Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule took various forms of

organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in

Europe by Jews during World War II. The term is particularly connected with the
Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as
well as bothpassive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Due to military strength of Nazi Germany and its allies, as well as the administrative system
of ghettoization and the hostility of various sections of the civilian population, few Jews were
able to effectively resist the Final Solution militarily. Nevertheless, there are many cases of
attempts at resistance in one form or another including over a hundred armed Jewish
uprisings.[1] Historiographically, the study of Jewish resistance to German rule is considered
an important aspect of the study of the Holocaust.

Types of resistance[edit]
The French historian Julian Jackson argued that there were three discrete forms of Jewish
resistance in the course of his study of the German occupation of France:
"One can distinguish three categories of Jewish resistance: first, individual French Jews in
the general Resistance; secondly, specifically Jewish organizations in the general
Resistance; thirdly, Resistance organizations (not necessarily comprising Jews alone) with
specifically Jewish objectives."[2]
In his book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, Martin Gilbert defines Jewish resistance
more widely:
"In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps,
the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would
be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water
under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to
gloat over panic and despair.
Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To
resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of
animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of
resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a
contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit." [3]

This view is supported by Yehuda Bauer, who wrote that resistance to the Nazis comprised
not only physical opposition, but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and
humanity despite the humiliating and inhumane conditions. Bauer disputes the popular view
that most Jews went to their deaths passively. He argues that, given the conditions in which
the Jews of Eastern Europe had to live under and endure, what is surprising is not how little
resistance there was, but rather how much resistance was present.

Ghettos across German-occupied Poland[edit]

Further information: Ghetto uprising, Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
In 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was cut off from its access to Polish underground newspapers,
and the only newspaper allowed to be imported into the confines of the ghetto was
the General Government propaganda organ Gazeta ydowska. As a result, from roughly
May 1940 to October 1941, the Jews of the ghetto published their own underground
newspapers, offering hopeful news about the war and prospects for the future. The most
prominent of these were published by the Jewish Socialist party and the Zionist Labor
Movement. These papers lamented the carnage of war, but for the most part did not
encourage armed resistance.[4]
Between April and May 1943, Jewish men and women of the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms
and rebelled against the Nazis after it became clear that the Germans were deporting
remaining Ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka extermination camp. Warsaw Jews of
the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Unionfought the Germans with a
handful of small arms and Molotov cocktails, as Polish resistance attacked from the outside
in support. After fierce fighting, vastly superior German forces pacified the Warsaw Ghetto
and either murdered or deported all of the remaining inhabitants to the Nazi killing centers.
[5]

The Germans claimed that they lost 18 dead and 85 wounded, though this figure has

been disputed, with resistance leader Marek Edelman estimating 300 German casualties.
Some 13,000 Jews were killed, and 56,885 were deported to concentration camps.
There were many other major and minor ghetto uprisings, however most were not
successful. Some of the ghetto uprisings include the Biaystok Ghetto Uprisingand
the Czstochowa Ghetto Uprising.

In concentration camps[edit]

Smoke rising from Treblinka extermination camp during the prisoner uprising of August 1943

There were also major resistance efforts in three of the extermination camps.

In August 1943, an uprising took place at the Treblinka extermination camp. The
participants obtained guns and grenades after two young men used forged keys and
snuck into the weapons store. The weapons were then distributed around the camp in
garbage bins. However, during the distribution of arms, a Nazi guard stopped a prisoner
and found contraband money on him. Fearing that the prisoner would be tortured and
give away the plan, the organizers decided to launch the revolt ahead of schedule
without completing the distribution of weapons, and set off a single grenadethe
agreed-upon signal for the uprising. The prisoners then attacked the Nazi guards with
guns and grenades. Several German and Ukrainian guards were killed, a fuel tank was
set on fire, barracks and warehouses were burned, military vehicles were disabled, and
grenades were thrown at the SS headquarters. The guards replied with machine-gun
fire, and 1,500 inmates were killedyet 70 inmates escaped to freedom. The guards
chased those who had escaped on horseback and in cars, but some of those who
escaped were armed, and returned the guards' fire. Gassing operations at the camp
were interrupted for a month.[6]

