The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Essay

The bulk of the 30,000 remaining residents were hidden away in their prepared bunkers and in the ZOB headquarters. Despite having running water and electricity, these shelters had no escape. The few Jews that were not in hiding, about 1,500 fighters, opened fire on the Nazis with a smorgasbord of weapons killing German officers, destroying tanks, and preventing reinforcements from entering the ghetto (Berenbaum). The ZOB was granted a seemingly miraculous reprieve when the Germans retreated for the night. Unfortunately their reprieve was short lived, the Germans came back the next day with flamethrowers and gas in an effort to get the Jews to withdraw from their bunkers. The day after that the Nazis decided to burn the nearby buildings which sucked the oxygen from basements and bunkers, causing many people to suffocate to death. In spite of this, the resistance held out for a month, 27 days longer than the Nazis expected. The charismatic leader of the organization, Mordecai Anielewicz along with many of the remaining fighters took their lives to avoid capture. However, 20,000 Jews managed to escape from the ghetto. To the Jewish people the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was nothing less than revolution.

Some of the Jews were able to hide out in the ghettos. Others were able to escape from the concentration camps. In some cases organized resistance was formed in the ghettos amongst the Jews. For example, in the Polish capitol of Warsaw, individual Jews continued to hide themselves in the ghetto ruins for many months after they were forcefully told to leave by the Nazis. These resistance fighters often attacked German police officials on patrol. Approximately 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding in Warsaw long after the liquidation of the ghetto.

Although the Jews tried to resist, many factors were against them, such as lack of weapons and resources, trickery, fear, and the crushing power of the Germans. Many people refused to participate in these uprisings, but for those who chose to rebel, they served as an example for all of camp residents. In Night this happened also when the three inhabitants were hung and shown to the entire camp. Those who conformed to justice paid the ultimate price, but with that other learned what not to do. They sacrificed themselves unknowingly for their

As ordered by Himmler, a huge show of force descended upon the Warsaw Ghetto. SS troops, German Police, and Lithuanian and

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.

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,

“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.

Holocaust ghettos; these are the over looked places where the Jews, in Nazi controlled lands, awaited their future.

“It is necessary to resist the tendency of recent Holocaust scholarships to universalize or collectivize Holocaust testimony, and instead revive the particular by uncovering the multiple layers within testimony.” (1) Zoe Waxman’s 2006 monograph Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation sets out to prove that while the Holocaust has been universalized as one event, historians must explore the social and historical context of the many individual narratives of Holocaust witnesses in order to understand the diversity of experiences. Waxman states “three theses emerge during the course of the present study” (1) and sets out to demonstrate that Holocaust testimonies are historical, to prove that the testimony is mediated by its own history, and that testimonies confirm to the heterogeneity of Holocaust experiences.

There were many different resistance efforts throughout the Holocaust. On 12 September 1942, the town was assaulted by about 150 partisan soldiers who killed thirty SS officers, soldiers, and police. They broke through the wall, evacuated the 30 Jews remaining and burned the ghetto to the ground before retreating into the surrounding woodland.

“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.

On August 2, 1943, a group of Jews stole weapons from the Nazi soldiers and shot down as much of the camp that they could. Hundreds ran but most were shot and killed or captured by villagers who returned them to Treblinka. Only 67 people were reported to surviving after fleeing from the camp. Willenburg

Near the end of the war prisoners fearing death conceived a plan to escape. This became the Treblinka death camp revolt, one of the most successful revolts during the Holocaust. The Treblinka revolt was a very important part of the Holocaust resistance. Treblinka is so important because of the mass amounts of murder committed and the escapees that lived on to educate the world on the Holocaust.

Jewish armed resistance started around 1943, the Jews fought against the germans while in the ghettos. The Jews Retallied back on Germans when they were stripped of their human rights and everything was taking from them. ”As a desperate effort, after it became clear to those who resisted that the Nazis had murdered most of their families and their coreligionists”(Armed Jewish). For instance the jews resist against the germans because they were not treated right. The germans found humor in seeing the Jew suffer. Since the Jews did not have much, they often came together and formed spiritual resistance.

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