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There were roughly up to 500,000 people who died in the ghettos due to starvation sickness or other circumstances

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Many people died of disease like typhus and tuberculosis and because of this people constantly lived in fear of catching those diseases

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In these ghettos they were given very little food or water and struggled to keep alive and not starve to death

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They participated in some cultural activity's that were sometimes not always forbidden by German authorities, things such as concerts, theatrical productions, and art contests.

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Throughout the ghettos there were hundreds of schools created for the children, they would attend these schools in secret areas and hid there books under there cloths

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There were times when people would make attempts to escape the ghettos into nearby forest but were often caught and killed immediately

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In the ghettos people weren't allowed to practice there religion anymore so they did it in secret in there attics, back rooms, and cellars.

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In the ghettos where the people had next to zero freedom and next to no rights, people in the ghettos would come together and had underground library's were they had collected up to a 60,000 volume library.

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http://echoesandreflections.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/EchoesAndReflections_Lesson_Six_PrimarySource-CulturalAndSpiritualResistance.pdf

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https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/spiritual-resistance-during-the-holocaust.html

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Introduction

This article will introduce the concept of spiritual resistance during the Holocaust and present ways in which the lessons learned from such unarmed resistance can be taught in the classroom.

By introducing students to examples of spiritual resistance, the teacher can facilitate discussions on how people survived during the Holocaust, and the personal values that contributed to their fight for survival.

In Holocaust terminology, "spiritual resistance" refers to attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity and core values in spite of Nazi dehumanization and degradation. Such unarmed resistance came in many forms, religious and non-religious, cultural, and educational. It proved that physical survival was not the only decisive quality of a person and it certainly was not the only matter of importance even to people in the most dire conditions.

While this article presents several examples of such resistance, its aim is to present a basis for a more general discussion on the global issues of morality, humanity, and core personal values.

What was Spiritual Resistance During the Holocaust?

During the years of the "Final Solution" between 1942 and 1945, Jews and several groups of non-Jews targeted by the Nazi regime were interned, enslaved, humiliated, and exterminated in ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps. Finding food, staying warm, providing a roof over their heads, and taking care of their families were difficult challenges that they had to meet on a daily basis. Nazi restrictions and modes of degradation were definitely aimed to physically destroy. However, the isolation of ghetto life was intended to incur social separation in addition to controlling and monitoring Jews. It was under these circumstances that some Jews "found within themselves the inner strength to examine their situation and to try and find meaning in the events that controlled their very existence." 1

Others established cultural programs in ghettos and concentration camps as they realized that physical sustenance would not be the sole route to survival. Such religious, cultural, and educational activities are termed "spiritual resistance," for resistance is not only the struggle against, but it is also the struggle for. In ghettos and camps, Jews struggled for humanity, for culture, for normalcy, and for life.

In order to teach the values of spiritual resistance, it is important to understand specific examples of such activity. A diary is a form of spiritual resistance. Written from within the walls of a ghetto or the barbed wire of a concentration camp, a diary is testimony and reflects the desire to leave a legacy for future generations. One example of such a diary is that of David Sierakowiak, interned in the Lodz Ghetto and later deported and murdered in Auschwitz. He left a legacy of seven journals, five of which were recovered after the war. In one entry, dated September 10, 1939, David writes, "Tomorrow is the first day of school. Who knows how our dear school has been. Damn the times when I complained about getting up in the morning and tests. If only I could have them back." 2

The mere fact that David kept a journal is significant, though it is of course fascinating to notice what he wrote and valued. While starving and tired and even after his mother had been taken away, he longed for school and for normal life. In later entries he expresses hope for the future though realizes that it "seems just another pipe dream." This diary provides testimony that could not be obtained in any other way. Furthermore, it forces one to think about the strong personal integrity that David and others had even under such degrading, humiliating circumstances.

Education is a form of resistance. In his diary, Yitzkhok Rudashevski writes about the library in the Vilna Ghetto. The Jewish community of Vilna was known for tremendous study and Jewish learning. Therefore, it is not surprising, in light of our knowledge on spiritual resistance, that when confined to the ghetto, Jews built a library and were so excited by each acquisition, that there was a celebration for the 100,000th book. Yitzkhok writes, "Hundreds of people read in the ghetto. The book unites us with the future. The book unites us with the world. The circulation of the 100,000th book is a great achievement for the ghetto, and the ghetto has a right to be proud of it." 3 The establishment of the library itself is an act of spiritual resistance, but Yitzchok's diary entry also highlights the fact that he was still thinking about the future. All hope was not lost and Jews in the Vilna Ghetto wanted to maintain their dignity as human beings.

Cultural activities are a form of resistance. In the Terezin Ghetto, children performed an opera called Brundibar, composed before the war by a Czech Jew named Han Krasa but not performed until he and many of the original performers had been deported to Terezin. A set was designed, pieces were rewritten to include the instruments available in the ghetto, and artists in the camp designed posters to advertise the performance. Furthermore, the very subject of the opera was easy to relate to. The opera tells the story of children who sing in the marketplace to raise much-needed money for their sick mother. The organ player Brundibar chases them away, but with the help of some outsiders, the children defeat Brundibar and continue to sing in the square. All those watching and performing the opera understood that Brundibar represented Hitler and were uplifted, even if only briefly, by the fact that evil could be defeated by good.

