Ben Shapiro’s musical ‘We Will Rise’ on the Warsaw Ghetto and October 7th is set to open in Israel this week. A historian’s prelude, below, shows Jewish resistance in WWII in tragic perspective. Never again.
Warsaw Ghetto UprisingJNS, Wikimedia Commons
Before 1942, the Jewish underground in German-occupied Eastern Europe did not view armed resistance as an option according to historian Yisrael Gutman, who was a member of the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw ghetto and participated with the Jewish resistance in Auschwitz. The Nazis were viewed as a transitory evil. Until they were defeated, Jews in the Polish ghettos had to “play for time,” in order to maintain their community and ensure minimal harm.
The possibility of mass murder had not even occurred to the Polish Jews prior to or even during the initial stages of the German occupation. “It was not possible, therefore,“ Gutman concludes, “for the Jews to prepare themselves for actual events.” The systematic mass murder of the Jews began on June 22, 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.
The absence of information and a thorough understanding of the German’s ultimate objectives were not the sole reason for the Jews “passivity and confusion,” Gutman adds. Some members of the Judenräte (the Jewish Councils), established by the Germans to execute their orders, subscribed to the belief that productive work in the ghettos would protect the Jews, or at least a majority of them, from deportation and extermination. They perceived this as the only possible option available to them. Not everyone agreed that the “work will save life” approach was a viable solution.
Armed Resistance
Armed resistance would not have helped them in their immediate need to survive, opines Bauer. He asserted that attacks against the German army would not have undermined the military. Instead, they would have provoked severe mass reprisals resulting in the murder of most, if not all of the Jewish residents, and confiscation of Jewish homes by the local population.
The Germans permitted the local inhabitants, who were either unmoved by the plight of the Jews, generally hostile, or expressed open animosity, to seize Jewish possessions.
This secured Polish collaboration in the murder of the Jews, encouraged them to thwart the survivors from escaping, and guaranteed that there would not be any remaining witnesses to expose the crimes that had been committed.
Emanuel Ringelblum , who founded the Oneg Shabbat Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, described this enmity when he asked, If it was “inevitable” that while Jews were being transported to Treblinka and other extermination camps from all over the country, their last glimpse of the outside world should be to witness [the] “indifference or even joy on the faces of their neighbors?”
He wrote in the summer of 1942, “when carts packed with captive Jewish men, women and children moved through the streets of the capital, did there really need to be laughter from the wild mobs resounding from the other side of the ghetto walls, did there really have to prevail such blank indifference in the face of the greatest tragedy of all time?”
Since resistance would result in collective punishment, Abba Kovner, a young poet and a partisan commander in the Vilna Ghetto, asked whether by procuring and smuggling weapons to ghetto fighters they were “entitled to endanger the lives of the last few thousands of Jews in case arms were discovered in our possession.”
Kovner’s response to inevitable German retaliation, especially since Jews were “exposed to all kinds of betrayal,” was unequivocal: “With full consciousness of the responsibility we were undertaking, our reply was: Yes. We can. We must.”
Bauer explains that Jewish armed resistance in Poland and elsewhere depended on two factors: the availability of arms , and the aid of the local population, who were able and willing to support the underground fighters.
Neither prerequisites existed for the Jews Bauer notes. They could not retrieve weapons hidden by the Polish army after the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Very few Jews were officers, especially high ranking ones. Merely one general in fact. Only right wing officers knew where the arms were buried, and they did not share this information with the Jews.
Rebellions in the Generalgouvernement– Warsaw, Kraków, Radom and Lublin
As long as the Jews hoped they would survive, there were no rebellions in the ghettos Bauer said. “Only when all hope for survival was abandoned,” Gutman added, “ did armed resistance enjoy widespread support.” In other words, “Hopelessness was a prerequisite for resistance.”
In the Generalgouvernement there were about 5,000 fighters; 1,000 of whom fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943; 1,000 in the Warsaw Polish insurrection which lasted from August to October 1944. In 1939, there were about 1.5 million Jews in the area, which meant a ratio of 0.33 of those who resisted—a negligible number at most.
