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4. Give other examples of resistance by Aidan Pena

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4. Give other examples of resistance by Aidan Pena

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Armed resistance was offered by Jewish civilians to more than 100 ghettos. Jews that were living in the Warsaw ghetto had a armed revolt after getting news that Germans were going to deport any of the remaining Jews in the ghetto. After getting out of the ghettos the Jews would join and help partisan units fight the Germans. When escaping the ghettos not many would be successful but some still tried to escape, so in order to escape weapons had to smuggled in. Hundreds of Jews fought against the Germans and was known as the largest single revolt by Jewish people. Jews were forced to leave after Germans had burned the ghetto to the ground.

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Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.

In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. For months after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, individual Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.

During the same year, ghetto inhabitants rose against the Germans in Vilna (Vilnius), Bialystok, and a number of other ghettos. Many ghetto fighters took up arms in the knowledge that the majority of ghetto inhabitants had already been deported to the killing centers; and also in the knowledge that their resistance even now could not save from destruction the remaining Jews who could not fight. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the slaughter of so many Jews.

Thousands of young Jews resisted by escaping from the ghettos into the forests. There they joined Soviet partisan units or formed separate partisan units to harass the German occupiers.

Although many Jewish council ( Judenrat) members cooperated under compulsion with the Germans until they themselves were deported, some, such as Jewish council chairman Moshe Jaffe in Minsk, resisted by refusing to comply when the Germans ordered him to hand over Jews for deportation in July 1942.

Jewish prisoners rose against their guards at three killing centers. At Treblinka in August 1943 and Sobibor in October 1943, prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the SS staff and the Trawniki-trained auxiliary guards. The Germans and their auxiliaries killed most of the rebels, either during the uprising or later, after hunting down those who escaped. Several dozen prisoners eluded their pursuers and survived the war, however. In October 1944, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, members of the Jewish Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) mutinied against the SS guards. Nearly 250 died during the fighting; the SS guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying the members of the Sonderkommando with explosives to blow up a crematorium. All five women were killed.

In many countries occupied by or allied with the Germans, Jewish resistance often took the form of aid and rescue. Jewish authorities in Palestine sent clandestine parachutists such as Hannah Szenes into Hungary and Slovakia in 1944 to give whatever help they could to Jews in hiding. In France, various elements of the Jewish underground consolidated to form different resistance groups, including the Armée Juive (Jewish Army) which operated in the south of France. Many Jews fought as members of national resistance movements in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Slovakia.

Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with various forms of spiritual resistance. They made conscious attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people despite Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews from human memory. These efforts included: creating Jewish cultural institutions, continuing to observe religious holidays and rituals, providing clandestine education, publishing underground newspapers, and collecting and hiding documentation, as in the case of the Oneg Shabbat archive in Warsaw that would tell the story of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, despite its destruction in 1943.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center.

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1. Why was it difficult to get away from the Nazis or even lie about being Jewish? by Justin Silva

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1. Why was it difficult to get away from the Nazis or even lie about being Jewish? by Justin Silva

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It was difficult to get away due to the fact that the Jewish had to wear badges that and numbers that told people they were indeed Jewish. It was also difficult for the Jewish to escape not only because of the guards but also because if a Jewish person was too weak to work at the camp, they were ordered to be taken to "showers" by Nazi guards only to be gassed and killed.

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5. How did non-Jewish or Gentiles as they were called help the Jews? -Josh Camacho:)

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5. How did non-Jewish or Gentiles as they were called help the Jews? -Josh Camacho:)

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Hundreds of Gentiles like Father Kolbe sacrificed their lives in the hopes of saving Jews from the concentration camps. Even though many people acted in Nazi genocide, there were many people in the same nations that risked their lives to help the Jews. Other people such as Leopold Socha, Yanis Lipke, and Irene Gut all helped contribute to saving Jews's lives. But sadly, many non-Jewish Poles shot at the heroic people that tried to liberate the Jews.

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Some non-Jews stood up to the Nazis, and helped their Jewish neighbors, despite grave dangers.

Many ordinary men and women in every country of occupied Europe showed great courage and compassion in helping the Jewish victims of Nazi terror.

For the most part, these individuals did not plan to become heroes; the names of the rescuers are largely unrecorded, and their good deeds remain anonymous and unrewarded, except in the emotions of those they saved. They helped by providing hiding places, false papers, food, clothing, money, contact with the outside world, underground escape routes and sometimes even weapons.

Their decency exposed them to the dangers of discovery and denunciation. If caught, they faced torture, deportation to concentration camps, or execution. Their behavior was atypical even in their own communities, where the attitude of the majority was characterized by inertia, indifference, and open complicity in the persecution and mass murder of Europe's Jews.