In another example of spiritual resistance in Terezin, several teenage boys compiled a secret magazine titled Vedem, which printed prose, poetry, and editorials that provided an outlet for their emotions. In a touching letter, one of the teenagers wrote, "We no longer want to be an accidental group of boys, passively succumbing to the fate meted out to us. We want to create an active, mature society and through work and discipline, transform that fate into a joyful, proud reality." This statement is an act of resistance. The boys in Home Number One were not only fighting for their right to live, but for their right to exist as educated, valued individuals.

It is usually assumed that a student who studies the Holocaust learns about the deprivation and humiliation that the Nazi regime instituted. They learn about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the ways in which Jews smuggled food, stole clothing, and tried to appear strong and able in order to avoid the gas chambers. However, one of the unique aspects of this situation is that those types of behavior were not enough for those interned in ghettos. It was not enough to keep one's body physically alive. In many instances, Jews in ghettos and camps continued observing religious traditions, using their creative skills, and maintaining communal life.

What Can Be Learned from Spiritual Resistance?

Aside from the necessary facts required in a lesson on the subject of "spiritual resistance," there is a global message that should be taught and learned. These people attempted to preserve a sense of self in impossible conditions. They managed to create a personal - albeit tenuous - world in which small, day-to-day decision-making mattered, as a way of preserving internal meaning.

How Do I Teach this Concept in My Classroom?

The pedagogical philosophy at Yad Vashem focuses on the face of the individual. It is through learning about personal stories that concepts can come alive for students and help them relate empathetically to the people they are learning about. Use the resources provided in this newsletter, particularly the lesson plan devoted entirely to the subject of "spiritual resistance" and on the Yad Vashem website to personalize this concept. Finally, encourage your students to think about their own values and what they would choose to maintain from their own lives. What would they leave as a legacy for the future?

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"What We Value" - Spiritual Resistance During the Holocaust

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This article will introduce the concept of spiritual resistance during the Holocaust and present ways in which the lessons learned from such unarmed resistance can be taught in the classroom. By introducing students to examples of spiritual resistance, the teacher can facilitate discussions on how people survived during the Holocaust, and the personal values that contributed to their fight for survival.

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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/spiritual-resistance-in-the-ghettos

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Springtime in the trees, in the fields, in the forest,
But here, in the ghetto, it's autumnal and cold,
But here, in the ghetto, it's cheerless and bleak,
Like the house of a mourner-in grief

The deprivations of ghetto life and the constant fear of Nazi terror made resistance difficult and dangerous but not impossible. In addition to armed resistance, Jews engaged in various forms of unarmed defiance. These included organized attempts at escaping from the ghettos into nearby forests, non-compliance with Nazi demands on the part of certain Jewish community leaders, illegal smuggling of food into the ghettos, and spiritual resistance.

Spiritual resistance refers to attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity, personal integrity, dignity, and sense of civilization in the face of Nazi attempts to dehumanize and degrade them. Most generally, spiritual resistance may refer to the refusal to have one's spirit broken in the midst of the most horrible degradation. Cultural and educational activities, maintenance of community documentation, and clandestine religious observances are three examples of spiritual resistance.

Culture and Education

Throughout occupied Poland, hundreds of clandestine schools and classes were organized inside the ghettos. Going to and from class in various apartments and basements, students hid their books under their clothing.

Jews smuggled books and manuscripts into many ghettos for safekeeping, and opened underground libraries in numerous ghettos. These underground libraries included the secret library at Czestochowa, Poland, which served more than 1,000 readers. Activists established a 60,000-volume library in the Theresienstadt ghetto, near Prague.

In the ghettos, Jews also engaged-insofar as possible-in a variety of cultural activities. Unlike the schools, these were not always forbidden by German authorities. Concerts, lectures, theatrical productions, cabarets, and art contests took place in many ghettos, despite the hardships of daily life.

Documentation of Community Life

Groups in many ghettos established secret archives and methodically wrote, collected, and stored reports, diaries, and documents about daily life in the ghettos. These efforts served to gather evidence on situation of Jews in occupied Europe and also sought to reaffirm a Jewish sense of community, history, and civilization in the face of both physical and spiritual annihilation.

The best known of these archives was that of the Warsaw ghetto, code-named Oneg Shabbat ("Joy of the Sabbath") and founded by historian Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-44). Some of the containers holding the archives were dug up from the rubble of the Warsaw ghetto after the war. The papers found inside have provided valuable documentation of life and death inside the ghetto. In the Bialystok ghetto, activist Mordechai Tenenbaum, who had come to Bialystok from Warsaw in November 1942 to organize the resistance movement, established ghetto archives modeled after Oneg Shabbat. An archive was also kept in the Lodz ghetto, but unlike the Warsaw and Bialystok archives, it was not entirely clandestine and therefore operated under certain limitations. These and many other smaller collections document daily life in the ghettos.

Religious Activities

The Germans forbade religious services in most ghettos, so many Jews prayed and held ceremonies in secret-in cellars, attics, and back rooms-as others stood guard. In Warsaw alone, in 1940, 600 Jewish prayer groups existed. Rabbinical authorities adjudicated religious disputes on the basis of religious law and attempted to adapt this law to the changed and difficult circumstances in which the community found itself. Prayer helped sustain morale, reaffirmed a cultural and religious identity, and supplied spiritual comfort. Many Orthodox Jews who opposed the use of physical force viewed prayer and religious observances as the truest form of resistance.

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Springtime in the trees, in the fields, in the forest,But here, in the ghetto, it's autumnal and cold,But here, in the ghetto, it's cheerless and bleak,Like the house of a mourner-in grief The deprivations of ghetto life and the constant fear of Nazi terror made resistance difficult and dangerous but not impossible.