week 9 the feasibility of resistance and rescue: debating ... · the feasibility of resistance and...

WEEK 9

The Feasibility of Resistance and Rescue: Debating whether the Holocaust could have been Prevented

Prepared by Tony Joel and Mathew Turner

Week 9 Unit Learning Outcomes ULO 1. evaluate in a reflective and critical manner the consequences of racism and prejudice

ULO 4. recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust, and question Hitler’s role in these events

Introduction This week’s learning module grapples with two of the most controversial issues that continue to influence historiographical debate about the Holocaust: the separate but related themes of resistance and rescue. Section 1 examines the question of Jewish resistance. Namely, could and should have Jews stood up for themselves more effectively against Nazi persecution and genocide? Did Jews fail to resist? This section also considers how we can define “resistance,” looking at the divergent ways in which Holocaust scholars view Jewish resistance against Nazism. Should actions only be called resistance if they involved armed force, or did simply surviving in the face of such atrocious treatment constitute an act of resistance? These questions are visited through the best-known example of organised and armed Jewish resistance during the Holocaust: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Did this act of resistance (and others) reveal the potentialities or futility of Jews employing physical force to oppose the Nazis and their collaborators?

Section 2 focuses on the question of whether the international community could have intervened to rescue Europe’s Jews. The broad theme of rescue envelops two main aspects: the alleged failure of the international community to provide safe havens for Jewish refugees prior to the outbreak of war; and the Western Allies’ and Soviet Union’s apparent failure to save Jews during the war by destroying (or at least interrupting) the Nazis’ killing facilities through direct military intervention. Section 2 focuses on the key issues involving the latter aspect that is concerned with what may have been possible during the war years. While you are encouraged to draw your own conclusions about the validity and persuasiveness of the arguments presented, it is important that you never lose sight of the fact that the primary responsibility for the murder of Jews rests with Hitler’s criminal régime and its many willing collaborators across Europe.

LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 1: Resistance

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In completing this learning module, you will continue to evaluate, in a reflective and critical manner, the consequences of racism and prejudice. You will also continue to recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Section 1. Resistance We have already seen the extent to which the Holocaust became genocide on a continental scale. To this end, Jews experienced the Holocaust in a multitude of ways and in various settings. Some were confined to ghettos, where they faced disease and starvation, and, for those who survived long enough, eventual deportation to camps. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered through mass shootings conducted by Einsatzgruppen and other murderous forces, often close to where they resided. Other Jews lived in western Europe, where survival depended on the zeal of local collaborators, as well as the kindness or indifference of others. Within each of these settings — and countless others — Jews were faced with a choice to resist what was happening to them, either actively or passively. Most Jews were ordinary folk — men, women, children, and the elderly — with no experience in handling firearms, conducting military operations, or surviving in harsh conditions. The very young and the elderly were in no real position to take up arms against the German army, and, likewise, those who were responsible for the survival of children or elderly parents were similarly encumbered.

Still, the inconsistency of Nazi rule and devotion to Jewish persecution meant that right across Europe Jews faced rather different situations. For many Jews in Poland, for instance, they were trapped within hermetically-sealed ghetto walls, and without outside support. Jews in western Europe generally had more freedom of movement, and arguably faced less of an existential threat than their eastern European counterparts. In other words, Jews in eastern Europe were in greater peril at an earlier stage, though in less of a position to resist through force. Conversely, Jews in western Europe had more opportunities to resist but were more inclined to “hold out” and avoid German capture rather than taking the risk of taking up arms. Whatever the complexities, the points to note are that we cannot generalise about Jewish resistance to Nazi genocide, and that it is important to understand the hopeless reality that Jews faced at the time rather than applying hindsight.

To further complicate matters, scholars do not even agree on what should and should not constitute “resistance” when it comes to Jews and the Holocaust. The eminent Holocaust scholars Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer embody these opposing — indeed, polarized — viewpoints regarding resistance. Hilberg and his supporters, for instance, place emphasis on active resistance and are especially critical of Jewish wartime leadership for a perceived failure to recognise the dangers posed by the Nazis and consequently failing to organise counter measures to resist persecution/extermination. Hilberg argues that the “reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance... the documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged,


