1. There are various responses to dealing with a threat from an authority.
2. The Jews did resist the Holocaust, despite a common misconception that there was no resistance.
3. Resistance can take many forms, both passive and active.
4 The inaction and complicity of the world community reduced the extent to which the Jews could resist the Holocaust.
5. The Allies did not bomb the death camps despite full knowledge about what was going on.
6. There were many non-Jews, such as Raoul Wallenberg, who risked their lives to save Jews from destruction.
7. Though Jews faced repeated obstructions to their efforts to emigrate from Nazi-occupied countries, steps were taken by some nations to rescue Jews, Denmark being the archetypical example.
Historian Raoul Hilberg has stated that the "Jewish reaction
pattern" to a threat has taken five forms:
1. Armed Resistance
2. Alleviation
3. Evasion
4. Paralysis
5. Compliance
History is replete with examples of Jews resisting domination by other nations. The Bible details many of these examples. Jewish rebellions to the Roman Empire occurred frequently (See Chapter 3 about Masada and the Bar Kochba revolt, 132 C.E.).
During the Middle Ages, Jews resisted the persecutions against them in Spain, France, Germany and Russia. They organized self-defense units to fight off attacks of the Russian pogroms. The Jews of Palestine fought along with the British forces in World War I. Today, the Israeli army is perhaps the best-trained, most disciplined, and most highly-successful military force in history, for its size.
The Judenrat raised funds to create hospitals, homes for orphans, disinfection stations, and to provide food and clothing to those without.
Jewish leaders were ambivalent about participating in these Judenröte. On the one hand, many viewed these councils as a form of collaboration with the enemy. Others saw these councils as a necessary evil, which would permit Jewish leadership a forum to negotiate for better treatment. In the many cases where Jewish leaders refused to volunteer to serve on the Judenrat, the Germans appointed Jews to serve on a random basis. Some Jews who had no prior history of leadership agreed to serve, hoping that it would improve their chances of survival. Many who served in the Judenrat were arrested, taken to labor camps, or hanged.
When the Nazis required a quota of Jews to participate in forced labor, the Judenrat had the responsibility to meet this demand. Sometimes Jews could avoid forced labor by making a payment to the Judenrat. These payments supplemented the taxes which the Judenrat levied to finance the services provided in the ghettos.
Underground Jewish organizations sprang up in the ghettos to serve as alternatives to the Judenrat, some of which were established with a military component to organize resistance to the Nazis.
For most of the Jews who died in the gas chamber, the issue of resistance was not an issue at all. Until as late as mid-1942, the Jews were unaware that the Final Solution was being implemented. Stripped of weapons, facing starvation and disease, the prospect of deportation combined with offers of food was an incentive for Jews to board the trains which took them to their deaths. Most believed what they were told that they were going to be relocated to work. For virtually all, the reality that they faced immediate death did not occur until the doors of the gas chambers were sealed, the lights were turned off, and the smell of gas was perceived. By then, it was too late. Those who did resist, either by running from the trains, or attacking their captors, faced certain death. Some took advantage of this option and were summarily executed on the spot. Others chose to take their own lives when faced with the hopelessness of the situation. It might be argued that suicide under these circumstances was itself resistance.
For others, deciding not to commit suicide but rather to make an attempt at survival amidst the hopelessness and despair of this situation was their resistance. Those that resisted more actively found that any success resulted in unintended consequences. The Nazis practiced the doctrine of collective responsibility. Thus, if a Nazi soldier was murdered by a Jew, not only was that Jew executed, but also his family, and perhaps a hundred other Jews. As a result, few Jews even considered carrying out this active resistance for fear of reprisals.
"All forms of culture sustained life in the ghetto. Since curfew rules did not allow people on the street from 7 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning, socializing had to be among friends living [in] the same building or visitors who spent the night. Card playing was very popular, and actors, musicians, comics, singers, and dancers all entertained small groups who came together for a few hours to forget their daily terror and despair."
Artists and poets as well entertained, and their works, many of which survive today, are poignant reminders of the horrors of the period (see Appendix II). Underground newspapers were printed and distributed at great risk to those who participated. Praying was against the rules, but synagogue services occurred with regularity. The education of Jewish children was forbidden, but the ghetto communities set up schools. The observance of many Jewish rituals, including dietary laws, was severely punished by the Nazis, and many Jews took great risks to resist the Nazi edicts against these activities. Committees were organized to meet the philanthropic, religious, educational, and cultural community needs. Many of these committees defied Nazi authority.
