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From: hfavr@hogpd.UUCP (A.REED)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Holocaust and Jewish Resistance (long article)
Message-ID: <323@hogpd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 21:39:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: hogpd.323
Posted: Thu May  3 21:39:06 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 4-May-84 04:15:37 EDT
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Michael  Condict asks (START OF QUOTE):
The past week has been devoted to remembrance of the Holocaust.  Not being
as well-informed about the events that led up to it as I would like, I
am unable to understand exactly how it could have happened at all.
In particular, I wonder why more of those who were taken to death camps
did not physically resist.  Was it because they did not know what their
fate would be or because things were arranged by the Fascist government
in such a way that they had no alternative?  What was different in the
case of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, where there was open rebellion? (END
OF QUOTE).

I would like to contribute an attempt at an answer. For the record, both
my parents survived as Resistance fighters in Polesie (Eastern Poland,
now annexed to Byelorusia). My great-grandparents, grandparents, and an
older brother were murdered by the Nazis. I was born after the war.

Much of MC's question is based on a misapprehension of fact. Jewish
resistance to the Nazis was far more widespread than American media
acknowledge. There were uprisings not only in the Warsaw ghetto, but
also in nearly all other ghettos, most concentration camps, and even
some death camps (e. g. Treblinka). Jewish guerilla units were numerous,
and often effective in disrupting German supply lines. Some of these
units were quite large. My parents were members of a regimental-strength
group commanded by Sergei Kaplun. This group operated an airstrip, which
was often used by the Polish government-in-exile to transport their
personnel in and out of occupied Poland. Other Jewish Resistance units
of comparable size were numerous, and at least two were at Division
strength, with over 10,000 combattants. In addition to armed resistance,
civil resistance efforts included escape networks, groups smuggling food
to counter Nazi-organized starvation in ghettos and concentration camps,
etc. etc.

One possible source of confusion over the extent of Jewish resistance is
traceable to the antisemitic tendencies of several Allied governments,
including Poland and Russia, which never referred to Jewish resistance
units except as "patriotic partisans". The same is true of public German
records, edited to conform to the Nazi myth that Jews were "subhumans"
incapable of fighting. Secret German records of the period show that
most anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe was in fact Jewish.

The real question, then, is not why there wasn't Jewish resistance, but
why Jewish resistance was not more successful. Part of the answer is
that the Nazis were efficient and well-organized, and that they were
enthusiastically supported by significant pluralities in most of the
occupied countries, and by an overwhelming majority of the Germans, who
were quite adept at turning themselves into perfectly mindless killing
machines required by National Socialism. The other part has to do with
several factors:

1) In most European countries the population, obviously including Jews,
had been disarmed by pre-war governments. Any remaining weapons were
subject to registration, and while some Jews, including my parents,
refused to let their weapons be registered, the majority of European
Jews were very law-abiding, and registered their weapons like good
little citizens. Early in the occupation the registered weapons were
confiscated by the Germans. It is difficult to fight against machine
guns with knives, stones, and "Molotov cocktails".

2) Until quite late in the war, allied governments refused asylum to
refugees, turning them over to the Nazis. The unspeakable perfidy of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in the U. S. is well documented
in, e.g., Morse's "While Six Million Died". In 1938, the British
government closed the Empire to Jewish refugees with the exception of a
minuscule quota allocated to Palestine. To close "illegal" routes to
Palestine, the British government exerted diplomatic pressure on the
governments of Greece and Yougoslavia to turn Jewish escapees over to
the Nazis. Stalin believed Nazi propaganda to the effect that Jews were
behind International Capitalism, and until the Nazi invasion of Russia
in 1941, his secret police routinely turned Jewish escapees over to the
Nazis. For similar reasons, Allied governments refused to supply weapons
to most Jewish resistance groups in Europe.

3) The effectiveness of guerilla operations is crucially dependent on
the cooperation of the surrounding population. Exploiting antisemitic
prejudices previously promoted by Russian governments in Russia,
Lithuania, the Ukraine and Eastern Poland, the Nazis added the tactic of
blaming Communism on Jews. This was very effective in denying the
support of the peasants to Jewish guerilla groups. Where propaganda was
not enough, terror was used until it worked: it was not unusual for the
Nazis to exterminate an entire village for hiding one Jewish child.

4) Most Eastern European Jews were strictly orthodox, and heroic efforts
of the Jewish resistance were often nullified by their fanatical
religious observance. Some orthodox Jews, for example, preferred to
starve to death rather than eat food that was not known to be kosher, as
was unavoidably the case with most food smuggled into the ghettos from the
other side of the wall by the Resistance. Some Hassidic sects are
extremely pacifistic, and their members refused to use force even
against their murderers. Most died, but the descendants of those few who
survived and made their way to Israel still refuse to serve in the
Israeli Defence Force.

5) Resistance activity requires the ability to act. As in any
population, many European Jews were too old, or too young, or sick or
infirm to fight. The Nazis did their best to minimize resistance by
spreading typhoid, typhus, and other epidemics; starvation etc.

I could go on, but that would only serve to hide the most important fact
about the Jewish resistance in Europe: difficult though it was, the
Resistance did manage to save some 4 million out of the 10 million Jews
targeted for genocide by the Nazis. And, of course, its members and
their children have learned some hard lessons from the experience. But
that is another topic.

					Adam V. Reed
					lzmi!adam