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is very slight.”1 For Hilberg, the inability of Jews to resist the Nazi onslaught could be attributed to the much longer history of Jews in Europe. Over 2,000 years, the Jewish minority had learnt, according to Hilberg, that they could “survive destruction by placating and appeasing their enemies.”2 The consequences of applying this lesson of history to the existential threat Nazi Germany posed to European Jews — what Hilberg famously calls the “machinery of destruction” — were deadly. Hilberg concludes that Jews were “caught in the strait jacket of their history” and, subsequently, “plunged themselves physically and psychologically into catastrophe.”3

Bauer and other likeminded scholars, conversely, stress the importance of not only active but also passive resistance. Accordingly, such an interpretation argues that merely staying alive longer than the Nazis wanted could constitute a form of resistance. Life-saving acts of unarmed resistance — including smuggling food into ghettos and camps, or sacrificing one’s own life to save others from starvation or murder — constitute resistance in Bauer’s view. But the definition also extends to “cultural, educational, religious, and political activities” that may potentially boost the morale of Jews, as well as the work of Jewish doctors to preserve life.4 Clearly, then, a substantial gap exists between the definitions of Jewish resistance to Nazi genocide

posited by two of the world’s most esteemed Holocaust scholars in Hilberg and Bauer.

READING EXCERPT: Michael Marrus, in his piece entitled "Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust," summarises these positions and points to nuanced arguments that move beyond such polarisation.

Two of Marrus’ more interesting observations relate to:

• the importance of intent and motivation for defining whether resistance occurred;

• and the relative insignificance of resistance overall in the Second World War in shaping the course of events. Indeed, Marrus argues that resistance often involved unacceptable risks.

Importantly, from Marrus’ perspective, acts of resistance frequently were made with a view to preserving some form of record for the future. Acts of armed resistance, during which

1 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. (Quadrangle, Chicago, 1961). p. 662.

2 ibid. p. 666.

3 ibid. p. 667.

4 Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2001). p. 120.


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Jews faced insurmountable odds of survival and near-certain death, often were preceded by Jews recording their plight for future posterity, whether through secret diaries or final letters. Indeed, probably the most oft-quoted instance involves the renowned Russian-born Jewish historian Simon Dubnow. According to witnesses, when facing imminent death during a liquidation of the Riga ghetto in December 1941 Dubnow’s final words in Yiddish were a rallying call to his fellow Jews to ensure their genocide would be remembered in future: “Yidn, shreibt un ferschreibt!” (“Jews, write and record!”). 5

The eminent Jewish historian, writer, and activist Simon Dubnow, who was 81 years old when he was shot during a liquidation of the Riga ghetto in December 1941.

Source: “The Jews of Latvia: Professor Simon Dubnow and His Final Journey,” The Museum of Family History. http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-dubnow-simon.htm

[Accessed 3 May 2017]

a) Resistance in the Ghettos As Marrus notes in the above reading (in which he quotes Bauer), Jews took up armed resistance against the Nazis in no fewer than 150 ghettos in Poland.6 Despite what appears to be substantial physical opposition undertaken by Jews in ghettos, the interpretation of their behaviour has been the focus of much debate surrounding the

5 See, for instance: “The Jews of Latvia: Professor Simon Dubnow and His Final Journey,” The Museum of

Family History. http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-dubnow-simon.htm [Accessed 2 May 2017]

6 Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust. (F. Watts, New York, 1982). pp. 270-71, quoted in Michael Marrus, “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 30, no. 1, January 1995, pp. 83-110. Here pp. 103-04.


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adequacy — or otherwise — of Jewish resistance. Theoretically, Jews in ghettos had more opportunity to organise resistance than Jews concentrated in camps because the German presence within ghettos was minimal and responsibility for day-to-day administration lay with the Jewish councils, whereas in camps Jews came almost totally under direct Nazi control.

According to Lucy Dawidowicz, the reality of ghetto conditions militated against any systematic armed resistance developing.7 Dawidowicz argues that any criticism of the Jewish leaderships’ apparent failure to resist is unreasonable. The failure of resistance was not the result of cowardice but rather a function of the circumstances in which Jews found themselves. Few ghetto inhabitants were capable of embracing the notion that armed resistance might offer a greater chance of survival than complying with German orders. The possibility of escape existed only in some ghettos scattered across easternmost Poland, the Baltic States, and eastern Europe, which were located near forests where local partisan groups supported by the Soviets were hidden. Even in such circumstances, of course, there were no guarantees that Jews could find long-term protection.

