Spiritual Resistance and Armed Resistance Among European Jew

In 1961 was held, in Jerusalem, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, coordinator of the Final Solution. Eichmann suggested that the victims didn’t put much of a fight. Other commentators in the same period accused Jews of “going like sheep to slaughter.” Since then many sources of information on Jewish resistance have been found and specific evidence on the subject ended any kind of debate towards the question whether Jews resisted or not: Jewish resistance did take place in different ways and places. There is however a debate on the definition of resistance. According to the variable definition of “resistance” there are variable ways of describing Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.

In this work I will try first, using Ruby Rohrlich’s introduction of his edited book, Resisting the Holocaust, (pages 1-19) to define the concept of Resistance and the different views one can have on spiritual and “pa

As Ruby Rohrlich states in his introduction, “resistance” is a concept “far from simple [to define], the term embraces a variety of operations, actions and movements performed by individuals, groups and nations” (page 1). Resistance is also considered as spiritual opposition taken against the oppressors. The definition may vary, but psychologically it is referred as a process in which the ego opposes the conscious recall of anxiety-producing experiences. In the camps and in the ghettos it was often considered that the mere fact of surviving was an act of resistance against the Nazi attempt of annihilation. Furthermore, in Hitler’s dehumanization of the Jews, not giving up, trying to remain human and refusing to abandon the spiritual fight meant opposition to the regime; in other words, resistance. Resistance was conducted individually or in groups, individuals refused to mentally bow, families gathered in camps and ghettos, other groups unified not to physically fight the Germans but to put all changes of survival on their side. The every day routine was resistance, gathering to exchange ideas, professors continuing to teach to others in the ghettos, celebrating religious days, believing, hoping and looking forward to a better time where peace would reign and life would not seem like hell was resistance. We must understand that for many, resistance was just a struggle for existence.

This type of action is passive resistance, it is opposition without confrontation; it should not be undervalued because it took a lot for these men and women to abandon their homes to flee, often without even knowing the extent of the horror of the Nazi “Solution” to the “Jewish question.” Additionally, for those who didn’t flee or hide, struggling to obtain life’s essentials by smuggling food, clothing and medication necessary to survive was also a form of resistance. “According to Alexander Kimmel, another Holocaust survivor, passive resistance among the Jews flourished, and in many ways. When the Germans tried to starve the Jews to death, they responded with massive smuggling. After the Jews learned that deportation meant torture and death, they jumped from the moving trains; they built hiding places, the so-called bunkers; they printed underground newspapers (polemic resistance).” These passive acts are legitimately referred as a type of resistance because once again they stand against the Nazi oppression and even though the risk taken is not comparatively as big as in active resistance, life is still endangered by not obeying to the Nazis.

Some topics in this essay:
Final Solution, Furthermore Hitler’s, Anne Frank, University Montgomery, Paulson Rohrlich, Indeed Jews, Kimmel Holocaust, History Resistance, Ruby Rohrlich, Solution Eichmann, jewish resistance, active resistance, camps ghettos, eli tzur, passive resistance, resistance meant, jewish resistance holocaust, armed resistance, partisan organization, united partisan, ambivalence antipathy, united partisan organization, jewish resistance occurred, yitzhak wittenberg decline, wittenberg decline united,