12 - Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution

Summary

Nowadays, death rules in all its majesty; while life barely glows unde'r a thick layer of ashes. Even this faint glow of life is feeble, miserable and weak, poor, devoid of any spiritual content. The very soul, both in the individual and in the community, seems to have starved and perished, to have dulled and atrophied. There remains only the needs of the body—and it leads merely an organicphysiological existence.

Yet we wish to live on, to continue our existence as free and creative men. This shall be our test. If, under the thick layer of ashes, our life is not extinguished, this will prove the triumph of the human over the inhuman—that our will to live is mightier than the will to destruction, that we are capable of overcoming all the evil forces which are attempting to engulf us.

ABRAHAM LEWIN, 13 September 1941

We do not wish to be a heap of dirt, worms in the face of destruction. Let us help each other. We must remove from our society traitors who help the enemy. We must not allow ourselves to be destroyed! Prepare to fight for your own lives. Remember that we, Jewish civilians, are also at the forefront of the battle for freedom and humanity. The enemy is already very weak. Let us defend our honour with bravery and dignity. Long live freedom!

Jewish Fighting Organization, Warsaw, 4 December 1942

JEWISH RESPONSES to the persecution which they endured at Nazi hands ranged from compliance to armed resistance. These should not be seen as polar opposites but rather as part of a curve, in which one passes almost imperceptibly from one type of reaction to another. In evaluating Jewish behaviour it is important to remember that the primary responsibility for the appalling dilemmas the Jews faced when confronted with genocide lies with the Nazis, with the German people who gave them their support, and with their local collaborators. One also has to beware of hindsight. It is clear today that the Nazi policy towards the Jews ultimately sought the murder of all those Jews they could lay their hands on, but this was not obvious at the time to the victims. It was only in the first months of the invasion of the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1941 that the Nazis in fact adopted a policy of genocide.