Introduction: The World Wars
(1914-1918; 1939-1945)
The Jews of Poland were not strangers to the winds of war. Poland had long been a land torn by the power struggles of the empires to its east and west. In the First World War (1914-1918), which was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire waged war against Imperial Russia, France, Great Britain, and the United States. During the war, the Jews who lived in Poland experienced life under occupation, with borders shifting between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary over the course of the war. When World War I came to an end, Poland was finally reconstituted as an independent state. To the west, however, many in Germany were unsettled by the defeat in the war. The German desire for expansion would express itself within two decades in a new war - World War II, 1939-1945 - which would once again envelop the Jews as victims caught in the cross-fire; moreover, this time the war would directly target the Jews. Adolf Hitler had promised that the next world war would be one of Jewish annihilation. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, three million Jews came under Nazi rule; in June 1941, Germany invaded the USSR and the Nazi fire surrounded another two million Jews.
The Destruction of European Jewry
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Polish Jews under Nazi Rule
The Jewish residents of Germany had been stripped of their basic human rights following the Nazi rise to power in 1933. First subject to humiliation and progressive exclusion from German economic, political, and cultural life, the Jews became pariahs in German society. Once the Nazis occupied western Poland in September 1939, Polish Jewish citizens there were marked for special persecution. They suffered a complete loss of their civil rights, which included being limited in the physical space they could inhabit. Beginning in November 1939, in the Nazi-occupied provinces of Poland, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge to identify them as Jews. Jewish males were conscripted for forced labor and any assets possessed by Jews were expropriated by the German authorities.
Over the course of 1940 and 1941, Jews in virtually all major Polish cities were herded into urban ghettos, which were sealed off from the surrounding population. The ghetto streets, wired and enclosed, were cramped with massive number of displaced families. They became scenes of mass death, as the impoverished Jewish population slowly died from malnourishment and disease. In June 1941, as Germany invaded the USSR, mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen, which followed the invading Wehrmacht (German army), began the systematic extermination of Jews in eastern Poland and the western Russian provinces. At some point in 1941, the Nazi regime decided to expedite the process of Jewish extermination by employing more "efficient" methods of mass killing through special extermination camps, among which were Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. By the end of the World War II, three million Polish Jews (92% of the pre-war population) would be murdered.
Jewish Culture During the Holocaust: Kiddush Ha-Chaim (Sanctifying Life)
Despite the Nazi effort to restrict Jewish existence in Poland, and to take away their dignity, Jews tried to continue with their lives as best they could. How did Jews live during the war years? Was there any room for actual 'living' when there was almost no food, no water, and no sanitation, and as they suffered from forced labor, no work, disease, death, and irrational killings? What could Jews, stripped of their citizenship, positions, possessions, connections, homes, friends, children, and parents, do during the years that this war lasted? Yet, despite the deadly blows, and reduced to the most basic forms of existence, Jews continued to embrace life, while resisting despair and the Nazi death sentence.
Resistance to the Nazis did not only mean armed self-defense; the choice to stand up against the Nazis, to embrace survival and refuse acceptance of the Nazi death sentence, both as individuals and for the Jewish people collectively, represented a choice to resist the imposed German fate. This choice to resist the Nazi regime was reflected in various forms of behavior: the smuggling of food into ghettos; self-sacrifice within the family to avoid starvation and death; setting up soup kitchens despite the minimal food available; organizing cultural, educational, religious, and political activities to strengthen morale; and the work of doctors, nurses, and teachers within the ghettos of Poland. These were all parts of maintaining the health and moral fiber of Jews individually and as a whole. Each of these acts, as well as the later choice to take up arms against the Nazis and their collaborators, constituted a form of resistance against the Nazis. Kiddush Ha-Chaim, (the "Sanctification of Life") by Jews under Nazi rule signified the embrace of a survival ideology as a form of resistance. It showed an inner defiance that provided the physical strength required for active resistance. Jews tried in every way, and in every aspect of daily life, to survive until the Nazi tyrants could be vanquished.
