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RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE –

RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE – . THE JEWISH POINT OF VIEW. Douglas Wadley, Regional Education Corps Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School Bradley, Illinois.

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RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE –

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  1. RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE – THE JEWISH POINT OF VIEW Douglas Wadley, Regional Education Corps Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School Bradley, Illinois

  2. resistance: any individual or group action consciously taken in opposition to known or surmised laws, actions, or intentions directed against the Jews by the Germans and their supporters.

  3. German Jewry: The first to suffer • When the Nazis came to power – • 520,000 German Jews (.078% of the population) • 1914: pop. had been 600,000 Jews • Approximately 1/6 of Germany’s Jews served her in WWI (100,000 casualties)

  4. 1932: of 37 Cabinet positions, only 3 were Jews and another 4 could claim Jewish descent • Jews controlled no major companies, industries, and not one of Germany’s wealthiest families were Jewish • High intermarriage rate in 1920’s (maybe 40%) • 500 conversions a year to Christianity

  5. Prewar Jewish school, Czechoslovakia Jewish shtetl (village)

  6. Many Jewish organizations operated to strengthen Jewish culture and resolve through education and social functions • Some wanted to prepare young Jews to emigrate • Zionists proposed the creation of Israel as a homeland for Jews

  7. The majority (325,000) of German Jews survived • Reasons for staying – • “How long can Hitler last?” • “Nazism is just traditional antisemitism.” • “How can I protect my business?” • “How can I learn a new language and culture?” • “How can I leave my relatives behind?”

  8. At the time of 1938, Shanghai was the only place in the world that required no visa • Took in more Jews (25,000) than Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa combined

  9. May, 1939: British closed the doors of Palestine to Jewish immigration except for 15,000 per year (max. of 5 years = 75,000) • October, 1941: another 150,000 Jews fled Germany

  10. Life in the ghetto – • Nazis reinstituted slavery, barbarism, and the ghetto • Several hundred ghettos • 1st was in Nov. 1939 in Piatrkow, Poland • Lasted to summer, 1944 (became known as the Lodz ghetto)

  11. Scene in the Lodz ghetto marketplace

  12. Basic characteristics: • Form of concentration camp • Conditions of maximum deprivation • Slum parts of a city • Inadequate housing, food supply, hygiene • Some were open; most became closed • Governed by Judenrat (Jewish Council)

  13. Scenes from the • Warsaw Ghetto

  14. Negatives of the ghettos – • Mortality rate • 20% died of natural causes (typhus, hunger, etc.) • January ’41-May ’42: more than 66,000 perished in Warsaw ghetto

  15. Judenrat, smugglers, profiteers Judenrat workers, skilled workers, shopkeepers “Floating” population: those living hand-to-mouth; odd jobs, smugglers Refugees – continually dumped in; didn’t know how to survive… Beggars, prostitutes, orphans Society in the ghetto

  16. Positives of the ghettos – • Smuggling • Underground newspapers, schools for Hebrew • Diaries, journals that made it through the war • Underground Zionist meetings • Graffiti, artwork that survived • Intellectual and spiritual life was never fully stifled

  17. Obstacles to resistance: • Ignorance • Unimaginability • Family solidarity • Religious faith

  18. Deceit, deception by Nazis – constant • How could the very young or very old resist? • Collective responsibility • Isolation from outside world in ghettos and camps • To escape – what would one escape to?

  19. Resistance in the camps • Just surviving was an act of resistance • Escape • Est. 600 attempts to escape from Auschwitz (400 successful) • Record everything • Sonderkommando: Jews who worked in the crematoria wrote diaries and buried them in the ashes around the crematoria

  20. Sonderkommando engage in open pit burning of bodies

  21. Physical, armed resistance • Treblinka (8/43) • Sobibor (10/43) • Auschwitz (10/44) • Crematorium IV put out of commission • Polish-led underground in Auschwitz, while helpful, never really affected the uprising • Gunpowder supplied by 4 young Jewish women who worked in the factories organized by Sonderkommando

  22. Resistance in the forests: • Partisan movements • 20,000-40,000 Jewish partisans in the forests around Eastern Europe • Although Jews made up only 1% of French population, they comprised 15-20% of French Resistance • Many Jews resisted as part of nationalist movements

  23. A group of partisans from various fighting units including the Bielski group and escapees from the Mir Ghetto on guard duty at an airstrip in the Naliboki Forest.. [Photograph #46677]

  24. Jewish servicemen (-women) • Americans: ½ million fought (11,000 died) • Soviets: ½ million fought (120,000 died) • Sept. 1939: 150,000 Polish Jews fought in Polish army; 33,000 were killed in battle • Jewish parachutists from Israel organized resistance in the Balkans • Worked with the British RAF

  25. Photos of Hannah Szenes

  26. TIMOTHY HURSLEY TIMOTHY HURSLEY

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