For the unfortunate Jews living in Nazi Germany and its occupation zones,
life during the war was scarcely bearable. As the Nazi plans for the Holocaust—the final eradication
of Jews and Jewish culture from Europe—were put into action, a few brave souls made a stand.
From the forests, the ghettos, and the hellish extermination camps, Jews fought
back against those who sought to destroy them. In this video, we tell their stories.
When the Germans took over Poland in 1939,
one of their priorities was to set up the now-infamous Jewish ghettos. The primary
function of these ghettos was to restrict the movement of Jewish people to a certain area.
By 1940, most ghettos were fully enclosed with brick walls and barbed wire. Patrolling
German police and soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone attempting to leave or enter the ghetto.
The largest ghetto was located in the Polish capital of Warsaw.
This immense inner-city prison camp covered 3.4 square kilometres and housed
460,000 Jewish prisoners at its peak. However, these numbers soon began to dwindle.
In 1941, the daily food ration for each person living in the ghetto
was cut to just 184 calories—less than 1% of what the average person needs.
This spawned a lucrative black market. First, it was just food being smuggled into the ghetto,
but it wasn’t long before weapons started coming in, too. These were carefully stockpiled by the
Jewish Combat Organisation and Jewish Military Union, known as ZOB and ZZW.
In the summer of 1942, the deportations began. Without warning, German soldiers entered the
ghettos to round up people for what they said was “Resettlement in the East.” In reality,
they were being sent to extermination camps. The largest of these deportations
was scheduled for January 1943, but this time, the resistance was prepared.
On January 18th, SS troops and German police stormed into the Warsaw ghetto. They shot 600
people then began rounding up another 5,000. Then, seemingly from nowhere, the resistance appeared.
Men and women of the ZOB and ZZW threw a barrage of Molotov cocktails at their oppressors
then opened fire with pistols at close range. The Germans were decimated and rapidly forced
out of the ghetto. Expecting a counter-attack, the resistance fighters set up fortifications.
They held out until April, beating back several German attacks and forcing the resignation of
the German commander. But on the 19th, 2,000 SS troops launched a massive frontal assault.
The resistance was well prepared but couldn’t hope to withstand such numbers.
They went down fighting, forcing the SS to capture the ghetto block by block. Afterwards,
the Germans liquidated the site, killing and deporting an estimated 56,065 people.
But their last stand hadn’t been in vain.
Their sacrifice inspired uprisings in 100 different ghettos across eastern Poland.
For those who managed to escape starvation and deportation in the ghettos, there were other ways
to fight back against the Nazis. Many Jews joined partisan units operating from forests across
Europe. Jewish partisans were active in Poland, France, Belgium, the Soviet Union,
the Baltic and Yugoslavia. Some groups, such as the famous Bielski Partisans of Poland,
looked after Jewish civilians. Others, like the Belarussian Chkalov Brigade,
only accepted armed fighters with some combat experience.
Outside Lithuania and Yugoslavia, there was no cohesive partisan central command.
Each group had its own objectives and set its own rules. Some groups stole food, clothing,
and supplies from civilians at gunpoint, while others tried to establish civilian communes.
Communist partisan groups operating in the occupied Soviet Union were occasionally supplied
directly by the Red Army and given military orders, but most didn’t receive this level of
support. They relied on the individual skills of their members and supplies looted from the enemy.
It’s estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews served as partisans during the Second World
War. 4,500 of these were from Yugoslavia alone, where they helped to liberate the country from
Axis rule. 3,000 Jewish partisans fought on the front lines. Over one-third were killed in action,
and ten were awarded Yugoslavia’s highest honour: the Order of the People's Hero.
Even though they were often beaten, starved, and worked to near-death,
some of the extermination camp prisoners found the strength to fight back. There were many small acts
of sabotage, especially in camps where prisoners were forced to manufacture war materials.
In some camps, Jewish prisoners banded together to launch full-scale revolts.