Jewish Life in Nazi Ghettoes
In the first year following the Nazi invasion of Poland, much of the Jewish population was confined in large urban ghettos. The Warsaw ghetto, established in October 1940, was sealed from the outside world in November 1940. Eventually close to 450,000 Jews would be crowded into this largest ghetto in Poland; just over 30% of the overall population of Warsaw was packed into 2% of the total area of the city. Jews were forced to live six and seven to a room, with a total lack of sanitary facilities to accommodate the newly crowded conditions. Most alarming, however, was the ghetto food supply. The Judenrat, (the Jewish administration responsible for all realms of Jewish life within the ghetto), headed by Adam Czerniakow, who later committed suicide, was only able to purchase what amounted to miniscule rations for the Jews in the ghetto. Within the first 18 months after the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto, 20% of the population had died due to starvation and the terrible sanitary conditions.
Nonetheless, the Jews who were forced to live within the walls of the ghetto in Warsaw and in other cities did just that: they struggled valiantly to survive using all the ways they could. Jewish children in the ghetto were still educated, with small groups of children being taught in secret by a teacher whose salary usually consisted of a little food. Zionist youth movements in the Warsaw ghetto also operated two underground high schools. In the Lodz ghetto, where education was permitted, 14,000 students attended 2 kindergartens, 34 secular schools, 6 religious schools, 2 high schools, 2 college-level schools, and one trade school in the period between 1940-1941. One 15-year-old boy in Vilna, Yitzhak Rudashevsky, aged 15, described the importance of having some diversion during the long days in the ghetto:
"My mood is just like the weather outside. I think to myself: what would happen if we did not go to school, to the club, and did not read books? We would die of dejection inside the ghetto walls."
Despite the hardships inherent in ghetto life, religious Jews continued their observance. The historian of the Warsaw ghetto, Emmanuel Ringelblum, estimated that some 600 minyanim regularly met to hold prayer services within the walls of the ghetto. Additional prayers were added to services, with special prayers recited for deliverance, such as Psalms 22 and 23, as well as prayers composed during the persecutions of the Crusades and the Middle Ages, which recalled those who chose martyrdom rather than denying the Jewish faith. Observing religious commandments, such as the keeping of the Sabbath and dietary laws (Kashrus), became nearly impossible in the ghettos. Jews were forced to work on the Sabbath and holy days; rabbis made special exceptions to permit the consumption of non-kosher food, declaring that the preservation of life for those who were starving was more important than observing religious commandments. In the Kovno ghetto, the young Rabbi Ephraim Oshry attempted to address the new moral and ethical dilemmas of life under Nazi rule, providing answers based on halakhah to such unimaginable questions as whether a Jew was allowed to accept a work permit with the knowledge that it would lead to the death of another Jew, or whether it was permissible for a Jew to acquire a forged birth certificate that hid his/her Jewish identity.
Social welfare organizations functioned in the ghettos, trying desperately to prevent the death from starvation and disease of the neediest Jews. In the Warsaw ghetto over 1,000 "house committees" were organized to provide education for small children and to encourage self-help among the inhabitants of individual apartment buildings. The committees also organized cultural activities for the inhabitants of the buildings and were themselves part of the umbrella group Zetos (The Jewish Association for Mutual Aid), and prior to December 1941, the Warsaw branch of the American Joint Distribution-AJD (AJDC) headed by the historian, Emmanuel Ringelblum. These welfare organizations also ran soup kitchens, as well as ghetto hospitals, schools for nurses, and a system of orphanages. The great Jewish educator, Janusz Korczak, who was also a physician, writer, and pedagogue, became head of the Warsaw Jewish Orphanage. In the ghetto, he did everything within his power to improve the situation of the children in his orphanage. Although offered the chance, he rejected the opportunity of going into hiding outside the ghetto and instead chose to stand by his orphans. On August 5, 1942, Korczak and the 200 children in his orphanage were deported to the Treblinka death camp where they all perished.
