Question of Survival Jewish Resistance We must first realize that resistance was in no way a survival strategy. Yet, even when it seemed obvious that death was near inevitable, why did they not put up a fight? This argument is still puzzling to many holocaust historians, yet the arguments of Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer offer insight to possible reasons why they did not fight and that resistance was more widespread than most people think. First of all we will look at Raul Hilberg’s “Two Thousand Years of Jewish Appeasement,” to give us possible reasons why Jews simply willing followed orders to their death. We must see the destruction in a way that has two role-players: the perpetrators and the victims.
We will closely look at the role that Jews played in sealing their own fate. Hilberg gives us five possible Jewish reactions to the situation they had been confronted with. First of all we will look at the possibility of resistance. It seems as though people would not willingly walk to their death, but 2000 years of appeasement was not easily changed. Along with the history of appeasement, the Jews were totally caught by surprise. They had little organization and so, could not put up a worthwhile fight even if they had wanted to.
The SS also did a good job of mental warfare in that any resistance, no matter how significant, the perpetrators knew that the repercussions would affect the whole community and so it was hard to muster support for physical opposition. The second reaction was Jewish attempt to make the struggle more of a mental battle than a physical one. They tried to avert the full plans of the German army by using written and oral appeals. Jews also tried to anticipate German wishes. The SS found that the ghettos could be very productive and tried to milk them for all they could. In this way, the Jews believed that if they were able to be productive, they would be spared long enough because of their economic value for help to arrive.
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Another possible reaction is flight. Only a few thousand Jews escaped from the ghettos in Russia and Poland, and very few escaped from the camps. This was the most viable survival option and yet very few took it. Von dem Bach talked about an “unguarded escape route to the Privet Marshes” but few Jews took the opportunity to escape. Many of the people that did not try to escape early, did not escape at all. A fifth option, which was automatic compliance, seemed to be what the Jews used the most.
2000 years of appeasement had helped them endure “the Crusades, The Cossack uprisings, and the czarists persecution. There were many casualties in these times of stress, but always the Jewish community emerged once again like a rock from a receding tidal wave.” Although many times people were told that millions of Jews were being killed in death camps, it seemed impossible that they were trying to exterminate Jewry completely from Europe. This helped in compliance in two ways. First of all, the German forces forced them to get documents of identification, submit lists of people, hand over property, and many other things that required the complete compliance of the Jews in order to work. The second is institutional compliance. Jewish councils were the head of the ghettos.
They were given orders from top Nazi officials and passed them to the Jewish community. They had power of persuasion of the Jewish community because they had close ties to the community. They were Jewish leaders that the majority of the time was doing all they could to look after the interests of the people. The Germans used this against them to accomplish their goals more easily than they could have by using brute force. Next we will discuss Re huda Bauers’ piece that suggest that Jewish resistance was more widespread than most people believe and the conditions for resistance was often not available. He defines resistance as any opposition to German Nazi forces and wishes.
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Hatred Leads to Persecution of Minorities Primo Levis book, Surviving Auschwitz, tells about the results of one group of people hating another group of people, the Nazis; hatred for the Jews. The Nazis justified their actions, however, in an attempt to explain the horrible things done to Primo Levi and his fellow victims. There were consequences of this hate for both the Jews and the Nazis. Still, ...
To explain resistance he looks at three different area of the situation including the ghettos, the forest, and the camps. Within the ghettos there were a couple different forms of resistance. First we must understand that any defiance to Nazi law was punishable by death. With that said, resistance seems much more widespread under Bauers’ definition. Nazi leaders allowed the Judenrat to distribute food that delivered a mere 336 calories per day, on such a diet the inhabitants could live at most a couple of months. Knowing this they smuggled and produced more food to give people 1125 calories, which is more than three times the allowed amount, and many people still died from this amount.
There were also non-violent resistance in the form of education and religion. There were laws banning education and public religion, yet groups met in soup kitchens or professors’ houses to work and pray together. Within the ghettos there were also armed resistance, but as with any resistance there were consequences. First of all, the Nazis’ held the community accountable for any forms of resistance. Bauer uses an example of two boys who were seen leaving the ghetto and were able to hide and reach safety. The Nazis’ demanded the return of the two boys or the ghetto inhabitants would be killed.
They did not return and the next day the entire ghetto was shot. Although this was a powerful tool the Nazis’ used in deferring resistance, the family responsibility was also a large deterrent. In joining a resistance force meant that you must disassociate yourself from your family in every way. The feeling of abandoning their family was sometimes too difficult for men to do, even though there was little they could do to help change the outcome.
Armed resistance in the ghettos was difficult because of the lack of arms. The AK, the polish government in hiding, would not provide any weapons, and it was difficult to smuggle weapons in even if they could be provided. The resistance numbers from the Warsaw ghetto resistance come out to be about. 33 percent of the 1. 5 million Jews in the area. And many times like in all other areas, armed resistance was not a survival strategy, but something that was done in order to keep ones honor, dignity, and respect.
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With this said, the armed fighters were not overly successful, but they died with the honor they were seeking. There was armed resistance in the forests, but this too was very limited for a couple of reasons. First of all, the AK were not very accepting of Jews’ in to their forces, many times they would actually hunt them down and kill them. Second of all, it was still hard to find arms for them to use, and without being properly equipped no resistance group would let you join. Lastly, escaping the ghettos was difficult enough in itself.
At the end of the war 15, 000 Jews came out from the forest which is only 1. 5 percent of the 1 million Jews that were in eastern Poland and the beginning of the war. Lastly, we will look at the resistance in the camps. There were a total of six movements in all the camps combined, the resistance in the gas chambers of Auschwitz being the most famous. This was extremely difficult for many reasons.
First of all, although there were armed undergrounds in two of the camps, they never acted, and other than this it was impossible to get arms to stage a real resistance. Second of all, the victims were so malnourished that they could not put up any reasonable fight. And lastly, they were in no mental state to fight the SS. They were instead, fighting for their life every second of the day. They had in some ways given up on life and often times willing to obey all orders because it was the easiest way to do things. My immediate reaction is, how could they not resist when they know they are going to die.
But, it is easy to say what you would do looking back at the situation. In many cases I believe that they did resist in the best way they knew how. They fought for life and did that by any means necessary. Many times they felt as though if they prolonged their life, that soon enough they would be saved. This seems as a very reasonable thought, so in my opinion I believe that they did resist more than Hilberg gives them credit for, but I believe they did it from lessons they had learned from the past 2000 years.
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