# UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

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## Jewish Resistance

Policies of oppression and genocide fueled resistance to the Nazis throughout occupied Europe. Although Jews were the Nazis' primary victims, they too resisted Nazi oppression in a variety of ways, both collectively and as individuals.

Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to the Nazis. The largest armed uprising was the Warsaw ghetto uprising (April-May 1943), sparked by rumors that the Nazis would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. As German forces entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) pelted German tanks with hand grenades. Although the Nazis had far greater numbers and weapons, it took them 27 days of fighting to destroy the ghetto and snuff out the last resistance.

Uprisings also took place in Vilna and Bialystok and in a number of other ghettos. Ghetto fighters knew that armed resistance by a few could not save the Jewish masses from destruction. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the Nazi slaughter of so many Jews.

A number of Jews resisted the Nazis by escaping from ghettos into the forests and joining groups of partisan fighters. Some Jewish council (Judenrat) chairmen resisted through noncompliance with German orders, and refused to hand over Jews for deportation to extermination camps.

Violent uprisings occurred at three extermination camps. At Sobibor and Treblinka, prisoners with stolen weapons attacked the SS staff and their Ukrainian auxiliary guards. Most of the rebels were shot, though several dozen prisoners escaped. At Auschwitz, four Jewish women helped Jewish crematorium workers blow up a crematorium. All four rebels were killed.

In most Nazi satellite or occupied countries, Jewish resistance focused on aid and rescue. Jewish authorities in Palestine sent clandestine parachutists such as Hannah Szenes into Hungary and Slovakia to aid Jews. In France, various elements of the Jewish underground movement consolidated to form the Armée Juive (Jewish Army). Many Jews fought as part of the national resistance movements in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, and other countries in eastern Europe.

Violence was not the only form of Jewish resistance. Some Jews offered resistance through acts of sabotage in the forced-labor factories where they worked for the German war effort. Others joined networks of document forgers and food smugglers, or worked to find safe hiding places for themselves and others.

Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with forms of spiritual resistance. The creation of clandestine Jewish cultural institutions, the secret continuance of prohibited religious observance, and the will to remember and tell the story of the Jews (through, for example, the Oneg Shabbat archive in the Warsaw ghetto) were conscious attempts to preserve the history, dignity, and communal life of the Jewish people despite Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews from human memory.

Further Reading

Ainsztein, Reuben. Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe: With a Historial Survey of the Jew as Fighter and Soldier in the Diaspora. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974.

Glass, James M. Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Moral Uses of Violence and Will. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Grubsztein, Meir, editor. Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Proceedings of the Conference on Manifestations of Jewish Resistance, Jerusalem, April 7-11, 1968. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1971.

Gutman, Israel. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Krakowski, Shmuel. The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942-1944. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984.

Rudavsky, Joseph. To Live With Hope, To Die With Dignity: Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos and Camps. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997.

Tec, Nechama. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

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