(l) Frida and Hanan Altermann, killed during resistance operations in the Minsk ghetto.

(r) The Jewish partisan leader Tuvia Bielski, one of the celebrated Bielski Brothers made famous in the 2009 film Defiance (in which the central role of Tuvia is portrayed by Daniel Craig). Tuvia survived the

war and eventually moved to the United States where he died in 1987 aged 81 years old. Sources: Yad Vashem.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/item.asp?GATE=Z&list_type=3-0&TYPE_ID=85&TOTAL=&pn=2&title=Belorussia [Accessed 3 May 2017]

Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. http://jewishpartisans.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Tuvia%20Bielski [Accessed 3 May 2017]

7 Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945. (Penguin, London, 1990). See especially the chapter

“For your Freedom and Ours,” pp. 376-409.


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READING EXCERPT: Please read Barbara Engelking's piece entitled “In the Ghetto: Moods between Hope and Fear.”

Oscillation between moods of hope and fear partly explains why ghetto inhabitants may have been reluctant to engage in resistance. On the one hand, hope that the nightmare was nearly over meant that ghetto inhabitants felt that it was not worth taking the risks that resistance entailed. On the other hand, fear, especially of retaliation against family and loved ones, could paralyse the will to react against Nazi oppression.

b) The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Michael Marrus, in his reading mentioned above, observes that Hannah Arendt especially glorified the heroics of the participants in the most well-known example of resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which provided a spectacular exception to the metanarrative of Jewish caution.

Mass deportations of some 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka took place in the (northern) summer of 1942. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commenced on 19 April 1943, as the Germans sought to capture and deport the 55,000 to 60,000 Jews who still remained in the ghetto following the mass deportations the previous year. While the uprising demonstrates how Jews were capable of defying the Nazis, its tragic outcome also illustrates what might be the consequences of such defiance.

Jews gathered at the Warsaw ghetto’s deportation point known as the Umschlagplatz, 1942. Jews selected for deportation were ordered to meet at the Umschlagplatz, without knowing their destination was Treblinka.

Source: “Nachum Remba,” Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/remba.html [Accessed 3 May 2017]


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Does the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising exemplify the limitations of resistance? Or does it suggest possibilities of resistance that could and should have been grasped sooner? (For instance, if the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto had revolted a year earlier, they still would have numbered in the hundreds of thousands thus making it exponentially harder for the Nazis to counter.)

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Unfolds On 19 April 1943, Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto commenced the first mass armed revolt against Nazi occupation anywhere in Europe.8 They initiated the uprising in full knowledge that it most likely would fail, but by this late stage word had filtered back to the ghetto confirming the existing rumours swirling around about was taking place in the extermination camp located at the nearby village Treblinka. This knowledge meant that those Jews still remaining in the Warsaw ghetto in early 1943 knew for certain that, even if they decided not to resist, they were condemned to death anyhow.

In 1942, a few escapees from the Treblinka extermination camp had found their way back to the Warsaw ghetto to warn of the fate of deportees. Confirmation of rumours about extermination camps resulted in a fundamental change of attitude among those who remained in the ghetto, many of whom were relatively young and attracted to the idea of taking up direct military action. With nothing left to lose, some Jews in the Warsaw ghetto decided to fight back. Zivia Lubetkin, a participant in the uprising, wrote in her memoirs: “It was obvious to us that the Germans would liquidate us. We said to ourselves that in this situation, we must at least kill as many Germans as possible and stay alive as long as possible.”9

After 13 September 1942, the Jewish underground in the Warsaw ghetto prepared for the impending next wave of deportations (although there was uncertainty about when this would take place). As far as possible, the various youth and other organisations within the ghetto were coordinated into a plan of attack. Apart from some splinter groups, general consensus was reached that an armed revolt was the only feasible course of action.

So long as Jews believed that hope existed, most of them could not be easily persuaded to support an uprising. It was crucial, then, to counter against German propaganda promoting the misinformation that deportation meant relocation from the squalid ghetto to better conditions awaiting Jews at labour camps or farms. Arms either had to be procured (a difficult enterprise not only because of ghettoisation but also given the lack of support from the mainstream Polish underground) or manufactured (difficult due to a lack of appropriate materials). Consequently, the fighters were desperately ill-equipped.

8 The following account draws heavily on Shmuel Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in

Poland 1942-1944. (Holmes & Meier, New York, 1984). Chapter 10, “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Krakowski’s use of primary accounts by participants, translated from Yiddish and Polish, is of special interest.

