Lesson 15
Lesson Objectives:
As a result of this lesson, students will:
Key Glossary Terms:
The following glossary terms are used in Lesson 15.
Instructional Materials:
Teaching Sequence:
Reading: Reading 15A, “Jewish Armed Resistance” (30 minutes)
Reading: Reading 15B, “Survival as Resistance” (15 minutes)
NOTE TO TEACHER: The point of this exercise is to make students aware of the specific historical conditions that made Jewish armed resistance implausible. By the end of the exercise, students should begin to see that the question, “Why didn’t the Jews resist?” is not meaningful.
PART I: THE QUESTION OF ARMED RESISTANCE
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently at this point seems foolish. The situation is considered temporary and livable, like other wars, other invasions and other anti-Semitic laws. While Jews are being humiliated in the streets, this is not a new situation and the non-Jewish population is also under stress. Both the Jewish and non-Jewish populations are against any violent uprising as they attempt to regain some normalcy.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is still considered an extremist act. Against whom would they rebel? Whom would they shoot? For what purpose? To jeopardize their families? Everyone assumed that since the war was over in Poland, violence would decrease. No one expected that the Germans would increase their hostilities against the Jews of Poland after they had already conquered the nation.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently meant endangering loved ones and opposing an overpowering armed force. The labor is hard, the food is scarce, but this is still considered a temporary crisis.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is now nearly impossible. Movement itself is painful and the primary concern is protecting family members.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is not only a physical burden, but suicidal.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is to risk life and defeat hope. There are few unclear rumors about mass graves and death camps, but they are unconfirmed and seem too insane to be true. Since the illusion of hope is more appealing, the act of retaliation becomes less realistic.
The doors open - Auschwitz. Dogs, guns, yelling, crying, screams, smoke, the stench of burning flesh, family members slip away - a nightmare.
Should the Jews have retaliated with violence at this point?
Suggestion for discussion: To react violently is no longer an issue.
Suggestions for discussion: The question of resistance, meaning armed resistance, no longer seems proper. In fact, some historians have called that question not only offensive but absurd. Living conditions in the ghetto must be stressed. After fewer than two weeks of starvation rations, with disease rampant and guns and weapons almost impossible to come by, the question of armed resistance is a foolish one.
Also, family bonding worked against Jewish resistance. The Gestapo technique of holding the group responsible for individual actions stopped armed resistance. Whole communities were destroyed because of acts of armed resistance. One example is the Czech town of Lidice {lid-i-say}. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, the Germans randomly chose the town of Lidice to be punished for this act. The men of Lidice were killed along with the children. The women were sent to concentration and labor camps. Such acts of brutality effectively stopped most armed resistance.
PART II: THE REALITY OF ARMED RESISTANCE
Given the conditions described in this lesson, the following examples seem nothing less than miraculous. (See map for each example.) Keep in mind the conditions that prisoners endured in the death camps, the near-total dehumanization and starvation described by survivors in the videotape and presented in other parts of this curriculum.
Ghettos:
Tuchin {too-chin} ghetto: On September 3, 1942, the Jewish community burned its homes and fled to the woods. Local Ukrainian populations hunted down all but 15 survivors of the 700 Jewish families and delivered them to the Germans.
Warsaw ghetto: On April 19, 1943, German troops surrounded the ghetto in order to begin the final deportations. Over 310,000 Jews had already been deported since June 1942. Almost all had been sent directly to the gas chambers at Treblinka. The Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), led by 23-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz {ann-nee-lev-ich}, consisted of about 1,500 young men and women. These young resistance fighters had lived in the ghetto for over two years and were nearly starved, suffering from disease and the sadness of having lost families and friends. In addition to these terrible conditions, they had managed to get only three light machine guns, about 100 rifles, a few dozen pistols, some hand grenades and explosives. When the resistors opened fire, the surprised German troops fled from the ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion had begun. It would last about one month, although the last documented skirmish in the Warsaw ghetto occurred in October, 1943, six months after the start of the rebellion.
The ZOB faced 3,000 German troops who were equipped with armored trucks, artillery, flame throwers, heavy machine guns and heavy explosives. The ZOB resisted until May 16, when the Great Synagogue was blown up and the ghetto, already in flames, was burned to the ground. Along with a few Polish non-Jews who had helped in the battle, 56,065 Jews surrendered. The prisoners were either shot, sent to the Treblinka or Maidanek death camps or to labor camps where almost all died. Sixteen Germans had been killed. The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion against the Germans was an utter failure from a military point of view. But word of it spread across Europe as a symbolic sign of hope for all those resisting the Nazis.
Bialystok {bee-al-eh-shtok} ghetto: On August 16, 1943, realizing the Nazis were going to destroy Bialystok, the ZOB attacked the Nazi forces. The battle lasted one day on the outskirts of the city. The resistors ran out of ammunition and were captured or killed. One group of young women carried on the struggle from within the ghetto and were eventually killed. Several other people escaped and joined partisans in the nearby forests.
Vilna ghetto: On September 1, 1943, largely because of increasing activity around the city, the Nazis moved to liquidate, that is, destroy, the ghetto. The United Partisan Organization (FPO), active for months, attempted an uprising within the ghetto. Poorly armed, they were hunted down and killed. Some escaped to the forests where they joined partisans until the liberation of Lithuania in July 1944.
