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Jewish Resistance

What would be an obstacle to resistance?

• German power

• Lack of weapons

• Collective responsibility

• lack of supplies

Superior armed power of the Germans

• Superior armed power of Germans posed a threat to resistance to mostly unarmed Jewish civilians

• Remember how quickly Poland and France fell to German power; (Poland-a few weeks, and France-6 weeks)

• If two powerful nations could fall so easily; unarmed Jewish citizens would be no match for the Germans

German tactic of “collective responsibility”

• Entire families and communities were held responsible for acts of an individual– In Lithuania the entire population of the ghetto

was killed after 2 young boys ran away and refused to return

– In Poland 120 Jews were killed because 1 German policeman had been killed; the entire ghetto would have been killed if the perpetrator would not have come forward

German tactic of “collective responsibility”

• One of the most notorious acts of retaliation was in Bohemia– Czech resistance fighters assassinated Reinhard

Heydrich– In retaliation, Nazis “liquidated” the entire population

of the village of Lidice (about 700 people); whose citizens were not involved in the assassination

– Older men and boys were shot, women and children were sent to concentration camps, village leveled to the ground

Isolation of Jews and lack of Weapons

• Even if individuals had strength and opportunity to resist, they faced difficulty in finding hiding places, food, and population willing to assist on the outside

• Jews didn’t blend well into non-Jewish communities because of language differences, religious customs, and physical appearances

Isolation of Jews and lack of Weapons

• In many occupied areas, the local population was hostile or indifferent of the Jews’ fate

• Local populations were also suffering under German occupation– Food rationing– Subject to German terror; roundups for camps,

murder and forced labor

• Civilians who helped, did at the threat of death

Secrecy and deceptions of deportations

• The speed, secrecy, and deception used to carry out the deportations and killings were done in order to impede resistance

• As they were rounded up for mass killings or deportations they had no idea of where they were going

• Victims were ordered to pack some of their belongings to mask that they would never return; indicated possible ‘resettling’

Secrecy and deceptions of deportations

• Many of the first wave of deportation to Auschwitz were forced to send postcards to family stating, “Arrived safely. I am well.”.

Resistance in the Ghettos

• Between 1939 and 1943, Germans forced millions of Jews into ghettos

• In ghettos, Jews were isolated from the outside and separated from Jews in other ghettos

• Some ghettos were tightly sealed with no one allowed in or out as in Lodz; others like Warsaw, allowed movement through holes in the walls and underground sewers


• In ghettos that were not tightly sealed, goods, like weapons, began to be smuggled in

• Starvation, exposure, and disease killed tens of thousands of people in the ghettos; these struggles drained the will to resist of those that survived

• Because of the exhausting work and malnutrition many Jews died


• Diverse population in ghettos kept many of them from uniting in resistance against the Nazis

• Ghetto residents were forced to compete for a small number of forced labor jobs in manufacturing workshops or factories, which offered temporary reprieve from deportation

Unarmed Resistance in the Ghettos

• Acts of unarmed resistance predominated – They usually didn’t take the risk of armed

resistance until the last days before the destruction of the ghettos

– Ghetto groups needed time to organize and smuggle weapons into the ghetto


• Newspapers and Radios– Illegal newspapers were published to inform

people of events and keep up morale– Their news was gathered from illegal radios – In cases in which they were caught with the

radios, they were executed


• Acts of Sabotage– Jews working as forced laborers would

organize acts of sabotage• Stealing vital documents• Tampering with machinery• Producing faulty munitions• Slow production on assembly lines• Stealing parts for Black market• Setting fire to factories


• Underground Couriers– In Poland and the Soviet Union, young

couriers were often members of a communication network

• Carrying illegal documents, underground newspapers and money

• Bought and smuggled arms into the ghetto, ran illegal presses and arranged escapes


• Underground Couriers– Women were vital in the role as couriers, they

could move more freely than war age men without arising suspicion

– They were also less distinguishable than men– All couriers took on enormous risks; they were

always looking for victims and prize rewards; if caught they faced certain death

Armed Resistance in the Ghettos

• Armed resistance was an act of desperation once they saw all the Jews would be killed– Couriers would verify that the mass

deportations turned into mass killings– Most knew there was a slim chance to

succeed, but vowed to die fighting rather than in mass executions in gassing or shooting

– Fighting back was in a way upholding Jewish honor and avenging deaths of loved ones


• Vilna Ghetto Fighters– 1st Jewish fighting organization; called United Partisan

Organization (FPO was the acronym for the name in Yiddish)