9 Quoted in ibid. p. 165.


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The resistance leadership, mobilized under the ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa or Jewish Fighting Organisation), divided the ghetto into sections. Combat units were trained and weapons were hidden in preparation for the assault.

The steps taken demonstrate the complexity of undertaking large-scale, planned armed resistance:

• the ŻOB challenged the authority of the Judenrat, taking over the political and military leadership of the ghetto (this included executing any Jewish informers);

• German misinformation was counteracted through the distribution of leaflets;

• a network of hiding places, stocked with provisions, was established;

• the ŻOB refined its resistance strategy following a surprise German raid in January 1943;

• a community tax in support of resistance was levied;

• and members of different political groups were recruited and fused together in a unified resistance movement.

The surprise German raid conducted in January 1943 revealed weaknesses in the Jewish resistance strategy. Valuable lessons were learnt by the ŻOB for future resistance. According to Zivia Lubetkin:

The January uprising taught us, the Jewish Fighting Organisation, to prepare for the battle awaiting us. We learned that it was most important to put the people into a kind of military barracks, to plan the uprising so that all people would be in their positions, and to make sure that each company commander, each area commander, and each fighter would know what he was to do so that we would not be surprised when the Germans renewed the action.10

(l) Zivia Lubetkin, the only female member of the ŻOB High Command, and its leader Yitzhak Zuckerman.

Both survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, married after the war in 1946, and later moved to Israel. (r) Zivia testified in the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel, 3 May 1961.

Sources: “Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman,” JewishHistory.org http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/showpic.php?ID=679 [Accessed 3 May 2017]

USHMM. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=0&MediaId=4976 [Accessed 3 May 2017]

10 ibid. p. 182.


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When the time came, then, the Jewish uprising was (within the limitations of the situation) a well-coordinated and organised act of armed resistance. The ŻOB had succeeded in mobilising virtually the whole community.

Forewarned by the moderate resistance they had encountered in January, the Germans had reinforced their troops for the final attack on the ghetto that commenced on 19 April 1943. Ghetto residents held to their positions within buildings and in the extensive network of bunkers and tunnels while the organised Jewish fighters engaged in armed attacks on German troops who were then forced to retreat. Furthermore, the passive resistance of the general Jewish population who refused to report for deportation contributed to the effectiveness of the armed resistance.

Resistance against the Germans still was holding up remarkably well on the second day of the revolt. On the third day, however, the Germans unleashed a new tactic: fire. This had a devastating impact on the non-fighting ghetto populace, as this contemporary account by a member of the Jewish labour organisation, the Bund, demonstrates:

What the Germans could not accomplish, the all-encompassing fire did.

Thousands of people are dying in the flames. The smell of burnt bodies is suffocating. Charred bodies are lying on the balconies of houses, window sills, and unburnt stone steps. The fire expels the people from the shelters, forces them to escape from prepared hideouts, from safe hiding places, attics, and cellars. Thousands are wandering around in the yards, awaiting seizure, imprisonment, or direct death, at any moment at the hands of the Germans. Hundreds of people are losing their lives by jumping from third or fourth floors. This is how mothers are saving their children from being burnt alive.11

Fires continued to engulf much of the ghetto into the fourth day, but the majority of the Jewish fighting forces nonetheless remained intact. On the fifth and sixth days, fighting shifted to guerrilla combat as the German forces led by Jürgen Stroop, an SS commander, systematically combed the ghetto block-by-block for fighters and other Jews in hiding.

On the seventh day (25 April 1943), the Germans dropped incendiary devices from planes onto the ghetto and attacked it with heavy artillery. Desperately short of weapons and ammunition, the ghetto fighters moved underground into bunkers, and tried, at much risk, to gain more weapons from beyond the ghetto walls.

After a week, the Germans had effectively broken the back of the rebellion. Yet, isolated pockets of fighting continued as resisters remained in hiding for months afterwards. According to a Polish underground report:

Although two months have already passed since the beginning of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans have not been able to end this operation. In many places in the ghetto, in cellars, sewers, and closed buildings, remnants of the Jews are still hiding. These concentrations sometimes number a few hundred people. The Germans are gradually finding these concentrations and destroying them, with great cruelty, by

11 ibid. p. 198.


