Children…

Resistance and rescue
One of the most tenacious myths about the Holocaust
is millions of Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter”
without resisting. In reality, there were literally thousands
of examples of resistance, ranging from armed
resistance and revolts in many ghettos to Jewish partisans
attacking Germans in Western and Eastern Europe.
Even in concentration and death camps, Jewish and
non-Jewish prisoners put up resistance and revolted.
However, the Germans crushed any attempt to resist
with unrestrained and total violence, usually imposing
lethal collective punishments.
Those who decided to resist, often the young, were
aware that this involved immense danger. They risked
not only their own lives, but also those of their parents,
brothers and sisters, and possibly hundreds of others.
Prisoners in work teams knew that their escape would
backfire on their unfortunate comrades. Even death
camp prisoners hesitated, although they knew they
could be killed at any moment. For many, the will to
live, or to die with some dignity, was the critical factor
for their decision to resist.
In January 1943, the Jewish Fighting Organisation
in Warsaw tried to mobilise ghetto inhabitants to armed
resistance:“Know that escape is not to be found by walking
to your death passively, like sheep to the slaughter. It
is to be found in something much greater: in war!
Whoever defends himself has a chance of being
saved! Whoever gives up self-defense from the outset
– he has lost already! Nothing awaits him except only a
hideous death in the suffocation-machine of Treblinka.
Let the people awaken to war! (…)
We also were destined to live! We too have a right
to life! (…) Let the people awaken and fight for its life!”
Resistance groups of various sizes formed in about
100 Eastern European ghettos. More effective however
were the partisan groups active in the forests of Eastern
Europe. Up to 20,000 Jews fought in such groups,
some of them forming family camps in the vast forests.
In Western Europe, Jewish partisans were active in the
national resistance movements in France and Belgium,
where many such groups hid Jews.
Sanctuary was found for small numbers of Jewish
children in monasteries or with Christian families in
Poland, Holland and France. Many were raised in the
Christian faith, losing their Jewish identity. Even though
the Germans severely punished those caught hiding
Jews – in Poland, it was a capital offence – there were still
some people willing to take the risk, either for money or
as a matter of principle.
Another form of resistance was smuggling Jews out
of Nazi-controlled areas. This was not easy, since some
key countries, such as Switzerland, kept their borders
closed for years, often sending Jews who had managed
to cross the border back to Germany. Some Jews, mostly
from Eastern Europe, made their way to Palestine by
circuitous routes, while others fled even further, some
all the way to Shanghai.Although Japan, Germany’s ally,
controlled Shanghai, they did not share the Nazis’ ideological
hatred of Jews.
“Anything could be resistance,
because everything was forbidden.
Every activity represented
resistance that created the
impression that the prisoner
retained something of his former
personality and individuality.”
ANDREA DEVOTO, ITALIAN PSYCHIATRIST
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