YIKOR
Cultural activities within the ghettos of Poland, and in the concentration camps, also constituted an important element of the continued Jewish affirmation of life . Orchestras were active in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos and elsewhere. YIKOR (Jewish Culture Organization) was an illegal group founded in December 1941 in the Warsaw ghetto. It maintained an underground library, held concerts and lectures, and supported the underground schools. Study circles, cabarets, musical and theater performances, and poetry recited from memory all served to preserve Jewish morale. In the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, female inmates created a cookbook with recipes recorded from memory.
One of the most important acts of cultural resistance within the ghettos was the effort to document Nazi inhumanity and to preserve the history of daily life within the ghettos for future generations. The Oneg Shabbat (Joy of Sabbath) archive in the Warsaw ghetto was founded by Emmanuel Ringelblum, the young historian who was head of Zetos. He persuaded writers, journalists, sociologists, rabbis, and others to contribute to the documentation effort. Doctors studied medical problems within the ghetto, others reported on culture and education, as well as life in the work camps and in other ghettos. The materials collected in the archive were packed and hidden in milk cans which were then buried in the ghetto; they were recovered following the war. Ringelblum, who was murdered in March 1944 after he was found in hiding, also kept a diary of his experiences during the war. Many Jews wrote diaries during the war, and although most were lost, those that survived, as did Herman Kruk's chronicle of the Vilna Ghetto, provide some of the only firsthand testimony of what Jews endured in the ghettoes during the war.
Those who believed that the Nazi persecution of the Jews would be over in a matter of time sparked the effort to preserve morale and improve Jewish life in the ghettos. Until the Nazis could be defeated, however, they believed it was of the utmost importance that Jewish morale be lifted and that Jews should care for one another as best they could. The secrecy with which the Nazi regime decided upon its plan for the mass murder of European Jewry meant that most of those Polish Jews isolated in ghettos could not have known what deportation for "resettlement" or "hard labor" actually meant. Nevertheless, Jewish ghetto leaders believed that the longer Jews could continue to survive within the ghettos, the better chance they had of preserving a maximum number of Jewish lives until the Nazi defeat.
The Last Resort: Young Jews Choose Armed Resistance
Some of the first Jews to understand the scope of the Nazi plan for the mass murder of European Jewry were youth movement activists. They learned of the mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe in the autumn of 1941, including a report of the mass murder of Jews in Ponary near Vilna. The 23-year-old Abba Kovner, a member of HaShomer HaTzair, concluded in December 1941 that Nazi policies were aimed at mass murder and therefore armed resistance was the only solution:
"Vilna is not just Vilna. The shootings at Ponary are not just an episode...we are facing a well-planned system that is hidden from us at the moment. There is no rescue...Is there a way out? Rebellion and armed resistance. We are headed for absolute, total annihilation...Hitler intends to kill all the Jews...the Jews of Lithuania stand at the first place. Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter. We may be weak and defenseless but our only response to the enemy must be resistance."
Still, Kovner did not have any concrete proof that his assumptions were correct. It was difficult to convince others that armed resistance, which would surely result in the retaliatory murder of many, was the proper course. Despite the disbelief, the hostility of local populations, and the isolation faced by Jews cut off from other communities, Jewish youth active in Zionist, Bundist, and Communist youth movements came together in a number of places to resist the Nazis through armed conflict. The option of armed resistance was generally taken as a last resort, and only after the Jewish underground groups in various locations became convinced that the Nazis were bent on the total annihilation of the Jews. It was clear that fighting against such an overwhelming foe would not mean survival; it would mean a proud death, and to be remembered as defenders of the Jewish people. Jewish underground groups in ghettos, concentration camps and extermination camps, along with partisan groups in the forests, engaged in armed resistance in any way they could.