Why They Did It

It is impossible to analyze the multiple reasons for individual heroism and ethical behavior under Nazi occupation. Explanations for heroism and creativity rest in the individual psyche and character; however, it is clear that compassion and simple decency played as large a role as bravery.

Impartial and reliable information about the number of rescuers and the number of Jews aided or saved is not available. Very rough statistics indicate that about 2,000 non-Jews participated in the rescue of Jews and that they saved between 20,000 and 60,000 children and adults.

There is no postwar institution specializing in either World War II or the Holocaust that has collected systematic data about the righteous or about Christian-Jewish relations during the war years. Postwar historiography has given scant attention to this subject, except for biographies of heroes like Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest. Individual episodes are recorded in numerous published memoirs or hidden within the histories of the Jewish communities under German occupation. Others are found in some survivor testimonies, oral histories, and depositions.

Individuals & Groups

The rescuers can be broadly divided into two categories: 1) individuals acting autonomously in haphazard isolation, and 2) individuals acting as part of organized groups-for example, Christian clergy, Socialists, and Communists, among others. Both groups of rescuers faced certain common problems.

They were dependent on the general political and military situation. Helping Jews was thus more successful as liberation approached than in the early days of the war. Later in the war, the time required in hiding was shorter, support from local resistance movements was better organized, and the degree of popular hostility to rescue was muted by imminent military defeat.

The geographical patterns of local hostility to Jews influenced receptivity to their rescue. Thus, western Europe (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), Scandinavia (Denmark and Finland), and southern Europe (Italy and Greece) adapted rapidly to the problems of hiding and rescuing Jews, whereas eastern and central Europe (Poland, the Ukraine, and Austria) remained a more hostile environment to rescue efforts.

As the war continued, the rescuers learned to adapt and work around the Nazi network of informers and collaborators. However, they were never able to develop effective strategies to combat the Nazis' rapid organization of mass deportations and population transfers. As the war progressed, rescuers were able to identify sympathetic local groups, individuals, and organizations in every country of occupied Europe; for example, low-level clergymen, Socialists, Communists, and nationalist anti-Nazis. At all times, however, the success of Jewish rescue depended upon fate and chance.

Individuals faced greater pressures than did groups. Many Christian professionals (writers, artists, doctors) saved their Jewish colleagues; Christian employees aided Jewish employers; Jewish employees were helped by Christian bosses; and Gentile wives helped save their Jewish husbands and children.

Despite the overwhelming odds, individual rescues sometimes succeeded, especially if the Jewish fugitives could pass as natives in language, manner, and appearance; if the hideout was skillfully camouflouged; if the local population was sympathetic; if geography and distance from neighboring homes aided concealment; and if organized groups or sympathetic friends provided additional safe houses and forged ration papers for essentials like food and clothing.

Notwithstanding the mortal risks, many individuals became "their brothers' keepers," were able to overcome their realistic fears, and forged an ethical and practical identification with the persecuted.

Religious Responses

Despite the Vatican failure to act, many priests, nuns, and laymen hid Jews in monasteries, convents, schools, and hospitals and protected them with false baptismal certificates. However, as Saul Friedlander's memoirs show, many Catholic priests proselytized and converted their "guests." Moreover, after the war, many Jewish children were never returned to Jewish families, even after lengthy court battles.

Nevertheless, some clergymen went to great lengths to protect the Jewish education and observance of their wards. Catholic, Protestant, Quaker, and Unitarian relief organizations cooperated with the Catholic church in France to rescue 12,000 Jewish children; they arranged safehouses and smuggled small numbers into Switzerland and Spain.

In Lvov, the Metropolitan Andreas Sheptitsky defended the Jews against the Nazis, and he and his Ukrainian compatriots hid about 150 Jews in monasteries in eastern Galicia. Furthermore, the French Huguenot Pastor Andre Trocme converted the small French Protestant village of Le Chambon into a mountain hideout for 1,000 Jewish persecutees. Le Chambon was as unique as the mass rescue of Danish Jews, because the entire town supported the rescue and accepted arrest and torture rather than betray the Jews they hid.

Lay Catholics, such as the German Dr. Gertrude Luckner, who headed the Caritas Catholica, also extended help to Jews and non-Aryan Christians in Germany. She was deported to Ravensbruck for her aid to the persecuted. After the war, Dr. Luckner was honored for her courage by the Israeli government. It must be noted that much of this Christian help was actually rendered to fellow Christians (converted Jews), who were classified as Jews due to their descent under Nazi racial laws.

In addition to active help, many clergymen also protested the mistreatment and deportations of Jews as violations of divine and human laws. The Catholic pastor of St. Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin, Bernard Lichtenburg, prayed publicly for the Jews until his arrest and death on the way to Dachau. The rescue work of priests of all Christian denominations is well-documented in postwar literature.