In October 1943, an uprising took place at Sobibr extermination camp, led by

Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhendler and Soviet-Jewish POW Alexander
Pechersky. The inmates covertly killed 11 German SS officers, including the deputy
commander, and a number of Ukrainian guards. Although the plan was to kill all of SS
members and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the guards discovered the killings
and opened fire. The inmates then had to then run for freedom under fire, with roughly
300 of the 600 inmates in the camp escaping alive. All but 5070 of the inmates were

killed in the surrounding minefields or recaptured and executed by the Germans.

However, the escape forced the Nazis to close the camp, saving countless lives. [7]

On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (inmates kept separate from the
main camp and put to work in the gas chambers and crematoria) atAuschwitz staged an
uprising. Female inmates had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and
Crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. At this stage they were joined by
the Birkenau One Kommando, which also overpowered their guards and broke out of
the compound. The inmates then attempted a mass escape, but were stopped by heavy
fire. Three SS guards were killed in the uprising, including one who was pushed alive
into an oven. Almost all of the 250 escapees were killed. There were also international
plans for a general uprising in Auschwitz, coordinated with an Allied air raid and a Polish
resistance attack from the outside.

Partisan groups[edit]
Main article: Jewish partisans
There were a number of Jewish partisan groups operating in many countries, especially
Poland. The most notable of the groups is the Bielski partisans, whom the
movie Defiance portrays, and the Parczew partisans in the forests near Lublin, Poland.
Hundreds of Jews escaped the ghettoes and joined the Partisan resistance groups. [1]

Assassination[edit]

On 4 February 1936, the leader of the NSDAP (Nazi) party in Switzerland Wilhelm
Gustloff was assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Croatian Jew.

On 9 November 1938, Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath was assassinated in Paris by a
Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan.

Belgium[edit]
Main article: Belgian Resistance
Belgian resistance to the treatment of Jews crystallised between AugustSeptember 1942,
following the passing of legislation regarding wearing yellow badges and the start of the
deportations.[8] When deportations began, Jewish partisans destroyed records of Jews
compiled by the AJB.[9] The first organization specifically devoted to hiding Jews, the Comit
de Dfense des Juifs (CDJ-JVD), was formed in the summer of 1942.[8] The CDJ, a leftwing organization, may have saved up to 4,000 children and 10,000 adults by finding them

safe hiding places.[10] It produced two Yiddish language underground newspapers, Unzer
Wort ("Our Word", with a Labour-Zionist stance) and Unzer Kamf ("Our Fight", with
a Communist one).[11] The CDJ was only one of dozens of organised resistance groups that
provided support to hidden Jews. Other groups and individual resistance members were
responsible for finding hiding places and providing food and forged papers. [12] Many Jews in
hiding went on to join organised resistance groups. Groups from left wing backgrounds, like
the Front de l'Indpendance (FI-OF), were particularly popular with Belgian Jews. The
Communist-inspired Partisans Arms (PA) had a particularly large Jewish section in
Brussels.[13]
The resistance was responsible for the assassination of Robert Holzinger, the head of the
deportation program, in 1942.[14] Holzinger, an active collaborator, was an Austrian Jew
selected by the Germans for the role.[14] The assassination led to a change in leadership of
the AJB. Five Jewish leaders, including the head of the AJB, were arrested and interned in
Breendonk, but were released after public outcry.[9] A sixth was deported directly to
Auschwitz.[9]
The Belgian resistance was unusually well informed on the fate of the deported Jews. In
August 1942 (two months after the start of the Belgian deportations), the underground
newspaper De Vrijschutter reported that "They [the deported Jews] are being killed in
groups by gas, and others are killed by salvos of machinegun fire." [15]
In early 1943, the Front de l'Indpendance sent Victor Martin, an academic economist at
the Catholic University of Louvain, to gather information on the fate of deported Belgian
Jews using the cover of his research post at the University of Cologne.[16] Martin visited
Auschwitz and witnessed the crematoria. Arrested by the Germans, he escaped, and was
able to report his findings to the CDJ in May 1943. [16]

