In the face of Nazi terror, many Jews resisted the Germans and their collaborators.
In ghettos throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, Jews defied the indignity and dehumanization of Nazi terror through resistance and attempts to preserve their communal and cultural life. They held clandestine religious services, established schools and libraries, and maintained cultural traditions through secret publications, lectures and performances. Secrets archives of art and written documentation recorded conditions in some of the ghettos. Underground networks of forgers and smugglers supplied life-saving documents and food to people in ghettos and in hiding throughout Europe.
Organized armed resistance, though, was the most direct form of Jewish opposition to the Nazis. In western Europe, Jewish partisans smuggled endangered people to safety and aided those in hiding. They also joined non-Jewish resistance units and sabotaged German military operations. Despite minimal support and even hostility from local populations, armed resistance units also formed in more than 100 ghettos. In April 1943, the Jews of Warsaw, outgunned and outnumbered, launched the largest ghetto uprising. After almost a month, the Germans suppressed the Jews of Warsaw. Jews fought the Germans both in the ghettos and behind the front lines in nearby forests. In many cases, resistance members also joined partisan units outside the ghettos of Eastern Europe. Prisoner revolts even took place in Nazi camps, including 1943-1944 uprisings in the Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau killing centers. Continue reading from Holocaust Center for Humanity
Jewish Resistance (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Jewish Resistance to the Nazis (Britannica)
Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust (The Wiener Holocaust Library)
Who Were the Jewish Partisans? (Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation)
Resistance and Rescuers (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust)
Background: Resistance (British Library)
Jewish Armed Resistance and Rebellions (Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center)
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Brittanica)