Mass Rescues

Spectacular rescues by mass resistance also occurred, as for example, the rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews in October 1943. The combination of a mass resistance, the proximity of receptive neutral Sweden, advance warnings of Nazi deportations, and identification with the persecutees by a whole nation made this episode almost unique.

Similar smaller rescue operations occurred in Greece, where Jews were hidden in the mountains or on islands. Later, Greek Jews were smuggled into Turkey. Similar popular aid to the Jews was rendered in Finland and in Holland there was a protest strike in February 1941, against the deportation of Dutch Jews. The Italian army also helped Jews in their occupation zones in France and Yugoslavia, and they played an important role in rescuing Italian Jews before the Germans occupied Italy in September 1943.

Resistance movements also helped Jews. Sometimes, this aid was intended to help the Jews; often it was rendered in the context of the general anti-Nazi resistance. In Yugoslavia, Serbian partisans attacked a concentration camp near Nish in 1941, freeing a small number of Jews. On April 19, 1943, the Committee for Jewish Defense, aided by Christian railroad workers, attacked a Belgian transport leaving Malines for Auschwitz. Several hundred Jewish deportees escaped with the help of the Belgian resistance.

A unique example of anti-Nazi resistance occurred in the Bialystok ghetto, where several anti-Nazi German and Austrian soldiers were sentenced to death for smuggling weapons and wireless sets to the Jewish resistance. One of these men, Otto Busse, survived and settled in the Kibbutz Nes Amin in 1969, devoting his life to Israel as a concrete example of "Christian atonement."

In Hiding

Many Jews were saved by hiding and also by illegal frontier crossings. Anne Frank's family hid in the concealed annex of an Amsterdam office building with the help of a Christian friend, and the family of Emmanuel Ringelblum (the Warsaw ghetto historian) hid in Warsaw in a specially prepared underground bunker camouflaged by a Polish gardener's greenhouse. Both the Franks and the Ringelblums were caught and perished. About 20,000 Polish Jews, however, did survive hidden in Aryan Warsaw. Likewise, 5,000 Dutch Jews and several thousand German Jews were hidden in the heart of the Nazi empire, in Berlin and Hamburg.

Gentiles, like the teacher Joop Westerweel, smuggled about 100 Jewish children (Palestine Pioneers) across the Dutch border through the French Pyrenees to safety in Spain. He worked alongside Yehoyahim Simon ("Shushu") in the Zionist Halutzim (pioneer) movement. Both Shushu and Westerweel were eventually caught by the Germans and executed.

Spontaneous gestures by supportive Christian neighbors and friends led to aid for Jews in hiding and on the run. Although the Jewish underground railway to Palestine continued with difficulty throughout World War II, some Jews did escape the European arena and made it to safety in Palestine, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain.

Although Yad Vashem (Israel's Memorial to the Six Million) has honored over 1,200 Righteous Among the Nations since 1953, it is impossible to generalize about the motives, deeds, and actual numbers of these rescuers. Some rescuers acted within the planned context of guerrilla units and resistance movements, others used the buildings and funds of the Roman Catholic church to aid Jews.

The rescuers were able to use the national humiliation caused by the German occupation to build limited popular support and help the Jews. They were few in number but ethically and morally strong. Although the number of Jews they saved was small, they provide a beacon of victory for posterity, a victory over the capitulation and collaboration of the majority of their compatriots.

Reprinted with permission from Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust (Rossel Books & Behrman House).

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Righteous Gentiles and Holocaust Rescuers | My Jewish Learning

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Some non-Jews stood up to the Nazis, and helped their Jewish neighbors, despite grave dangers. Many ordinary men and women in every country of occupied Europe showed great courage and compassion in helping the Jewish victims of Nazi terror.

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2. How did resistance occur in the Ghettos and what happened?By     Aubrey Stewart

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2. How did resistance occur in the Ghettos and what happened?By     Aubrey Stewart

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Resistance occurred in the Ghettos when the Jews held secret religious services. This kept some of their Jewish culture. They also kept diaries that told about their lives in the Ghettos and what was happening. Young  Jews would escape from the Ghettos into the forests and then would join the Soviet Partisan units and then harass the German occupiers. The forests provided a small chance of survival at best, but it was the only option for Jews.

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 3. How was sabotage used as a resistance tactic in the camps? By Ella Stump 

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 3. How was sabotage used as a resistance tactic in the camps? By Ella Stump 

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Many people were captured by the Nazis and were forced to work in factories, quarries, and mines attached to the camps. The  Nazis would deliberately lower the quality or speed of their work or even by sabotage. Certain fights between the workers or workers trying to fight the Nazis, were very dangerous but the Nazis would punish the workers by some form of sabotage that was hard to notice. For example Jews would disconnect the crematoria without the Nazis noticing.

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Aubrey Stewart
Ella Stump
Aidan Pena
Josh Camacho
Justin Silva