Some Jews escaped death by hiding in the attics and cellars and closets of non-Jews, who themselves risked certain death if their actions were discovered by the Nazis.
The writings and oral histories of survivors of the labor and concentration camps are filled with accounts of simple sabotage. Material for the German war effort, for example, might be mysteriously defective, the result of intentionally shoddy workmanship by Jewish slave labor.
Despite the myth to the contrary, Jewish armed resistance to the Holocaust did occur. This active resistance occurred in ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps. Many of those who participated in resistance of this type were caught and executed, and their stories will never be told. However, there are many verifiable accounts of major incidents of this resistance:
2. Warsaw Ghetto
: By 1943, the ghetto residents had organized an army of about 1,000 fighters, mostly unarmed and without equipment. They were joined by thousands of others, mostly the young and able-bodied, still needed for forced labor. By that time, the half-million original inhabitants had been depleted to about 60,000 as a result of starvation, disease, cold, and deportation.In January 1943, the S.S. entered the ghetto to round up more Jews for shipment to the death camps. They were met by a volley of bombs, Molotov cocktails, and the bullets from a few firearms which had been smuggled into the ghettos. Twenty S.S. soldiers were killed. The action encouraged a few members of the Polish resistance to support the uprising, and a few machine guns, some hand grenades, and about a hundred rifles and revolvers were smuggled in.
Facing them were almost 3,000 crack German troops with 7,000
reinforcements available. Tanks and heavy artillery
surrounded the ghetto. General Himmler promised Hitler that
the uprising would be quelled in three days, and the ghetto
would be destroyed. It took four weeks. The ghetto was
reduced to rubble following bomber attacks, gas attacks, and
burning of every structure by the Nazis. Fifteen thousand
Jews died in the battle, and most of the survivors were
shipped to the death camps. Scores of German soldiers were
killed. Some historical accounts report that 300 Germans
were killed and 1,000 wounded, although the actual figure is
unknown.
3. Bialystok Ghetto
4. Vilna Ghetto
2. Sobibor
: Jewish and Russian prisoners mounted an escape attempt on October 14, 1943. About 60 of 600 prisoners involved in the escape survived to join Soviet partisans. Ten S.S. guards were killed and one wounded.3. Auschwitz
: On October 7, 1944, one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz was blown up by Sonderkommandos. These were workers, mostly Jews, whose job it was to clear away the bodies of gas chamber victims. The workers were all caught and killed.The American press had printed scores of articles detailing mistreatment of the Jews in Germany. By 1942, many of these newspapers were reporting details of the Holocaust, stories about the mass murder of Jews in the millions. For the most part, these articles were only a few inches long, and were buried deep in the newspaper. These reports were either denied or unconfirmed by the United States government. When the United States government did receive irrefutable evidence that the reports were true, U.S. government officials suppressed the information. U.S. reconnaissance photos of the Birkenau camp in 1943 showed the lines of victims moving into the gas chambers, confirming other reports. The War Department insisted that the information be kept classified.
Photographs of mass graves and mass murder, smuggled out under the most dangerous of circumstances, were also classified as secret. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for the death camp at Auschwitz to be bombed. He was ignored. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews could have been saved had the Allies agreed to bomb the death camps or the rail lines which were feeding them.
Desperate for war material, the Nazis offered the British a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. When asked why he had refused to negotiate the deal, a British diplomat responded, "What would I do with one million Jews? Where would I put them?"
Escaped prisoners from the death camps filed reports on what was occurring. Again, many of these reports were suppressed.
Eventually, President Roosevelt, under pressure from the public, agreed to issue a statement condemning the German government for its genocidal policy against the Jews. Other support followed. The Pope requested that his diplomats help hide Hungarian Jews. In September 1944, the British bombed factories and the railroad lines of Auschwitz.
Could actions of the Allies have prevented the Holocaust or limited the destruction of six million Jews and five million other innocent civilians? There is no question that the silence and inaction of the world community in the face of irrefutable evidence resulted in the senseless loss of millions of lives.