There were three armed rebellions in the Generalgouvernement, in Warsaw, Czestochowa, and Tarnów. Attempted rebellions occurred in Kielce, Opatów, Pilica and Tomaszów Lubelski. There were 17 places where armed groups escaped to the forests.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The uprising, which began on April 19, 1943, on the eve of first night of Passover, to oppose the Nazis’ final effort to transport the remaining 55,000-60,000 Jews in the ghetto to extermination camps. By the middle of-May, 1943, the revolt had been quelled.
Most of the people remaining in the ghetto were workers and generally only one person was left from their entire family. They lived “in pain and isolation,” with no illusion that before long that they too would be deported, Gutman said. “Most of the population supports opposition…., “ Ringelblum wrote. “The public wants the enemy to pay heavily for life…. No longer will they allow themselves to be expelled by means of siege…”
The Establishment of the Jewish Fighting Organization
Faced with no alternative but to resist after major deportations had begun, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto created the Jewish Fighting Organization (?ydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ZOB), a Jewish self-defense organization on July 28, 1942.
Before an effective organization could be established, Gutman said “deep political divisions had to be overcome, and alliances had to be forged among Jewish fighting factions torn by deep ideological rifts. Zionists of the right and left, religious non-Zionists, socialists, Bundists, and Communists were at odds with each other, divided over what tactics and strategies to employ, when to strike, whom to trust, what contacts to make. Revisionist Zionists established their own fighting unit, with only marginal contacts, with the major resistance organization.”
Ultimately, Gutman said, a degree of solidarity was achieved among various political and ideological groups who had been unable to work together during the interwar period. “Still,” he lamented, “political and religious differences prevented a wall-to-wall coalition of Jewish factions. Even when faced with a Nazi enemy who did not distinguish among them, the Jews could not come together.”
The Germans Paid a Heavy Price
The Germans paid dearly in terms of loss of prestige, resources, and casualties Gutman said. Warsaw was the first uprising in any German-occupied city in Europe. The revolt tied down a considerable number of enemy forces for a longer period of time than did many other countries under German control.
The rebellion demonstrated that even a limited number of people, with a minimal quantity of arms, could exact considerable damage to the Germans, who were forced to fight in an urban setting. They had not anticipated the Jewish resistance, which is why they were surprised by the intensity of Jewish opposition .
A rebellion of this nature does not offer any immediate relief from suffering or provide any optimism for the future. The leaders of the revolt refused every possibility for rescue and survival.
The Most Significant Rebellion —”A Desperate Cry For Future Generations”
Bauer asserts that the rebellion was unique in “that it had no pragmatic goal. The military effect of such an uprising was obviously minimal. It was basically a rebellion of people who had been condemned to die, in order to mark their presence in history. It was a matter of revenge, it was a matter of Jewish honor, it was a matter of a simple statement of opposition to the policy of the Nazis, and the only way that the world would understand. If people had not rebelled, then the whole destruction of the Jewish people would have passed by, so to speak, without any kind of reaction; the rebellion made a statement.”
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Firing pins. They made their own, by hand. Often they would bend; so when you pulled the trigger, you didn;t know whether they would work or not.
Bloody nuissance (sometimes deadly 😮 )
READER’-
What sort of twisted nonsense are you spewing now. You specifically associated Christianity with a SECT, prefaced by “if”. You mentioned it first, now you try to twist out of it,
By “authorities” I mean learned Professors of Semitics and tenured Historians and others of that ilk.
The rest of your post is the usual Gabblydegook.
This subject is CLOSED for ME.
You can “Klap dein Kop in Vant.”
@Edgar G
You missed some things in my comment:
I didn’t say “Christians” I said “a sect”, and I said IF it started as a sect.
I was talking about the era of The Great Revolt, not about the era of established Christianity.
What is “thought” or “believed” by “authorities” are hypotheses NOT facts.
