Resistance (3 page)

Is it appropriate to evaluate Jewish or any other kinds of resistance only in terms of how much concrete damage it had inflicted upon its enemy? Perhaps it should also be examined in terms of the moral effects it might have had upon the resisters themselves, upon the majority of the victims, most of whom could not be directly involved with any underground movements?

Some light might be thrown upon these and other questions by describing an encounter that happened in Warsaw during the 25th commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was an encounter between two men, a journalist who covered this event and Yitzhak Zuckerman, the second in command of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The journalist asked Zuckerman what kinds of strategic lessons have been learned from the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Zuckerman
replied, “I don't think there is any need to analyze the uprising in military terms. This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army and no one doubted how it was likely to turn out. . . . If there is a school to study the
human spirit
, there it should be a major subject. The really important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youths, after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. I don't know if there is a standard to measure that.”
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Bettelheim, Arendt, and Hilberg came to their respective views from diverse directions, bringing with them a variety of experiences, perceptions, and conclusions. And yet, rather surprisingly, with some qualifications, their overall interpretations about Jewish resistance and Jewish Councils reveal only limited differences. Bettelheim and Arendt conclude that the Jews were passive, and in a real sense they had given up their opportunities to stand up to the Germans. Through their refusal to resist they had cooperated in the destruction of the Jewish people.

Both Bettelheim and Arendt present their arguments as if these were based on facts.
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In reality, Bettelheim's discussions rely on hypothetical images and value judgments, not on facts. Arendt's discussions also grew out of a particular context. Some were closely related to her journalistic assignment—covering the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Relying on personal views rather than on factual materials, Arendt introduced the concept of the “banality of evil,”
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through which she asserts that human beings are capable of assuming roles of both victims and murderers.

Arendt's assumption met with strong oppositions from Primo Levi. As a former underground fighter, an Auschwitz prisoner, a survivor, and a respected thinker and writer, Levi argued that in the banality of evil Arendt was confusing the roles of victims and murderers. He wrote: “I do not know and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation, or a sinister sign of complicity, above all in the precious service rendered intentionally or not to the negators of truth.”
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Hilberg's conclusions are more ambiguous. When it comes to the idea about Jewish wartime passivity, as expressed through an
absence of Jewish resistance, the differences between Bettelheim, Arendt, and Hilberg are minimal. Nevertheless, their respective arguments vary. While Bettelheim and Arendt simply assume that there are facts behind their assertions, Hilberg is concerned about checking the veracity of his conclusion. Relevant here is the fact that Hilberg's views come from his particular definition of Jewish resistance. As we have seen, for him the existence of resistance, particularly Jewish resistance, is contingent on its effectiveness in reducing the strength of the powerful oppressors, the Germans. This means that he focuses purely and narrowly on armed resistance. Resistance exists only if it achieved its intended goals—a diminished or defeated enemy.

Facts do not necessarily speak for themselves. Researchers give to their facts voices and view them through particular lenses. In social science, in particular, facts are easily undermined by the researchers' value judgments. Needless to say, this is more likely to happen when, for a variety of reasons, researchers are more devoted to their own value judgments than to empirical evidence.

Not surprisingly, inevitably, the concept of Jewish passivity, and by extension complicity in the systematic destruction of European Jewry, eventually did come under attack. Prominent among these attacks was Nathan Eck's lengthy 1967 article.
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Such objections led to a mixture of history, polemics, and myths in much of what has been written about Jewish passivity and its accompanying accusations.
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One of the results was the emergence of new definitions of what resistance or underground opposition meant. By itself the term “underground movement” suggests an organized entity. In fact, most publications on the topic refer to collective resistance forms. These in turn are further differentiated into armed and unarmed, spiritual and non-spiritual, urban and rural, as well as many other dichotomies. When observed directly, all underground activities were dynamic rather than static, appearing under many guises. They were fluid. Moreover, resisters could simultaneously engage in a variety of acts, suggesting that the many varieties of resistance were not necessarily mutually exclusive. The multiplicity of forms, and their transformations and flexibility, underscore the complexity of the subject, and even hint at contradictions.

Frequently “resistance” conjures up images of actual combat. In reality armed confrontations between oppressors and their victims are rare. Under the German occupation most opposition involved
hit and run tactics by resisters. For example, urban national resistance to the Germans frequently focused on the collection and dissemination of information, on forging documents, and on the accumulation of arms. The few actual armed uprisings occurred late, like the 1944 revolt in Paris, when the Allies were already at the gate. Another example is the August 1944 Warsaw uprising, which ended with the destruction of the city and an estimated death toll of over two hundred thousand Poles. In fact, a consistent policy of most leaders of national underground movements was to prevent premature uprisings. Correctly, these leaders assessed early uprisings as suicidal gestures.
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Given the German goal of Jewish annihilation, some scholars have argued that any Jewish effort to stay alive, and any and all efforts to undermine the Nazi goals, qualified as a form of resistance. Others, however, believe that this definition is too broad and that it would cloud our understanding of the subject. From another perspective, Jewish day-to-day survival efforts are an order of activity very different from derailing trains or participating in an armed uprising. Attempting to live represented resisting death, not resisting an oppressor. Some of these objections seem valid; others less so. A compromise is possible.