Uprisings
The most famous revolt took place in the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943. It was led by Mordecai Anilewicz, Yitzhak Zuckerman, Josef Kaplan, Zivia Lubetkin, and others. The uprising lasted from April 19 to May 16, 1943. Abba Kovner attempted unsuccessfully to organize a revolt in the Vilna ghetto before the final deportations in September 1943. Facing opposition from the ghetto leadership and the majority of the ghetto population who refused to believe his dire predictions, Kovner led his band of fighters outside of the ghetto to fight the Nazis in partisan attacks in the forests. Uprisings also took place in Bialystok (August 16, 1943), Mir (August 9, 1942), Lachva (September 3, 1942), Kremenets (September 9, 1942), Czestochowa (October 25, 1943), Nesvizh (July 22, 1942), and Tarnow (September 1, 1943) when final deportations were announced.
Despite almost impossibly difficult conditions, uprisings also occurred in death camps and concentrations camps. The most well known uprisings occurred in Treblinka in August 1943, Sobibor in October 1943, and Auschwitz in October 1944. Some Jews managed to escape from the camps, but such cases were rare, and those who were re-captured were executed. It is difficult to measure the impact of Jewish armed resistance efforts in terms of the number of German soldiers killed, or its effect on Nazi policy; in most cases, the practical results were negligible. The overall impact of armed Jewish resistance instead seems to have been much greater on the post-Holocaust consciousness of world Jewry.
But How can I sing-My world is laid to waste.How can I play with wringed hands?Where are my dead? O God, I seek them in every dunghill,In every heap of ashes... O tell me where you are.
Scream from every sand dune, from under every stone,Scream from the dust and fire and smokeIt is your blood, your sap, the marrow of your bones,It is your flesh and blood! Scream, scream aloud!
For many years after the Holocaust, a distinction was made between those "heroes" who chose to actively resist their Nazi oppressors, and those Jewish victims who allowed themselves to be passively led to their death, like "sheep to the slaughter". In recent years, scholars who study the Holocaust have come to realize that such a distinction not only tarnishes the memory of those who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, it also fails to account for the many forms of resistance exhibited by Jews under Nazi rule on the individual and daily level. These forms of resistance affirmed their desire to continue life, at all costs. The choice to resist the Nazi condemnation of Jewish life through the daily affirmation of the sanctity of life in countless acts of spiritual and cultural resistance, provides an enduring testament to the dignity of the Jewish people murdered in Europe. The courage of those who died and their affirmation of the sanctity of human life require us to preserve their memory and to honor them.
The survivors of the Holocaust, who emerged from the Nazi camps, or who managed to survive by hiding in the city or in the forests, are the moral conscience of our generation, witnesses to both the depths of human depravity and to the heights of human courage.
Zog Nit Keyn Mol! Hymn of the Partisans
By Hirsh Glik, 1943
Written by a 21-year-old Yiddish poet, Hirsh Glik (1922-1944), Zog Nit Keyn Mol! became the hymn of the United Partisan Organization in 1943. It was sung in all the camps of Eastern Europe as a song of resistance. After the war, it reached Jewish communities around the world, where it has been sung as a memorial for Jews martyred during the war.
זאָג ניט קײן מאָל אַז דו גײסט דעס לעצטן װעג,
כאָטש הימלען בלײַענע פֿאַרשטעלן בלױע טעג,
קומען װעט נאַך אונדזער אױסגעבענקטע שעה -–
ס’װעט אַ פּױק טאַן אונדזער טראָט — מיר זײנען דאַ!
פֿון גרינעם פּאַלמענלאַנד ביז װײַסן לאַנד פֿון שנײ,
מיר קומען אָן מיט אונדזער פּײַן, מיט אונדזער װײ,
ֶאון װוּ געפֿאַלן ס’איז אַ שפּריץ פֿון אונדזער בלוט,
שפּראָצן װעט דאָרט אונדזער גבֿורה, אונדזער מוט.
