How did Jews resist the Nazis' murderous assault?

In the context of the Nazi policy of the systematic mass murder of all Jews under their control, Jewish resistance to their assault took many forms. The very acts of trying to stay alive and to maintain at least a remnant of human dignity constituted resistance to the Nazi effort to dehumanize and ultimately annihilate the Jews. Jews, on the personal, familial, and community levels, strove to sustain themselves both physically and emotionally in the face of the Nazi machinery of murder.

In many ghettos the Jewish councils (Judenraete) and various underground communal organizations did their utmost to distribute food and medicines, and to supply other essential needs to the suffering masses. In many places they organized cultural, educational, and religious activities, which were expressions of the still-vital human spirit of the ghetto inhabitants. The act of providing work took on great importance in many places, both for its practical day-to-day aspects and because in several ghettos, proving the value of Jewish labor evolved into a strategy for safeguarding as many as possible from the Nazis. In some localities, attempts were made to document the ever-deepening suffering under the Nazis. In an organized fashion and sometimes on their own, Jews acquired false documents that identified them as Gentiles, and used them to hide and even to cross international borders.

As Jews became aware of the fact that the Nazis were out to murder them, armed underground organizations came into being. In more than100 ghettos, groups prepared for armed resistance against the Nazis, either within the confines of the ghettos or by joining the partisans in the surrounding forests, swamps, or mountains. Not all of the planned armed resistance against the Nazis was actually carried out. The armed uprising of the longest duration occurred during three weeks in the spring of 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto. Other armed actions took place in Bialystok, Czestochowa, and Krakow, to name a few of the larger ghettos.

Some Jews escaped from ghettos that were relatively near to forests, mountains, or swamps, areas more suitable for hiding and for partisan activities. This was the case in Vilna, Kovno, and Minsk, as well as in many smaller ghettos. Not only did men and women of fighting age flee, but some older people and children escaped in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Facing the elements, hunger, disease, an often-hostile local population, Nazi hunts for Jews, and partisans who despised both Nazis and Jews, it is not surprising that in at least one area, the Parczew forest, only four percent of the Jews who escaped to there lived to see the liberation. Nevertheless, Jewish partisan leaders did their best to provide for non-combatants, establishing what came to be known as “family camps” for them.

In several Nazi camps – despite their brutal regimes – Jews also engaged in armed uprisings. In three of the extermination camps – Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau – Jewish prisoners, in some cases along with other inmates, took up arms against their oppressors. Resistance was offered by Jews in other Nazi camps as well, among them Janowska near Lvov and Minsk Masowiecki near Warsaw. Jews escaped from many camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. Two sets of escapees from that camp in the spring of 1944 brought with them the first detailed report (the Auschwitz Protocols) that informed the Western world of the killing apparatus in Auschwitz-Birkenau.