Collective humanitarian activities on behalf of others, such as those in the ghetto, required extraordinary moral strength. Such efforts contributed to the perpetuation of Jewish life, while denying Nazi policies of annihilation. Organized and selfless attempts to protect others do constitute resistance of a kind, even if they do not result in concrete rewards. They affirm moral values. A more realistic and inclusive definition of resistances should include a range of prohibited armed and unarmed activities, such as: humane acts on behalf of others, the collection of prohibited historical evidence, and the rescuing of the persecuted.

Review of the Holocaust literature on resistance provides insights into how some assumptions about Jewish resistance evolved and endured. Philip Friedman, for one, questioned the view of Jewish Councils as contributors to Jewish destruction. A Polish Jew and historian, Friedman left a lasting impact on Holocaust research. In his relatively short career, Friedman covered a wide range of topics, including Jewish resistance, Jewish Councils, gentiles who rescued Jews, ghettos, and many more. His research concentrates on the victims rather than on the perpetrators. He had a keen awareness about the complexity of wartime history and an equally keen sense
about its moral dilemmas. Friedman's research echoes a position taken by the prominent wartime historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who insisted that all of Jewish history—the admirable and the less admirable—must be recorded. Indeed, Friedman stayed close to the empirical evidence, consistently warning against rush conclusions. His research about the Jewish Councils carefully distinguished different kinds of Judenrat groups. His findings show how varied these Councils were, ranging from the heroic to the collaborationist, therefore questioning any conclusions about Jewish complicity in their wartime destruction.
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In 1977 came Isaiah Trunk's pathbreaking research about the Judenrat,
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a book that retains its place as the definitive study on the subject. Trunk's results show how diverse the reactions of the Judenrat groups and individual Judenrat members were. His systematic survey of the roles played by the wartime Councils covers a wide range of behaviors, including full support for underground ghetto movements, heroic, collective and individual opposition to German orders, individual and collective suicides to protest calamitous orders, as well as reactions that verge on collaboration with the enemy.

Trunk's research offers no simplistic, uniform conclusions. All along, he emphasizes the complexity of the subject, inviting readers to venture their own interpretations of the data. His volume also explores the unprecedented historical changes that were an inherent part of the Holocaust. His exhaustive research undermines persistent assertions about Jewish passivity and complicity.

Focusing on Eastern Europe, Ruben Ainsztein specifically set out to refute accusations about Jewish passivity. He proceeded by documenting Jewish participation in a wide range of underground operations. Ainsztein's book
Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe
sought to rehabilitate the Jewish honor by showing how widely and often heroically the Jews participated in anti-German struggles.
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His book was followed by
They Fought Back
, which is a collection of articles by different individuals, each describing how Jews struggled in a variety of European countries and in a variety of wartime settings.
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Over the years, Israeli Holocaust historians have contributed important research about Jewish resistance under the German occupation.
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Outstanding among these historians is Israel Gutman, whose publications on the Warsaw Ghetto and Warsaw Ghetto revolt are enduring classics.
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As a holocaust survivor, a Warsaw
Ghetto uprising underground fighter, and through his personal connections to the underground movement in Auschwitz, Gutman provides a unique, first-hand perspective of the meaning and implications of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

The debates surrounding the issue of resistance have often led to conflicting and contradictory conclusions. Sometimes these discussions fail to produce clear-cut answers to the many emotionally charged questions they raise. And yet, out of these attempts to clarify and to instruct, two polar positions have emerged. One concentrates on Jewish passivity and complicity. The second portrays the Jews as active, courageous, and heroic resisters. Imbedded in each are some similarities. Those who accuse the Jews of passivity and those who insist on portraying them as heroic, collectively view resistance mainly as armed struggles. Most Holocaust scholars fail to embrace fully either extreme. Some try to reconcile these views, warning about the weaknesses of each, promoting a more moderate and balanced approach. Among the latter is Lucjan Dobroszycki, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and of Auschwitz. Dobroszycki offered an original approach to the study of resistance by posing questions: “Has anyone seen an army without arms? An army scattered over 200 isolated ghettos? An army of infants, old people, the sick? Armies whose soldiers are denied even the right to surrender?”
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This book seeks to answer this question with a resounding yes. Unprecedented oppression led to equally unprecedented forms of resistance, and what they shared was a belief that no one was alone and that, with the help of others, resilience could turn into resistance—acting not just on behalf of oneself to survive, but on behalf of an entire community of people. Resistance requires cooperation, a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself.

T
o tell the story of resistance, we need to tell the stories of individuals, Jews and Gentiles. I have decided to start with the very young—those for whom opposition came perhaps most naturally. What follows are brief portraits of three teenagers—two of them Gentile and the third Jewish—and how they coped with their wartime experiences. They were different yet similar. They dealt with their confrontation with a common enemy in ways that overlap and yet remain distinctive.

Born in 1922, in the small town of Krzemienice, Zygmunt Rytel attended the local elementary school, and later on the public high school, which was quite prestigious. As a Catholic and a good student, Zygmunt was automatically enrolled into this high school in 1936. Some of his Jewish friends were not as fortunate. Because it was a nationally funded school, the percentage of Jewish students enrolled in a particular year could not exceed the percentage of Polish Jews, who made up 10 percent of the Polish population.

Estimates of Krzemienice's prewar proportion of Jews are close to 50 percent. Given the Jewish emphasis on higher education, competition for entrance into this high school was fierce. Inevitably, Jewish students who enrolled into this select school were the brightest the community had.