Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust by James M. Glass Read Free Book Online

project spearheaded by Adolf Eichmann to exterminate all Hungarian Jews, a group of young Zionists rescued thousands of Jews from the prospect of transport to Auschwitz. Issuing fake identity papers, impersonating German officers and Hungarian Iron Cross troops, finding and establishing safe houses, these young people never relented in their efforts to thwart German plans. 1
    In Nesvizh, Poland, a group of Zionist youths formed an under ground and began acquiring arms. What stood between this group and their objectives was the Judenrat . One of the underground leaders writes:
    ‘In addition to reorganizing the resistance to strengthen the ghetto community for revolution, it was vital to undermine Maghalief’s position as chairman of the Judenrat . His methods were unscrupulous. He believed that bribery alone would ward off calamity, and since he was our only representative to the German command, he had to be stripped of his power.’ 2
    In Nesvizh, the sentiment of resistance countered the Judenrat ’s approach to appeasing the Germans and selecting Jews for transport. Several ghetto inhabitants inspired by the resistance armed themselves and launched a putative attack against German troops. The German army, with the help of local police, quickly subdued the insurrection. With the ghetto in chaos, many escaped into the surrounding forests. The isolated, but free ghetto inhabitants sought out partisan units.
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    Resistors in the ghetto faced enormous odds.
    ‘So, during the winter of 1942–43, we basically lived like squir rels, hiding in a hole. As you can imagine, the air in the bunker stank like hell. On nights when it was snowing or otherwise very dark, we would lift open the cover of the bunker a bit. Otherwise, we would sit in our hole … no one in our group expected to come out alive from that hell. The main thing was not to be taken alive by the Germans, not to submit to their questions, their torture, and a passive death at their hands. We were always armed and had an understanding that if we were ambushed, we would fight until we were killed. If need be, we would shoot one another rather than be captured. It was inevitable that we would die – but death would come on our terms.
    Once I became used to that idea, I became extremely brave.’ 3
    Nowhere could the desperate condition of the ghetto be better witnessed than in the ghetto hospitals. Adina Blady Szwajger, a survivor and a doctor who worked in ghetto children’s hospitals in Warsaw, describes conditions in what can only loosely be described as ‘hospitals’: ‘A not uncommon sight: children appearing at the hospital with their heads and bodies covered with lice’. One child’s head ‘“looked grey”. It was only when you came up close that you could see that the grey mop of hair was moving.’ Ghetto desolation and a loss of will permeate another child’s description of his family’s fate: ‘When my sister died, Papa said it didn’t matter where they buried her because we wouldn’t live to visit her grave anyway. And Papa wrapped her up in paper and took her out into the street.’ 4 What it feels like to wrap the corpse of your child in paper and deposit her on the street is unimaginable, an act existing in a universe far away from the present. Yet, no huge imaginative leap is required to surmise that such daily occurrences had an enormously depressing impact on the ghetto populations. Homeless, lice-ridden children running through the streets snatching pieces of bread, begging, knocking at doors and dying in the gutter, brought to the ghetto a paralyzing hopelessness. During one German action, Dr. Szwajger administered lethal doses of morphine to infants to keep them out of German hands. Never enough food to satisfy the hunger of sick and dying children, any scraps that became available were viciously fought over.
    ‘One day, on the older children’s ward, the famished skeletons threw themselves at the soup pot, overturned it as they