Death Camps:
Treblinka: On August 2, 1943, after the camp had existed for one year, the 600 remaining Jews (800,000 had died there) blew it up and escaped to the nearby woods. Forty survived.
Sobibor: On October 14, 1943, armed with hatchets, Jewish prisoners and some Russian prisoners of war killed about a dozen Nazi officers. Four hundred prisoners, almost all who remained in the camp, rushed to the woods. Half died in a minefield surrounding the camp, and more were killed by Nazi and Polish Nazi groups. About sixty survived and joined Soviet partisans. Two days later, Himmler ordered Sobibor dismantled. The camp had been the site of the murder of over 250,000 Jews.
Auschwitz: On October 7, 1944, one of the Sonderkommando units, the special group of prisoners used to clear the gas chambers of bodies, blew up one of the crematoria and attempted an armed escape. The members of this Sonderkommando were all killed.
Under unique circumstances like those of the Holocaust, “resistance” has to be refined. Armed resistance was almost impossible - yet, it did occur. But another type of resistance became a way of life for Jews: to defeat death, from moment to moment and hour to hour. Even if survival was a result of what some survivors say way “pure luck,” it represented resistance. Each day of survival meant successfully resisting the Nazi plan of genocide. To survive, to live, meant resistance.
As was apparent from “A ‘Normal’ Day in Auschwitz,” the prisoners lost the freedom to make choices. To make choices was to act like a human being. One scholar has noted that committing suicide was one of the first signs of resistance by prisoners. They chose to die when they could make no choices about anything else. Some chose to attempt escape, although few succeeded. Survivors described small acts of “sabotage.” Some at Auschwitz tore clothing apart as they sorted through clothes in the Brezhinka. Others reported pouring sand into machinery they were forced to build in slave labor camps.
One prisoner of Auschwitz washed his hands in extremely filthy water each day. When another prisoner asked him why he bothered to “wash” in such water, he replied: “To prove to myself that I am still a human being.” As he stood on the Appelplatz on his first full day in Auschwitz, a fourteen-year-old boy, alone after being separated from his family the day before, met an old man standing next to him. “What portion of the Bible were you studying at home?” the old man asked him. The boy told him. “We will begin reciting at that place today and go further each day,” the old man whispered. “Why?” asked the boy. “To continue.” Simple, routine or ritual acts became choices that allowed people to maintain links with their former lives.
Praying, one of the most serious “crimes” in any of the concentration, labor or death camps, was an act of resistance. Several survivors recall conducting secret religious services in the barracks. They risked their lives with this action but maintained their identity as Jews. This, to them, was resistance. One survivor of a labor camp recalled that on the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, she and many other prisoners chose to observe the religious tradition of fasting. When the SS guards discovered that these Jews were not eating, they forced them to do hours of punishing exercise. Then, those prisoners were not given rations for two days.
Those who survived have spoken of these acts as resistance – defeating the Nazi insistence that they become less than human.
The Nazis forced their victims to give up part of what it meant to be human: the freedom of choice. They tried to rob Jews of their human status.
Questions
What does “resistance” mean and why is it noble?
Suggestions for discussion: Resistance means opposition or refusal to comply with the demands of authority or evil law. The standard idea of resistance to tyranny or oppression is physical or armed resistance. The point of his exercise was to demonstrate that, during the Holocaust, physical resistance was nearly impossible and almost certain to fail.
The key to resistance against such overwhelming circumstances is the concept of choice – keeping a human identity by keeping control of some acts. Even when the fate of the victims was out of their hands, the ability to make choices, no matter how insignificant, remained an extremely important act. The Nazis tried to remove all possibility of choice prisoners could not choose when they would go to the bathroom, when they would eat, when they would sleep, talk, stand, wash, work or even think. To silently assert some choice meant to resist; it affirmed one’s status as a free human being with some dignity. Such resistance was not the same as automatic rejection of authority.
What are some examples of the different types of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust?
Suggestions for discussion: There are numerous examples given here of armed resistance, the type that most people think of when they hear the word “resistance.” The examples of survival as resistance include: small acts of sabotage; practicing routine habits like washing; trying to continue ritual observances by praying or fasting on Yom Kippur; choosing to behave in certain ways. The key to the idea of survival as resistance is the exercising of some choice in one’s life.
How is “survival as resistance” different from automatic antagonism toward authority:
Suggestions for Discussion: The differences are important.
Survival as resistance affirms the self even while submitting to force
Only each prisoner knew he or she was resisting because a more public display would have meant death
Antagonism to authority automatically rejects all authority
Antagonism to authority resists openly and with contempt
Why do people resist?
Suggestions for discussion: In the cases described above, the victims resisted because they tried to hold on to their identity as Jews or as civilized human beings. People might resists, as they did in the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion or the other armed resistance attempts, because all hope was gone. People resist authority or oppression for moral reasons, self-defense or self-affirmation.
Duplicate and distribute Reading 16C, the blank “Outline: Sounds of Silence: World Responses to the Holocaust” to be used in the lecture in Lesson 16.