If the new sect identified itself with the Jews or their Torah, it would disappear as quickly as the other sects, the only way it could survive at the time was to publicly separate from the Jews.
And if the early Christians were so Jewish, why did the open the gates of Beitar to the Romans?
Just because the Church Fathers were totally paranoid about their flock getting influenced by the Jews doesn’t mean that they actually were, and a lot of things weren’t settled for centuries.
@Michael S
The above are languages, not nationalities or ethnicities, clearly you are upset for some reason.
The reasons I asked those questions:
Was he a German from the lands that went to Poland after the war?
Were those Polish-Americans born in the US or in Europe?
I was speaking/asking about ethnic Poles who identify as ethnic Poles and speak Polish, and I thought these were the people (Polish-Americans) you grew up among.
However, this man (from Australia) you quoted spoke German.
And why did this Polish guy speak German?
To me this might mean that he is (if he is the 1st generation immigrant) one of the Volksdeutsche whose family lived in Poland, possibly for centuries, and either got expelled from Poland proper after the war or had to leave because some of the eastern German territories were given to Poland, also after the war.
I find it incredible that a German would fight in the Polish Underground or even would be accepted as a fighter there but, again, maybe he didn’t speak English and had to speak to you in German.
Why would they talk about Jews?
If the above is true, or even if they were ethnic Poles who just chose, for some reason, to communicate with you in German, if they came to the US in the early 50s, this means that they were either former Nazis or Nazi collaborators who a) needed to get out of the Eastern Europe/Germany to avoid being prosecuted for war crimes; or b) were brought in by the US among fairly large numbers of such people the US brought in to help in the Cold War.
These people would have no incentive to talk about the Jews even or, especially, to show their antisemitism for obvious reasons.
READER_
It is thought by many authorities that the vast majority of
Christians” were in fact ‘God Fearers”, who thronged into the synagogues , attracted by the sensible tenets of the Torah and also that at that era, a change had come as regards belief in Idols, an opening of their minds to a REAL belief which made sense.
Many believed that they were following a way into Judaism, deceived by the “preachers” just as do the MIssionaries of today.
The Jewish Sages, stated that they were NO longer Pagans, also not yet Jews (not being circumcised) and directed that they follow the 7 Laws of NOACH. They exist to this day.
MIHEL S.
“Hebrew, Ladino, English , Yiddish……??? This ambiguous question….
ALl except “English” are dialects of Hebrew, not Peoples. Brush up on your Jewish knowledge outside the Torah.
The ignorance of people otherwise knowledgeable often astonishes me. This is one of the instances.
READER-
There were literally dozens of sects ALL involving Judaism as their religion.
There was NO Christianity until after Bar Kocheba. The called themselves Ebiyonim, “The Poor”. But during the WAR Bar Kocheba issued an order to his lieutenant written on a shard found years ago, that if the inhabitants of that village refused to help in the struggle -to “take them away in chains”.
It’s presumed that this was a very early Christian village, although not named as such. But we have only little knowledge of how long after the War the name “Christian” came into being. There is some now lost documentation mentioned i,n much later writings.
It is a FACT that until the end of the War, all the sect leaders (9)(Popes??) were JEWS and after the War, NON Jews.
READER-
Many Border dwellers were fluent in each other’s language, a natural consequence of proximity. Nothing underhand needs to have been.
PELONI
You are absolutely right. After the War many Polish Jews returned home to find their houses STOLEN by Poles who committed massacres against the innocent Jews to a huge degree happening all over the country.
LOOK UP the Details Michael S. The Jews did NOT “fare” well there.
Maybe your Polish relatives were involved…….!!
@Michael
You clearly grew up with a more amicable version of Poles than is true of many others. I had relatives on both sides of the Atlantic which faired not as well as you in dealing with Poles, but they were in fact Jews and not Christians. In addition to, and more relevant than, either of our anecdotal tales, the pogroms which followed the end of WWII led to the great slaughter of Holocaust surviving Polish Jews, and this later led to their massive migration to Israel, thus making it clear that the war clearly did not end in 1945 for a great many Poles, too many in fact.