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blowing up buildings, flooding their foundations with water, and murdering the Jews they capture. In certain cases, there are battles with the Jews who resist stubbornly or try to break through to the “Aryan” quarters. From time to time, there is the sound of houses being blown up in the ghetto, and during the nights, close shooting is heard. Latvian and Ukrainian units, supervised by the Germans, are carrying out the final liquidation of the ghetto with great cruelty.12

In late September 1943 — that is, five months after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had commenced — Polish work groups assigned to blow up and clear away the remaining rubble continued to find survivors: the remnants of the resistance.

(top left) SS commander Jürgen Stroop flanked by his troops watching on as the Warsaw ghetto is set ablaze.

(top right) View of the fire raging in the Warsaw ghetto during the German suppression of the uprising.

(bottom left) Ghetto inhabitants captured after being forced to come to the surface due to their underground hiding spots either being deliberately flooded or smoked out due to fire. In the background

German troops are rummaging through Jews’ belongings.

(bottom right) Waffen SS soldiers flank Jews captured during the uprising as they are marched out of the Warsaw ghetto. Notice the little girl at the front, who somehow must have survived the atrocious living

conditions of the ghetto for several years before being captured in April 1943.

Sources: Getty Images. http://www.gettyimages.ae/detail/news-photo/reich-persecution-of-jews-poland-1939-45-warsaw-ghetto-news-photo/545734225

http://www.gettyimages.com.au/event/65th-anniversary-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-80316973 HolocaustSurvivors.org http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=photos&ke=73

“The Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Yad Vashem. http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/liquidation.asp


12 ibid. p. 212.


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PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Yisrael Gutman’s chapter entitled “Nothing to Lose,” pp. 387-401.

You can also read an account by Dr Marek Edelman, the last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s leadership group prior to his death aged 90 in October 2009.

(t) Marek Edelman in his youth, and as an octogenarian standing in front of the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes shortly before his death aged 90.

(b) Edelman’s coffin and portrait with a state guard of honour in front of the monument, 2009. Sources: “co było słychać na warszawskim stricie 19.04.1943 roku,” co slychac na stricie.

http://coslychacnastricie.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/co-byo-sychac-na-warszawskim-stricie.html “Marek Edelman, Commander in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Dies at 90,” NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/europe/03edelman.html Getty Images. http://www.gettyimages.com.au/photos/marek-edelman



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Edelman also features in this week’s powerful B&W documentary in which he paints a rather bleak picture.

Significance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising What, then, was the significance of this uprising? In one sense it can be argued that the exercise was futile. While some fighters managed to escape the ghetto and join partisan groups in the forest, it is doubtful that any significant numbers of Jews were saved. On the other hand, however, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising offered the chance to die in battle instead of waiting passively for imminent death in the gas chambers of Treblinka.

Memorial to the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who escaped through the underground sewers.

Photograph: Tony Joel, November 2011.


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Importantly, too, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising acted as an inspiration for non-Jewish resistance efforts in Poland. For the Polish underground, the heroism shown in the Warsaw ghetto demonstrated that the Germans were not wholly invincible. Jews, confined within a ghetto and equipped with few resources, had been able to withstand the superior German forces for far longer than had been expected. In addition, as word spread other Jewish ghettos now had both a model of resistance to follow and a source of inspiration. Even so, the relatively small populations of other ghettos coupled with their lack of access to arms severely limited the possibility of similar undertakings. Knowledge of events in the Warsaw ghetto also inspired insurrections in extermination camps including Treblinka.

Section 2. Rescue The polar opposite of the question of Jewish resistance, though hardly any less contested, is the role the Allies (the Western Allies, represented by Britain and the United States, and the Soviet Union) played in saving Jewish lives. That question, too, is split into two parts: what the international community could have done before the war began to accept more Jewish émigrés attempting to escape Nazi Germany; and, of most relevance here, what more the Allies could have done to “rescue” Jews during the war, particularly once it became understood that the Nazis were committing genocide.

a) The Western Allies The failure of outside states or agencies to protect or rescue Jews has attracted considerable controversy. As liberal democracies apparently supportive of human rights, Britain and the United States have borne much of the criticism. Arguably:

• during the prewar period, both states failed to take seriously the plight of Jewish refugees seeking a safe haven away from increasing Nazi persecution (see the earlier discussion relating to obstacles to German Jews migrating). Once the war began, Jews desperate to find refuge in countries such as “neutral” Switzerland often were met with distrust, even when authorities had a reasonably clear idea of the consequences of refusing entry.