ס’װעט די מאָרגנזון באַגילדן אונדז דעם הײַנט,
און דער נעכטן װעט פֿאַרשװינדן מיטן פֿײַנד,
נאָר אױב פֿאַרזאַמען װעט די זון אין דעם קאַיאָר —
װי אַ פּאַראָל זאָל גײן דאָס ליד פֿון דור צו דור.
דאָס ליד געשריבן איז מיט בלוט און ניט מיט בלײַ,
ס’איז ניט קײן לידל פֿון אַ פֿױגל אױף דער פֿרײַ,
דאָס האָט א פֿאָלק צװישן פֿאַלנדיקע װענט
דאָס ליד געזונגען מיט נאַגאַנעס אין די הענט!
טאָ זאָג ניט קײן מאָל אַז דו גײסט דעם לעצטן װעג,
כאָטש הימלען בלײַענע פֿאַרשטעלן בלױע טעג,
קומען װעט נאָך אונדזער אױסגעבענקטע שעה —
ס’װעט אַ פּױק טאָן אונדזער טראָט — מיר זײַנען דאָ!
Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,
Khotsh himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg.
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho —
S’vet a poyk ton undzer trot — mir zaynen do!
Fun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney,
Mir kumen on mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey,
Un vu gefaln s’iz a shprits fun undzer blut,
Shprotsn vet dort undzer gvure, undzer mut.
S’vet di morgnzun bagildn undz dem haynt,
Un der nekhtn vet farshvindn mitn faynd,
Nor oyb farzamen vet di zun in dem kayor —
Vi a parol zol geyn dos lid fun dor tsu dor.
Dos lid geshribn iz mit blut un nit mit blay,
S’iz nit keyn lidl fun a foygl af der fray,
Dos hot a folk tsvishn falndike vent
Dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent!
To zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,
Khotsh himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg.
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho —
S’vet a poyk ton undzer trot — mir zaynen do!
Never say that you are going your last way,
Though lead-filled skies above blot out the blue of day.
The hour for which we long will certainly appear,
The earth shall thunder ‘neath our tread that we are here!
From lands of green palm trees to lands all white with snow,
We are coming with our pain and with our woe,
And where’er a spurt of our blood did drop,
Our courage will again sprout from that spot.
For us the morning sun will radiate the day,
And the enemy and past will fade away,
But should the dawn delay or sunrise wait too long,
Then let all future generations sing this song.
This song was written with our blood and not with lead,
This is no song of free birds flying overhead,
But a people amid crumbling walls did stand,
They stood and sang this song with rifles held in hand.
(Translated by Elliot Palevsky)
| Country | Population Before the War (1939) | Estimated Number of Victims | Percent Destroyed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland | 3250000 | 3000000 | 92% |
| Latvia | 95000 | 85000 | 89% |
| Lithuania | 185000 | 195000 | 87% |
| Czechestovakia | 315000 | 270000 | 86% |
| Greece | 75000 | 60000 | 80% |
| Germany | 230000 | 10000 | 78% |
| Austria | 80000 | 65000 | 16% |
| Hungary | 400000 | 300000 | 18% |
| Holland | 140000 | 105000 | 18% |
| Yugoslavia | 75000 | 55000 | 13% |
| Rumania | 850000 | 400000 | 41% |
| Soviet Union | 2800000 | 1200000 | 43% |
| Estonia | 5000 | 2000 | 40% |
| Norway | 2000 | 800 | 40% |
| Luxembourg | 2000 | 700 | 35% |
| Belgium | 85000 | 24000 | 28% |
| France | 320000 | 76000 | 26% |
| Italy | 45000 | 7500 | 11% |
| Bulgaria | 50000 | 0 | 0% |
| Switzerland | 20000 | 0 | 0% |
| Sweden | 8000 | 0 | 0% |
| Denmark | 7000 | 0 | 0% |
| Ireland | 4000 | 0 | 0% |
| Spain | 4000 | 0 | 0% |
| Portugal | 3000 | 0 | 0% |
| Finland | 2000 | 0 | 0% |