At the Treblinka Extermination Camp in August 1943, two young men managed to steal the armoury
key from a guard. Using scrap, they successfully copied the key and replaced the original. The
Nazis were none the wiser. The men then sneaked into the armoury and stole grenades, ammunition,
and weapons, which they distributed to the other inmates. Halfway through this heist,
a guard caught another prisoner with stolen money and took him for interrogation.
He knew about the plot, and the Jewish ringleaders feared he would spill the beans under torture,
so they launched their attack early.
They set off a grenade, the signal for the revolt to begin, then attacked the guards with whatever
firearms or improvised weapons they could get their hands on. At first, the Nazis were taken
by surprise, and the Jewish prisoners managed to kill several, torch their vehicles, burn
down the barracks, and destroy fuel supplies. But it wasn’t enough. The guards counterattacked with
machine guns and killed 1,500 prisoners. Their sacrifice wasn’t in vain, though, as the camp’s
gas chambers were made inoperable and, allegedy, the camp was closed due to damage from the revolt.
On the flip side of the guns-blazing approach was the revolt at Sobibor
Extermination Camp. At this Polish camp in October 1943, the prisoners chose stealth.
The revolt was led by Alexander Pechersky, a Jewish Red Army soldier. He was one of
the first POWs to be sent to the camp, which otherwise held civilians. On his third day,
Pechersky openly defied an SS officer by rejecting cigarettes and bread intended to win him over.
This won him the support of the Polish prisoner leadership.
A few days later, Pechersky was ordered to sort through clothing belonging to murdered
prisoners from other camps. In a pocket, he found a note from one of these condemned men.
It read: “I don't know where they're taking us now. They say to Germany ... If all this is a lie,
then know that death awaits you too. Do not trust the Germans. Avenge our blood!"
Knowing what awaited him and the others, Pechersky decided to act.
He got a small team together comprising only the most diehard anti-Nazis in the camp. Each
was assigned a specific SS officer, whose routine they memorized. The conspirators then
waited for the commandant to leave with some of the auxiliary Ukrainian guards.
The revolt kicked off on October 14th, when several of Pechersky’s conspirators lured
their targets into a warehouse under the guise of presenting them with luxury goods found in
the luggage of gassed prisoners. The officers were then brutally hacked to death with axes, chisels,
and improvised knives. They then broke into the guard's living quarters and stole some weapons
left lying around. Everything went according to plan, until a particularly sadistic officer,
who had left earlier, returned unexpectedly. Without knowing a revolt was happening,
he shot several prisoners, as he customarily did to instil fear.
Pechersky’s crew thought the game was up, so they let loose with everything they had.
Yelling, "Hurrah, the revolt has begun," 420 Jewish prisoners stormed the gates. They broke
through and fled into the surrounding forest. Eighty were killed by fire from the watchtowers
and in perimeter minefields. A further 170 were recaptured and executed on Himmler’s orders,
but 200 made it out alive, including Pechersky.
A soldier through-and-through, Pechersky gathered weapons and a few loyal men before
marching towards the front line. Still wearing his original Red Army uniform, he joined a
Soviet-backed partisan group and fought as a demolitions expert. He later tried to re-join
the Red Army but was thrown into a penal unit for the crime of surrendering before he was initially
captured. This didn’t diminish Pechersky’s spirit though, as he earned his way out
and into a regular unit by extreme heroism and a near-fatal wound. He survived the war as a captain
and, at the Nuremberg Trials, testified against the SS officers his crew hadn’t managed to kill.
Not everyone has the courage and fighting spirit of Captain Pechersky,
and examples like his were fairly rare. For the vast majority of the European Jewish population,
survival itself was the most important form of resistance.
The Nazis wanted to eradicate Jewish people and culture from Europe, and the best way to stop
that happening was for the Jewish people to simply survive. With the odds so stacked against them,
it’s genuinely amazing what some managed to accomplish.
THAT was the tenacious story of the Jews who fought tooth and nail to resist the Nazis. But
what do YOU think? Did you know that the Warsaw Ghetto held out for months against the Germans?
Did you know there were so many Jewish partisans? And do you think YOU could
have organised a revolt like Captain Pechersky? Let us know in the comments!