The Gestapo routinely offered a bounty for those who turned in Jews who were hiding. This bounty consisted of a quart of liquor, four pounds of sugar, a carton of cigarettes, or, at times, small cash payments. For many civilians, these commodities were unobtainable through normal channels, and thus they were provided with a powerful incentive to cooperate with the Gestapo above and beyond any hatred they may have harbored against the Jews.
Those who resisted the Gestapo and hid Jews did so at grave personal peril. Any person caught hiding a Jew was immediately shot on the spot or taken out to be publicly hanged by the S.S. At a time when living space, food, sanitation facilities, and medicine were at a premium, those who hid Jews from the Nazis sacrificed a great deal, including the risk to their lives.
Those non-Jews who worked at great risk to their personal safety to save Jews became known as the "Righteous Gentiles." There are thousands of stories of great valor which will never be told because the Nazis executed many of these Righteous Gentiles. Among those whose stories are the most celebrated are:
Raoul Wallenberg - He was a Swedish diplomat who made it a
special, personal mission to help save the Jews of Hungary.
More than 30,000 Jews received special Swedish passports
from Wallenberg. He set up "safe houses," distributed food
and medical supplies, and virtually single-handedly set up a
bureaucracy in Budapest, Hungary's capital, designed to
protect Jews. More than 90,000 Budapest Jews were deported
to the death camps and murdered, and Wallenberg's efforts
may have reduced the number of those murdered by half. As a
diplomat, he successfully confronted the Nazis at great risk
to his own safety. Following the "liberation" of Budapest by
the Soviets, he was arrested by them, thrown in prison, and
never heard from again. Reports often surface, unconfirmed,
that he is still alive, although the Soviets announced his
death two years after his arrest.
Dr. Jan Karski
Cardinal Archbishop of Lwow
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski
Pastor Andre Trocme and Daniel Trocme
Why did Gentiles risk their lives to save the Jews?
Why did people not help the Jews?
Why governments got involved:
Why governments refused to get involved:
Thousands of Jews in Germany were successful in fleeing before the
onset of hostilities in 1939, especially in the early years of the
Nazi period. Many of these refugees were able to find their way
aboard ships headed for American ports. There are, however, tragic
stories of these ships being turned away by immigration officials,
and their occupants returned to Europe to face the gas chambers
(see story about the St. Louis Voyage, Chapter 9). Each nation had
its own story of how its government and citizens responded to the
horrors of the Holocaust. The following are capsules of some of
these stories.
United States
(Wagner-Rogers legislation)
(Bermuda Conference)
"At the Bermuda Conference in April 1943...the British and Americans proved most adept at postponing serious efforts to change matters. By this point, opinion was mobilized on behalf of several schemes for rescue and refuge. Such views were deflected, however; the press was kept at arm's length and little was achieved."
(War Refugee Board)
- U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, presented a report to President Roosevelt in 1943 providing details about the Final Solution. It was not until January 1944, however, that the President responded by establishing the War Refugee Board as an independent agency to rescue the civilian victims of the Nazis. By then, most of these civilian victims had already been murdered. The Board joined a plea to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral from Great Britain, Sweden, the Pope, and the International Red Cross to stop the deportations of Hungarian Jews. While Admiral Horthy agreed on July 8, 1944 to discontinue the deportations, fewer than 200,000 Jews of the original number of more than 600,000 remained. Thousands of those permitted this reprieve from the death camps were eventually saved through the efforts of Wallenberg and other diplomats.Spain and Portugal
. As many as 40,000 Jews who were able to make their way to Spain and Portugal were saved from the Nazi death camps. More than 20,000 Jews made their way into Switzerland, but many thousands were turned back, according to Michael Marrus' Holocaust in History.Denmark
. The rescue of Denmark's 8,000 Jews serves as an example of an entire nation mobilized to rescue humanity from the abyss of German terror. While the story may be apocryphal that King Christian X threatened to abdicate and to wear the Nazi yellow Star of David as a badge of honor, it symbolizes his opposition to all anti-Semitic legislation. Almost all of the Jews of Denmark survived the war, while those in almost every other nation occupied by the Nazis had their ranks decimated.A September 1943 decision by the Nazi occupiers of Denmark to round up all Danish Jews for shipment to the death camps was thwarted. Courageously acting on a tip from a German shipping official, Danes from all walks of life mobilized whatever would float and ferried 5,900 Jews, 1,300 part-Jews, and 700 Christians married to Jews to safety in Sweden. Of the 500 or so Jews left in Denmark on October 1, 1943, all were deported by the Germans to Theresienstadt. Eighty-five percent survived the war.
Historians have pondered why the citizens of Denmark resisted the
war against the Jews, unlike most of their European neighbors. One
reason is that Denmark did not have a history of anti-Semitism.
Another was that nearby was neutral Sweden, willing to accept the
Jews that could be saved.
Bulgaria
Several other governments resisted Nazi deportation orders, including Finland, Hungary, and Italy.
Several embassies in Hungary acted in concert to issue passports to
Jews at risk (see story about Raoul Wallenberg, above). Yet many
other European governments not only complied with the demand of
the Germans to deport Jews to the death camps but facilitated the
deportations.
France
A government was formed in unoccupied France at Vichy. The Vichy government was dominated by advocates for cooperation with the Germans. Many of the decrees of the Vichy government in 1940-41 paralleled the anti-Jewish edicts of Germany in the mid-1930s. Jewish property was expropriated, and Jews were stripped of their basic civil rights. Non-native French Jews were singled out in October 1940 for internment in labor camps, which resulted in a large number of deaths. In March 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the occupied zones in France to the death camps. In July of that same year, they demanded that all Jews be rounded up in unoccupied France for deportation. The Vichy government decided to protect French Jews, but handed over 15,000 foreign Jews from the internment camps for deportation to the death camps. Many hundreds of other Jews were executed, as described in Lucy Dawidowicz's The War Against the Jews, in reprisal for partisan activities. By the time France was liberated, 90,000 of the pre-war Jewish population in France had been killed.
Collaborator
- One who cooperates treasonably with the action of an enemy.Collective responsibility
- The doctrine which asserts that a group is responsible for the actions of its individuals, and thus can be punished for those actions.Deportation
- The forced transport of people outside of the area where they live.Judenrat
- Jewish councils established by the Nazis in occupied territories to represent Jewish interests.Kapos
- Prisoners, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who served in the camps as overseers of other prisoners, and who often inflicted beatings and other physical pain on prisoners.Molotov cocktail
- A homemade grenade consisting of a flammable liquid encased in a bottle.Musselmen (Muselmanner)
- "Walking dead," a term referring to those in the concentration camps who were so totally physically and emotionally exhausted that they became completely passive and dependent, losing their individuality and self-esteem.Partisans
- Guerrilla fighters who resisted the Nazis after their countries were overrun and occupied.Passive resistance
- Resistance which is other than through force, such as spiritual, religious, or cultural resistance.Resistance
- Acts, both passive and active, which are non-compliance to the demands of an authority.Righteous Gentiles
- Non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from being murdered by the Nazis.Sanctions
- Penalties levied by an authority for not complying with an order or law.Sonderkommandos
- The workers at the death camps whose job it was to clear away the bodies of those who were murdered in the gas chambers.Underground
- A secret network which is organized to resist authority.Wagner-Rogers Legislation
- Legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1939 by Rep. Robert Wagner to admit a total of 20,000 Jewish children over a two-year period above the refugee quota applicable at the time.War Refugee Board
- Established by President Roosevelt in January of 1944 after receiving a report by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, providing details about the "Final Solution." The Board was to take whatever steps were necessary to rescue the civilian victims of the Holocaust.Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- The most serious armed resistance by the Jews to the Nazis, which resulted in the deaths of many German soldiers.2. Discuss the role of the Judenrat in carrying out the orders of the Nazis? How did one become a member of the Judenrat? What was the penalty for refusing to join?
3. Name five non-violent forms of resistance which occurred in the ghetto.
4. Describe two incidents of armed resistance in the ghettos.
5. Compare and contrast active resistance to passive resistance.
6. Who were the Kapos? Were they perpetrators, victims, or both?
7. What were the incentives for the German people to hand over Jews to the Gestapo?
8. Give two reasons non-Jews risked their lives to save Jews. Give two reasons why many did not.
9. Give two reasons why governments got involved to save Jews. Give two reasons why some governments did not.
10. List three possible reasons why the citizens of Denmark resisted the war against the Jews, unlike most of their European neighbors.
Copyright 1990 Gary M. Grobman