto, an act in which many died

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

“During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe’s Jews.” Propaganda led to Nazi Ideology making the Nuremberg Laws that created hate groups, and hate rallies uniting non jewish people making them

of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the

Their main goals were to organize uprisings, break out of the ghettos, and join partisan units in the fight against the Germans.The Jews knew that uprisings would not stop the Germans and that only a handful of fighters would succeed in escaping to join the partisans. Still, some Jews made the decision to resist. Weapons were smuggled into ghettos. Inhabitants in the ghettos of Vilna, Mir, Lachva , Kremenets, Częstochowa, Nesvizh, Sosnowiec, and Tarnow, among others, resisted with force when the Germans began to deport ghetto populations. In Bialystok, the underground staged an uprising just before the final destruction of the ghetto in September 1943. Most of the ghetto fighters, primarily young men and women, died during the fighting.The Warsaw ghetto uprising in the spring of 1943 was the largest single revolt by Jews. Hundreds of Jews fought the Germans and their auxiliaries in the streets of the ghetto. Thousands of Jews refused to obey German orders to report to an assembly point for deportation. In the end the Nazis burned the ghetto to the ground to force the Jews out. Although they knew defeat was certain, Jews in the ghetto fought desperately and

To begin, resistance efforts employed during the Holocaust came in several forms. For example, the Allies, which included countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China, directly fought against the Axis powers, which included Germany, the source of the Holocaust. Coordinating together, the Allies used organized military forces to defeat the Axis, which included rescuing the Jewish people in Axis-controlled areas. Outside of organized military action, oppressed Jews also resisted by themselves. Examples of Jewish resistance included armed rebellions in the ghettos, uprisings in the concentration camps, and secret attempts to preserve the Jewish way of life. Furthermore, a specific incident would be the rebellion in the ghetto in Warsaw during the April