• despite the British intelligence learning in 1942, from the decryption of secret German Enigma codes, that Jews were being massacred in the Soviet Union, this information was not shared with the Americans. Nor was it seen by the British as a serious reason for intervention. (Acting on the intercepted reports almost certainly would have made the Germans realise that their Enigma code had been cracked, thus ending Britain’s access to priceless war-related information from the enemy.)

• When information about Auschwitz became available in 1944, reaction from the democracies remained muted. A subtext to these criticisms is the notion that government élites in both Britain and the United States, if not active antisemites,

were at least latently antisemitic.

LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 2: Rescue

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By 1944, knowledge of Auschwitz was confirmed. Yet, even though the USAAF (American air force) bombed the adjacent factories at Auschwitz III (Monowitz), it did not target the extermination camp at nearby Birkenau. The decision not to bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau is one of the chief reasons why critics such as Dan Wyman have accused the United States government of deliberately ignoring the genocidal plight of European Jews. The issue, however, is not necessarily as cut-and-dried as it seems.

READING EXCERPT: Please read Michael J. Neufeld's piece entitled "Bombing Auschwitz: A Guide for the Perplexed." This reading, which is taken from the introduction to Neufeld's edited collection of articles on the controversy surrounding the bombing of Auschwitz, summarises the arguments for and against bombing.

Note especially Neufeld’s observations relating to the dangers of hindsight—that is, of failing to understand and appreciate events from the perspective of 1944.

An aerial reconnaissance photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, September 1944. Note in the top left corner of the photo the USAAF bombs being dropped, which targeted Auchwitz’s nearby

factories instead of its killing facilities. The Birkenau complex was never designated as a target.

Source: “Auschwitz,” Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/43486/Auschwitz [Accessed 3 May 2017]


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Jewish communities outside of continental Europe, particularly in the United States and Britain, also had failed to mobilise adequate governmental support for the plight of their fellow Jews trapped in Nazi-controlled Europe. Their suggestions for rescue often reflected poor knowledge and understanding of the issues. The establishment of the War Refugees Board in the United States in 1944, for instance, assumed that significant numbers of Jews still were alive and the provision of migration opportunities was the central issue. By 1944, however, most Jews under Nazi control already had been murdered.

• PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Richard Breitman’s chapter

titled “The United States and Refugees, 1933-1940,” pp. 180-89. PRESCRIBED TEXT: Also please read Louise London’s chapter entitled “The Unreceptive British Empire,” pp. 200-15.

Any assessment of the supposed inadequacies of rescue attempts must take heed of Pamela Shatzkes’ claim made specifically in relation to Anglo-Jewry’s inability to take into account the broader context of the war.13 Governments would not — indeed, could not — jeopardise the wider war effort in order to rescue Jews. As Neufeld observes, prolonging the war ultimately would have been more dangerous for Europe’s Jews: it would have meant that they had to endure life under Nazism for longer; and the diversion of resources to undertake rescue attempts could not guarantee the success of such missions anyhow. Nonetheless, it does not mean that one should ignore the seeming lack of concern for the plight of Jews demonstrated by those who might have been expected to care.

PRESCRIBED TEXT: You may wish to re-read Marion Kaplan’s chapter titled “Going and Staying,” with particular focus on the sub-section “Obstacles to Emigration,” pp.241-51.

PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Gunnar S. Paulsson’s chapter entitled “The Hidden Jews of Warsaw,” pp. 699-706.

13 Pamela Shatzkes, Holocaust and Rescue: Impotence or Indifference? Anglo-Jewry, 1938-1945. (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002)


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b) Scandinavia Intriguingly, one of the safest areas for Jews in Europe during the Holocaust — despite the geographical proximity to Nazi Germany — was within Scandinavian countries. We have encountered the relatively successful cases of Denmark and Sweden already (Week 4), in which the former was occupied by the Nazis but resisted attempts to deports its country’s Jews, whereas the latter was a nominally neutral country that proactively saved over 7,000 Danish Jews fated for transport to Auschwitz being offering them refuge. The example is an exceptionally rare one, and while the numbers of Jews saved (relative to the millions of Jews murdered) is comparatively small, the episode nonetheless is symbolically significant. It illustrates how, under the right circumstances and with sufficient political and moral will, saving the lives of thousands of Jews was possible through state intervention. Yet, it is also important to bear in mind how exceptional the circumstances were, and that the Nazis’ military and ideological focus was on eastern Europe rather than their fellow “Aryan” nations in Scandinavia, which posed no military threat, were not as geo-strategically valuable, and had reasonably small Jewish populations. Despite a number of similarities to the Danish-Swedish success story, in the case of nearby Norway the antisemitic and collaborative Quisling puppet government, combined with a greater degree of direct German involvement in running state affairs, sealed the fate of Norwegian Jews, around half of whom were ultimately deported to their deaths.

PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Paul A. Levine’s chapter entitled “Sweden Expands Asylum,” pp. 735-52.

c) The Soviets

The topic of rescuing Jews from Nazi clutches is one that has been long dominated by the perspective of the Western Allies. In many respects this is understandable. Prior to the outbreak of war, there was certainly little desire on the part of Jews in central and western Europe to emigrate to the Soviet Union as a way to distance themselves from Nazi antisemitism. Indeed, anti-Jewish actions had been so prevalent in Tsarist Russia that the word “pogrom” — Russian in origin, translating to “devastation” — was adopted in English and other languages specifically in reference to outbursts of violence perpetrated against Jews throughout eastern Europe but especially Russia


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during the late 1800s and early 1900s.14 Consequently, the Soviet Union does not figure in any discussions around possible Jewish “rescue” before war broke out.

(t) Perpetrators pose with victims of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903. This pogrom, which resulted in 49 deaths, some 500 Jews wounded, and around 2,000 Jews made homeless, erupted on Easter Sunday. At the time

Kishinev was in Bessarabia, which is now Moldova.

(b) Postcard featuring local onlookers and Jewish victims of a pogrom in Odessa, 1905. A series of vicious pogroms occurred in Odessa in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, and 1905. At the time Odessa was part of the Russian

Empire, and now is located in present-day Ukraine.

Sources: “The First Twentieth Century Pogrom,” Jewish Journal. http://boston.forward.com/articles/189611/the-first-twentieth-century-pogrom/

“Experiencing the Russian Empire,” Cambridge Core. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-state-antisemitism-and-collaboration-in-the-holocaust/experiencing-the-russian-

empire/70059E9AEFB9AD6749D950486809E83D [Accessed 3 May 2017]

14 Werner Bergmann, “Pogroms,” in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan (eds.), International Handbook of

Violence Research, vol. 1. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2003). pp. 351-67. Here p. 351.


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After mid-1941, however, the Soviets were by far the largest armed force Nazi Germany faced, while the Red Army was responsible for all territorial gains east of Berlin, and for the liberation of every major Nazi camp located on Polish soil. Similar to the case of the Western Allies, however, it cannot be assumed that the Soviets necessarily did all they could in order to save Jewish lives (beyond winning the war against Nazi Germany as quickly as possible).

READING EXCERPT: Danny Orbach and Mark Solonin, in "Calculated Indifference: The Soviet Union and Requests to Bomb Auschwitz," shed light on a largely unexplored question: did the Soviets know what was happening in Auschwitz, and could they have done anything to stop the killing earlier?

The assessment of Stalin presented by Orbach and Solonin is especially damning. The Soviet leader possessed reliable intelligence of Auschwitz’s true purpose, information that Orbach and Solonin claim Stalin deliberately withheld from Red Army commanders in the field and partisan units. Stalin, according to Orbach and Solonin, had command over advanced units that may have been used to help Jews, or even to liberate Auschwitz from German hands earlier than January 1945. Moreover, they argue that the Soviets had a greater technical capability when it came to the theoretical bombing of Auschwitz-Birkenau than the Western Allies, and were much closer to the target at an earlier time (August 1944). Orbach and Solonin acknowledge that any bombing operation from the Soviet perspective would have brought with it many difficulties, and there was no guarantee of success. Ultimately, though, Orbach and Solonin argue that it was Stalin himself who made the decision not to attempt an aerial bombardment of Auschwitz’s killing facilities. It was a course of inaction that they attribute to Stalin’s own antisemitism, and to “a complicated shift in the Soviet Union’s nationalities policy.” Amongst other objectives, this policy aimed to suppress the nationalist aspirations of Jews and many other minority groups within a postwar Soviet Union. Essentially, Stalin’s indifference to the plight of Jews was “calculated.” Although research on this subject remains in its infancy, it adds further layers of complexity to an ongoing historical debate.