Reader.
Which are you, Hebrew, Ladino, English or Yiddish ?
@Michael S
Why would they talk about Jews?
And why did this Polish guy speak German?
Was he a German from the lands that went to Poland after the war?
Were those Polish-Americans born in the US or in Europe?
Keelie,
The year “0” actually doesn’t exist
As for Constantine, he wasn’t baptized into Christianity until he died”. He is most famous for having ALLOWED the practices of that faith, as well as settling disputes among its various factions. This demonstrates that Christianity already had a large following, long before Constantine was even born.
Hi, Reader. You said,
I grew up among Polish-Americans. None of them talked about the Jews. One Polish friend (in Australia)had fought in the Polish Underground. He used to say
„Kriegsverbrecher sind alles Schweine“
He didn’t have any animosity toward anyone. His “war” ended in 1945.
Reader, a very interesting list. The problems I am having is that from the year 0 CE until about 370 CE something was going on in that part of the world (actually from 70 CE until 370 CE). The question is what was it? Hadrian’s crowd was gone, and it was then Constantine who – after an interesting dream – decided to form this new religion using a home-made narrative.
It gets a little complicated from that point forward.
I read a very interesting book some time ago, called “Constantine’s Sword”. By James (?) Carroll. Lots of food for thought.
@keelie
I think if Christianity started out as a new sect, it was kind of doomed to become anti-Jewish.
The Great Revolt (the Jewish uprising in the 1st and 2nd centuries) must have been a huge problem for the Romans, and they killed more than million and and a half Jews during this era.
In those days it must have been extremely dangerous to be associated with Jews, or to be a Jew, or starting to promote a Jewish belief in a new Messiah (horrible times for Jews are always thought of by them as announcing the coming of Moshiach).
Imagine in those days a new sect/religion whose membership is heavily Jewish or whose members follow Torah in some way, or whose canons are based on the Jewish Bible.
How soon would the Roman government start thinking of them as enemies of the state?
What should this new sect do to save itself from persecution and possible annihilation?
1) Separate itself from the Jews physically;
2) make sure to state their loyalty to Romans in their texts;
3) make sure to express its dislike or even hate for Jews;
4) make sure that very few or, ideally, none of its members are
Jewish, even those believing in Jesus, and make it a Gentile
sect;
5) claim that the Jewish Bible is full of prophesies of their new
Messiah but that the Jews completely misunderstood it,
rejected Jesus because they are evil, etc.;
6) claim that the Jews absolutely hate their sect and persecute its
members;
7) fight the competing sects by accusing them of being either
Jews or Judaizers;
8) eventually starting to attack the Jews physically, destroying
their synagogues, etc
It is possible that it might have been a survival strategy in the mean and dangerous Roman world at first and then it just stayed this way, plus the Romans probably did mold it to their liking or it was molded eventually to the liking of the Romans.
So it seems that the hatred of Jews was the most attractive aspect of Catholicism…
I understand that their knowing that Jesus was a Jew is a fairly recent discovery. You have to hand it to the Romans; they really knew how to handle the “political aspects” of religion. In my opinion the entire religion was molded by the Romans to extend their political power. This is (obviously) not the best way as we all know.
1) they didn’t know this themselves, it is a recent Christian
discovery (I am not kidding);
2) if it did happen, knowing Poles, they would stop being Catholic;
3) Poles were actually wondering why Jews go like sheep to the
slaughter “because if we were in this situation, we would have
acted differently” – does this mean that the Poles thought of the
Jews as their fellow citizens?
The motto of the rebels was “Let me die with the Philistines” /”Tamot nafshi im Plishtim” (Judges 16:30), they knew that they are going to die because the ghetto was going to be liquidated but they made a choice to die while inflicting as much damage on the Germans as they could.
There were people in the ghetto who were still in hiding, and, of course, they were against the uprising.
Musing… Wonder what difference it would have made if the devout Polish Roman Catholics had been told by their religious leaders that Jesus was a Jew; no more, no less…