France[edit]
Despite amounting to only 1% of the French population, Jews comprised about 15-20% of
the French Resistance. Some of the Jewish resistance members were Hungarian-Jewish
refugees.
French Jews set up their own armed resistance movement: the Arme Juive (Jewish Army),
a Zionist organization, which at its height, numbered some 2,000 fighters. Operating
throughout France, it smuggled hundreds of Jews to Spain and Switzerland, launched
attacks against occupying German forces, and targeted Nazi informants

and Gestapo agents. Armee Juive participated in the general French uprising of August
1944, fighting in Paris, Lyon, and Toulouse.[17]

Germany[edit]
Jewish resistance within Germany itself during the Nazi era took a variety of forms, from
sabotage and disruptions to providing intelligence to Allied forces, distributing anti-Nazi
propaganda, as well as participating in attempts to assist Jewish emigration out of Nazicontrolled territories. It has been argued that, for Jews during the Holocaust, given the intent
of the Nazi regime to exterminate Jews, survival itself constituted an act considered a form
of resistance.[18] Jewish participation in the German resistance was largely confined to the
underground activities of left-wing Zionist groups such as Werkleute, Hashomer
Hatzair andHabonim, and the German Social Democrats, Communists, and independent
left-wing groups such as New Beginning. Much of the non-left wing and non-Jewish
opposition to Hitler in Germany (i.e., conservative and religious forces), although often
opposed to the Nazi plans for extermination of German and European Jewry, in many
instances itself harbored anti-Jewish sentiments. [19]
A celebrated case involved the arrest and execution of Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish
architectural student originally from Stuttgart, in connection with a plot to bomb Nazi Party
headquarters in Nuremberg. Hirsch became involved in the Black Front, a breakaway
faction from the Nazi Party led by Otto Strasser. After being captured by the Gestapo in
December 1936, Hirsch confessed to planning to murder Julius Streicher, a leading Nazi
official and editor of the virulently anti-Semitic Der Strmernewspaper, on behalf of Strasser
and the Black Front. Hirsch was sentenced to death on March 8, 1937, and on June 4 was
beheaded with an axe.
Perhaps the most significant Jewish resistance group within Germany for which records
survive was the Berlin-based Baum Group (Baum-Gruppe), which was active from 1937 to
1942. Largely young Jewish women and men, the group disseminated anti-Nazi leaflets,
and organized semi-public demonstrations. Its most notable action was the bombing of an
anti-Soviet exhibit organized by Joseph Goebbels in Berlin's Lustgarten. The action resulted
in mass arrests, executions, and reprisals against German Jews. Because of the reprisals it
provoked, the bombing led to debate within opposition circles similar to those that took
place elsewhere where the Jewish resistance was activetaking action and risking
murderous reprisals vs. being non-confrontational with the hopes of maximizing survival. [20]

Netherlands[edit]