Conclusion The topics of Jewish resistance and rescue in the Holocaust raise a number of important questions, can lead to heated debate, and are prone to the dangers of hindsight. It is often claimed that Jews were far too passive and they allowed themselves to be “led like lambs to the slaughter,” but such a conclusion is far too straightforward. Rather than reaching for simplistic generalisations we need to delve

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deeper and consider the variances. Likewise, assertions that the Allies could and should have done more to save Jewish lives during the war — beyond defeating Hitler’s Germany and liberating all Europeans from the yoke of Nazism as quickly as possible — need to take into account the complexities of the broader wartime historical context. After all, it simply was not possible to waltz into Nazi-controlled territory during wartime and help millions of Jews to escape. And by the time Allied forces were in a position to overrun German camps the overwhelming majority of Holocaust victims had been murdered already.

Perhaps more than any other topics covered in this unit, this week’s key themes of rescue and resistance challenge you to eschew the clarity of hindsight and build some historical empathy for those victims and bystanders who sometimes faced impossibly difficult decisions. Indeed, ask yourself: what would you have done in the circumstances?

In the case of resistance, first and foremost it must be recognised that Jewish experiences of the Holocaust differed throughout much of Europe, and opportunities to resist using force were limited and varied according to geography, German priorities, and local conditions. Most European Jews had no access to proper weapons, little to no experience in combat, and were struggling to survive as prisoners of the Nazis or to prevent themselves (and their loved ones) from becoming captive. With such circumstances in mind, you need to consider whether resistance should be limited to Hilberg’s tight definition of “armed” and “active,” or Bauer’s preference for a more open interpretation. If the Nazis’ intention was to kill every Jew in Europe, was the mere act of survival in itself a form of resistance?

We also need to be careful neither to ignore nor overestimate the acts of armed resistance that took place. Hilberg largely dismisses such instances, even when it comes to the quite spectacular and exceptional act of resistance that took place during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Arguably, though, this single example also raises further questions. Ultimately, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was crushed, most of the Jews who survived the fighting were captured and murdered, with only a few surviving the war. Meanwhile, the Jewish ghetto fighters inflicted relatively minor damage to German life and limb. Did such large-scale acts of armed resistance, then, demonstrate the potentiality or the futility of Jews actively fighting back? In other words, could Jews have done more to defend themselves as they did in the Warsaw ghetto? And could the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate European Jewry have been prevented — or at least mitigated to a far greater extent — had they done so? Or does this particular uprising suggest that the chances of success and survival were minimal and came at great cost — in other words, was there anything Jews could have done to adequately defend themselves against the Nazi machinery of destruction?

As with resistance, in considering the question of rescue we must attempt to place ourselves in the position of decision-makers. The Western Allies and the Soviet Union were up against the might of the German armed forces — the defeat of which was their

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utmost priority. For the Soviets in particular, the war was an ideological and military struggle to the death, one that cost the lives of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. Is it reasonable, then, to argue that more should have been done specifically to save Jews other than defeating Nazism? It is likely that the Allies had a reasonably solid awareness of what was happening to Jews around the time it was unfolding (though probably just after most Jews were already dead). Later in the war, for instance, the Allies knew what was occurring at Auschwitz — at a time when its extermination facilities were within striking distance of British and American bombers and advanced Red Army troops. Why the Western Allies decided not to bomb Auschwitz for the purposes of stopping the mass killing of Jews — as opposed to the strategic motivations behind the bombing of the nearby factories at Monowitz — is an open question for you to ponder.

The Big Three — Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin — and their key military advisors gathered together at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Beyond defeating Hitler and liberating all of Europe from

Nazism, could the Allies have done more to save Jews?

Source: “Yalta Conference,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference [Accessed 3 May 2017]

Finally, in discussing both resistance and rescue during the Holocaust one point must be stressed above all others: the culpability of Nazi Germany. Jews were not killed because they failed to resist or because the Allies refused to save them. Any bald accusations to the contrary are without justification. It is possible that more could have been done, and more Jewish lives could have been saved. Blame for the genocide of Europe’s Jews, however, lays squarely at the feet of the Third Reich and its willing collaborators.

week 9 the feasibility of resistance and rescue: debating ... · the feasibility of resistance and...

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