– Mass killings in had wiped out the majority of the population in Vilna

– January 1, 1942, 23 year old, Abba Kovner, spoke at an informal meeting in the kitchen of the ghetto and tried to dispel the little bit of hope they were holding on to (of surviving in the ghetto)


• Vilna Ghetto Fighters– They had little chance against the superior German

forces, but chose to die honorably as “free fighters”– July 5, 1943, the communist commander of the FPO was

arrested, his fellow members rescued him– He gave himself up the next day after Nazi forces

threatened to wipe out the ghetto if he did not surrender, but committed suicide in his prison cell

– Before his death, he named Kovner as FPO commander in his place


• Vilna Ghetto Fighters– In August and September 1942, German forces

began to liquidate Vilna, the Vilna FPO issued a manifesto imploring the remaining 14,000 to resist deportation

– But the majority of the people in Vilna didn’t heed the warning of the FPO, they held out hope that they would just be sent to work camps

– The leader of the Judenrat in Vilna opposed storing arms thinking that if they didn’t resist they would survive through working; resistance would cause everyone to be killed (collective responsibility)


• Vilna Ghetto Fighters– September 23-24, the Nazis began to

liquidate the ghetto– A few hundred members of the FPO escaped

to join other partisan groups in the Rudniki and Naroch forests


• Fighting organizations in other ghettos

• to gather support for fighting organizations several hurdles had to be overcome, political divisions and disagreement about tactics were just a few hurdles– Places near forests, activists debated whether

to hide in the forest or make a final stand with the people remaining in the ghetto


• In the larger ghettos, resistance fighters usually could not count on Jewish councils or general ghetto population– General population generally followed the council’s

lead or remained inactive due to lack of aggressive leadership

• As in Vilna, the Jewish council had mixed feelings about supporting the resistance movement because they hoped to survive through work and took resistance to be suicidal


• In Warsaw the Jewish council leader did not assist in the resistance and was criticized by Jewish underground

• He later committed suicide to avoid bearing responsibility for handing Jews over to Germans for deportation


• In other ghettos such as Minsk and Kovno the Jewish council leaders cooperated with the resistance– Possibly because of their location close to

mass killing sites; they may have understood the intentions to annihilate the Jewish race

– Other possible reasons could include the greater possibility of escape through the forests and support of Soviet partisans


• To further handicap resistance, they had trouble obtaining weapons

• Couriers had to steal or purchase weapons and then sneak them into the ghetto in pieces and in small quantities

• Fighters from Vilna stole weapons from a German arsenal or purchased arms from sympathetic farmers

• In Warsaw, most weapons were purchased from polish underground, but the prices were high, quantities limited, and the quality poor


• Location of revolts– Most Jewish resistance took place in German

occupied eastern Poland, Lithuania, and Belorussia– Altogether, at least 60 ghettos had attempted revolts,

mass escapes, or the formation of armed underground movements

– Although no rebellion took place in Kovno, the ghetto had a large resistance organization composed of Zionist youth groups and Communists

– Some 350 Jews from Kovno were able to join up with the Lithuanian Communist resistance in the forests


• The most successful organized resistance was the underground in Minsk, which helped an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 persons flee to the dense forests. Several thousand survived until the end of the war


• In many smaller ghettos in German-occupied eastern Poland and the Soviet Union, spontaneous uprisings broke out during the final liquidations of those ghettos.

• At Lachva in southwestern Belorussia, for example, ghetto Jews heard that Jews in a nearby town had been murdered. On August 3, 1942, the day after the Germans ordered peasants to dig pits outside Lachva, Jews set fire to the ghetto and, lacking guns and ammunition, attacked the Germans with axes, knives, iron bars, pitchforks, and clubs. In the ensuing chaos, 2,000 Jews fled, but only 120 survived to join with Soviet partisans in the

• Chobot forest about 12 miles away.


• In central Poland, the open terrain generally did not lend itself to resistance, and the Polish partisans were generally less receptive to Jews than Soviet partisans, but armed rebellions occurred in Warsaw, Czestochowa, and Tarnow.

• Four attempted rebellions took place at Kielce, Opatow, Pilica, and Tomaszow Lubelski.

• Armed combatants escaped from 15 other ghettos into the surrounding forests.


• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising– One of the most famous; occurred after most

of the population had been deported– Once news of the mass killings reached the

underground groups they rose in armed resistance-using weapons they had been smuggling in for months

– Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) was led by 23-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz


• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising– The ZOB fired on German troops during an

attempted deportation of 8,000 Jews; after a few days the troops retreated

– This small victory inspired resistance fighters to prepare for future resistance

– When the final liquidation began on April 19, 1943, the ZOB resisted

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