In the Netherlands, the only pre-war group that immediately started resistance against the
German occupation was the communist party. During the first two war years, it was by far
the biggest resistance organization, much bigger than all other organizations put together. A
major act of resistance was the organisation of theFebruary strike in 1941, in protest against
anti-Jewish measures. In this resistance, many Jews participated. About 1,000 Dutch Jews
took part in resisting the Germans, and of those, 500 perished in doing so. In 1988, a
monument to their memory was unveiled by the then mayor of Amsterdam, Ed van Thijn.[21]
Among the first Jewish resisters was the German fugitive Ernst Cahn, owner of an ice
cream parlor. Together with his partner, Kohn, he had an ammonia gas cylinder installed in
the parlor to stave off attacks from the militant arm of the fascist NSB, the so-called
"Weerafdeling"("WA"). One day in February 1941 the German police forced their entrance
into the parlor, and were gassed. Later, Cahn was caught and on March 3, 1941 he became
the first civilian to be executed by a Nazi firing squad in the Netherlands. [citation needed]
Benny Bluhm, a boxer, organized Jewish fighting parties consisting of members of his
boxing school to resist attacks. One of these brawls led to the death of a WA-member, H.
Koot, and subsequently the Germans ordered the first Dutch razzia (police raid) of Jews as
a reprisal. That in turn led to the Februaristaking, theFebruary Strike. Bluhm's group was the
only Jewish group resisting the Germans in the Netherlands and the first active group of
resistance fighters in the Netherlands. Bluhm survived the war, and strove for a monument
for the Jewish resisters that came about two years after his death in 1986.
Numerous Jews participated in resisting the Germans. The Jewish director of the assembly
center in the "Hollandsche Schouwburg", a former theatre, Walter Susskind, was
instrumental in smuggling children out of his centre. He was aided by his assistant Jacques
van de Kar and the director of the nearby crche, Mrs Pimentel. [22]
Within the underground communist party, a militant group was formed: de Nederlandse
Volksmilitie (NVM, Dutch Peoples Militia). The leader was the Jewish Sally (Samuel)
Dormits, who had military experience from guerrilla warfare in Brazil and participation in
the Spanish Civil War. This organisation was formed in The Haguebut became mainly
located in Rotterdam. It counted about 200 (mainly Jewish) participants. They made several
bomb attacks on German troop trains and arson attacks on cinemas, which were forbidden
for Jews. Dormits was caught after stealing a handbag off a woman in order to obtain an
identification card for his Jewish girlfriend, who also participated in the resistance. Dormits
committed suicide in the police station by shooting himself through the head. From a cash

ticket of a shop the police found the hiding place of Dormits and discovered bombs, arson
material, illegal papers, reports about resistance actions and a list of participants.
TheGestapo was warned immediately and that day two hundred people were arrested,
followed by many more connected people in Rotterdam, The Hague andAmsterdam. The
Dutch police participated in torturing the Jewish communists. After a trial more than 20 were
shot to death; most of the others died in concentration camps or were gassed in Auschwitz.
Only a few survived. The war grave of Dormits has recently been destroyed by municipal
authorities in Rotterdam.[citation needed]

In Allied militaries[edit]
Main articles: Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine, Jewish Brigade and Special
Interrogation Group
The British Army trained 37 Jewish volunteers from Mandate Palestine to parachute into
Europe in an attempt to organize resistance. The most famous member of this group
was Hannah Szenes.) She was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assist in the rescue
of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp atAuschwitz.[23] Szenes
was arrested at the Hungarian border, then imprisoned and tortured, but refused to reveal
details of her mission. She was eventually tried andexecuted by firing squad.[23] She is
regarded as a national heroine in Israel.
The British government formed in July 1944 the Jewish Brigade, which comprised more
than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine, organized into three infantry regiments, an
artillery regiment, and supporting units. They were attached to the British Eight
Army in Italy from November 1944, taking part to the spring 1945 "final offensive" on that
front. After the end of the war in Europe the Brigade was moved to Belgium and
the Netherlands in July 1945. As well as participating in combat operations against German
forces, the brigade assisted and protected Holocaust survivors. [24][25]
The Special Interrogation Group was a British Army commando unit comprising Germanspeaking Jewish volunteers from Palestine. It carried out commando andsabotage raids
behind Axis lines during the Western Desert Campaign, and gathered military intelligence
by stopping and questioning German transports while dressed as German military police.
They also assisted other British forces. Following the disastrous failure of Operation
Agreement, a series of ground and amphibious operations carried out by British, Rhodesian

and New Zealand forces on German and Italian-held Tobruk in September 1942, the
survivors were transferred to the Royal Pioneer Corps.