1 / 27

RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE –

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

zaina
Download Presentation

RESPONSE AND RESISTANCE –

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  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

More Related