Holocaust

5 Pages 1262 Words

Yehuda Bauer defines Jewish resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe as “any group action consciously taken in opposition to known or surmised laws, actions, or intentions directed against the Jews by the Germans and their supporters.” However, many argue that passive resistance, even when done by a single individual, is inherently considered resistance as well. Through careful examination of various sources, written by Bauer and Yahil, considering the difficult conditions Jewish armed and unarmed resistance was considerably more widespread than has been subsequently assumed.
In the Holocaust there were three types of Jewish resistance: the resistance and uprising in the ghettos, revolts in death camps, and Jewish participation in the partisan movement. In many ghettos, the Judenrat leaders taught that survival lay in submission, and the general population accepted that ideology. But nevertheless, their was a Jewish effort, including the effort of the underground, which directed their endeavors in aiming to guarantee the physical survival of the Jewish masses. In addition, they also initiated widespread activity on other spheres such as not showing up for labor.. One form of unarmed resistance was the smuggling of food inside the ghetto. One can take Poland as an example, official German food allocations distributed by the Warsaw Judenrat came to 336 calories daily in 1941. It is unlikely that Warsaw Jews could have survived longer than a few months on such rations. But smuggling produced an average of 1125 calories daily. This determination to survive in defiance of Nazi authority, is definitely to be considered an act of resistance.
A second means of unarmed resistance is evident through education. Although the Nazi’s forbade education it took place clandestinely, where small groups of pupils would meet either in the soup kitchen or in the home of the teacher. There is evidence of educating youths in a large number of places in P...