http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2986966
Jewish resistance
Re: When The Fighting Stops, Conrad Black, May 1.
Conrad Black writes "[Jews] had seen their families passively (except in Warsaw) await the coming and the savagery of the Nazis, and go as victims and not warriors to the gas chambers." He believes that with the exception of the valiant fighters of the Warsaw ghetto. European Jewry did not combat the Nazis. Nothing could be further from the truth.Martin Gilbert in his book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, writes that "In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labour camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms."
There are many other examples of the extent and heroism of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust despite the vicious and collective reprisals exacted by the Nazi oppressors.
Moses Shuldiner, Toronto.
Moses Shuldiner, Toronto.
All my father's relatives and most of my mother's perished in the Holocaust. When the Nazis invaded Poland my parents fled to the USSR and were interned in a forced labour camp. After the war they were sent to a displaced persons camp in Germany. In their name I was stunned and deeply hurt when I read Conrad Black's casual dismissal of Jewish courage. How could the one time third largest newspaper magnate in the world and a published historian make so erroneous a statment?
All my father's relatives and most of my mother's perished in the Holocaust. They fled to Russia and were interned in a forced labour camp. After the war they were sent to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. In their name I was stunned and deeply hurt when I read Conrad Black's casual dismissal of Jewish courage. How could the one time third biggest newspaper magnate in the world and an accomplished historian make such an erroneous statement?
Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust
Title:  | A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (British title, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy) by Martin Gilbert | |
| Author's Summary: | A comprehensive history of the Holocaust, stressing the human aspect, and telling the story of the deliberate murder of six million men, women and children through the words and experiences both of the murderers and of their victims... The story of Jewish resistance, and of individual acts of courage and defiance, is an important and integral part of this book. |
Insignia Sleeve Patch
Active 1944-1946
Country United Kingdom
Branch Army
Type Infantry
Size 5,000 volunteers
After early reports of the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust were made public by the Allied powers, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a personal telegram to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggesting that "the Jews... of all races have the right to strike at the Germans as a recognizable body." The president replied five days later saying: "I perceive no objection..."
After much hesitation, on July 3, 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On September 20, 1944, an official communique by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Zionist flag was officially approved as its standard (wikipedia).
In all, the Jewish partisans during WW II numbered between 20,000 and 30,000
Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the brigade named after Chkalov.
Masha Brusinska with fellow partisans before hanging.
Minsk, October 26, 1941.
Conman Black, like so many who decry the supposed passivity of european Jewry in the 30s and 40s, conveniently ignores the fact that the entire civil and Christian institutions were aligned with the Nazis. Were the Jews to have turned to the Catholic Church, the main disseminator of hatred of Jews as "Christ killers"? Or the Lutheran Church? Were the Jews to have turned to the Police or the courts? How exactly were they to have stopped the Nazis when the whole society, with the exception of a few Righteous Gentiles, was cheering on the Nazis pogroms, with their cooperation, silence and enthusiasm?
ReplyDeleteThank you Charlie for your passionate comments on my post about Jewish Resistance. It is true that Jews stood alone, although there were more than a few Righteous Gentiles e.g. the thousands of families who hid Jews from the Nazis putting the lives of themselves and their families in peril.
ReplyDeleteHowever there were many acts of defiance by Holocaust Jewry. Wikdipedia estimates that there were between 20,000 and 30,000 Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis during WW II. There is picture of the Chkalov Brigade just above your comment.
Conrad Black and most people in the world seem to be unaware of the tremendous courage shown by Holocaust Jewry in the face of the overwhelming and brutal forces arrayed against them. This courage was expressed in combat an in creative output such as paintings, scluptures, jokes, poems, literature, etc. I set up this blog to bear witness to these facts of the Jewish Resistance.