| |
April 19, 1943 marked the beginning of an armed revolt by a courageous and determined group of Warsaw ghetto dwellers. The Jewish Fighter Organization (ZOB) led the insurgency and battled for a month, using weapons smuggled into the ghetto. The Nazis responded by bringing in tanks and machine guns, burning blocks of buildings, destroying the ghetto, and ultimately killing many of the last 60,000 Jewish ghetto residents. The
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first large uprising by an urban population in German-occupied territory. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gallery 1. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gallery 2. Excerpts from General Stroop's report on the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising article from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. An extensive Warsaw Ghetto Uprising bibliography is available at the Wiesenthal Center site. Vladka Meed tells of how she watched the burning of the Warsaw ghetto from a building outside the ghetto. Late summer of 1943 saw armed uprisings at several ghettos and camps. On August 2, seven hundred Jews torched parts of the Treblinka death camp. Most of the rebels were killed within the compound and of the 150-200 who escaped, only a dozen survived. Two weeks later, Jewish paramilitary organizations within the Bialystok ghetto attacked the German army. The revolt ended the same day with the death or capture of all the resisters. Later, on September 1, inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto revolted. Most of the participants were killed, but some managed to escape and joined partisan units. The following month, 600 Jewish and Russian prisoners attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. About 60 survived and joined the Soviet partisans. An embarrassed Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers closed down and the camp leveled. Esther Raab, one of the few who escaped Sobibór, describes the preparations for the uprising. Read about the Rosenstrasse Protest staged by women in Berlin. |
On October 7, the sonderkommando (prisoners forced to handle the bodies of gas chamber victims) succeeded in blowing up one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz . All of the saboteurs were captured and killed.
Resistance continued until the end of the war. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum publication, Resistance during the Holocaust, describes examples of armed and unarmed resistance by Jewish and non-Jewish Holocaust victims. This 56 page PDF booklet requires Adobe Acrobat for viewing. Resisters, Rescuers, and Bystanders page at the Cybrary. "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" article on the Partisans. Visit the Resisters page of the People section for more information about resisters. Visit the Resistance Literature page of the Arts section for an annotated bibliography of recommended works. Interactive quiz on resistance. Lesson plans, discussion questions, term paper topics, reproducible handouts, and other resources for teaching about resistance are available here.
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust |