Genocide is the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group (Merriam-Webster). This is what Hitler did to the six million Jews during the Holocaust, which led to many Jews fighting back. This paper will talk about how the Holocaust victims fought back against Hitler and his army. The Holocaust was a mass killing of Jews and non-Jews who were viewed as unneeded within the world by Adolf Hitler. Hitler became leader of Germany and tortured and killed many people. With Nazi Germany killing and torturing millions of Jews and non-Jews, victims decided to fight back with armed and spiritual resistance. Resistance was effective against Nazi Germany rule. Armed Jewish Resistance consisted of attacking …show more content…
Armed fighting resistance was not the only form of Jewish resistance. Escaping, smuggling goods, and praying were also effective. Keeping education was also important. Spiritual resistance was used to keep calm and keep proud of themselves. underground libraries were made after smuggled books in the ghettos. Schools were made in apartments in secret while kids kept hidden school books in their clothes from place to place (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Education was a form of resistance. This was forbidden but Jews resisted and kept secret. Spiritual resistance like education was important for …show more content…
Spiritual resistance like praying kept Jew’s sanity and concerts help make people happy. Hitler’s plan was to break down and destroy Jews, so they fought against that in various ways. Art, music, and theater were often in ghettos to keep everyone happy. Comics, actors, singers, dancers, and actors also performed for a group of people for a brief amount of time. The Nazis had also made it illegal for Jewish gatherings but the Jews also did against that. Praying and services were kept in secret. Praying and services were important to continue. They also wanted to continue everyday things. Art, music, theater and praying were used as resistance by the Jews to stay
Spiritual resistance was when Jews would try to keep their humanity, civilization and dignity when Nazis would try to dehumanize them. They would continue to try to be optimistic even in the worst time. They would try to not let the Nazis break them. Some would journal, some would try to keep educating, and they would still worship through the worst times. The Germans would not allow religious acts in the ghettos. The Jews would hold religious ceremonies in secret in attics and closets and back rooms so they would not get caught. In Warsaw they would have prayer groups even though it was against the law and they could be killed at any moment. Orthodox Jews that would not use force physically would use prayer as a way to resist (spiritual
Nazis which proved to the world the Jews are not that easy to extinguish. The Jews had several ways of exhibiting resistance, but "Organized armed resistance was the most powerful form of Jewish opposition"(Jewish Resistance). Armed resistance is an important aspect to revolting not only because it reinflicts the pain lashed upon the Jews, but it also shows the Jews have the ability to fight back and gives the world the knowledge that Jews do not go down easily. However, resistance is not only an act of violence since the Jews demonstrated several non-violent forms of resistance while locked up or being transported. Jews would escape into the forest and figured that by escaping they resisted the Nazi Party and reduced their chances of achieving their goal of exterminating all Jews on the planet(Acts of Resitance). By escaping Jews gave themselves a chance to live and warn others of their fate which was an excellent form of non-violent resistance since, generally speaking, no Germans were hurt. Resistance can take many shapes and forms which is why all Jews resisted one way or another, simply living is resistance(Acts of Resistance). The other reason Jews struggled so desperately to survive was not to merely see the light of another day, but to see the Germans become enraged by their "resistance", living.
During the Holocaust there were many different forms of resistance undertaken by Jewish people. These can be categorised into two main forms, armed resistance and passive resistance. Armed resistance was resistance by Jews and civilians who actively fought back, sometimes they managed to scavenge weapons and use them in attacks on Germans and the different enforcement groups such as the SS. Armed resistance took place mainly in ghettos and concentration camps however, also occurred on the streets of Nazi occupied Europe. Passive resistance was less aggressive and usually meant that Jewish people refused to deny their faith and still practiced their religion in some form. Illegal organisations, Jewish militias and underground political groups also formed, planning and executing attacks and resisting the Nazi rule in occupied Europe.
In the Holocaust, the Nazis persecuted and murdered over 6 million Jews during a four and a half year period. By the 1930s the Nazis rose in power and all the Jews became victims. One of the ways the Nazis persecuted the Jews, was putting them into tight confined places called ghettos were they suffered for many years.
The Nazis were killing thousands of Jews on a daily basis and for many of the Jewish people death seemed inevitable, but for some of the Jewish population they were not going to go down without a fight as Jewish resistance began to occur. However, the Jewish resistance came in many different forms such as staying alive, clean and observing Jewish religious traditions under the absolute horrendous conditions imposed by the Nazis were just some examples of resistance used by the Jews. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many of the Jews who did succeed in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local resident and partisan groups who often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bia...
Why resistance? There are so many different aspects of the Holocaust to research, so why focus on this particular one? Well, I think it’s a great way for students to learn about the “silver lining” per se of this event. I think it’s a not-so-well-known aspect of a very well-known event. It’s important that people are aware that Jews and some non-Jews didn’t just sit back and let these horrific events go on without a fight. One can also loosely apply this idea of resistance to society today by saying that, to a lesse...
We must first realize that resistance was in no way a survival strategy. Yet, even when it seemed obvious that death was near inevitable, why did they not put up a fight? This argument is still puzzling to many holocaust historians, yet the arguments of Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer offer insight to possible reasons why they did not fight and that resistance was more widespread than most people think.
The resistance was a key part of survival for many of the Jews during the Holocaust.
They came up with a solution to try to get the U.S. involved to help save everyone. So in 1943, directly before Yom Kippur, 400 Rabbis marched to Washington to speak with Congress on the matter of rescuing the Jews in Europe from the Nazi rule. America eventually set up a War Refugee Board to help settle the situation and to stop the protesting. The board was able to save over 100,000 lives; although, it is still tragic how millions of more people 's lives could have been saved, but instead were left to die. The Jewish resistance was mainly trying to foil the Nazi plan to dehumanize Jewish people, but did not succeed as they had hoped. Even the Jews in Europe themselves did not believe what was happening. They all believed that when they were told they were being sent to “work camps” or going to be “resettled in the East” was true. No one could imagine that the Nazi’s actually planned to murder an entire nation. By the time they could believe the rumors, millions were already dead and many lives had been affected
Resistance is defined as “the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding”. Therefore, the Jews of Europe resisted the Third Reich every single day; withstanding the constant fear, the desolate aura, and the habitual cruelty. Existing became a heroic act of defiance as Hitler’s wrath swept through
A Holocaust is a disaster that results in the large-scale destruction of life. Although this name has been used to describe many catastrophes over centuries, today it has a more specific meaning. The Holocaust refers to the annihilation of 6 million Jews, men, women, and children, in addition to other groups of people by Hitler and the Nazi party during World War II. Such a destruction of a particular group or race is called genocide. (Resnick 9)
What is genocide? “Genocide is a deliberate, systematic destruction of racial cultural or political groups.”(Feldman 29) What is the Holocaust? “Holocaust, the period between 1933-1945 when Nazi Germany systematically persecuted and murdered millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many other people.”(Feldman 29) These two things tie into each other.The Holocaust was a genocide. Many innocent people were torn apart from their families, for many never to see them again. This murder of the “Jewish people of Europe began in spring 1941.”( Feldman 213) The Holocaust was one of the most harshest things done to mankind.
The Holocaust, occurred between 1933 and 1945. The actual definition of “holocaust” is a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned on an altar. The definition has now been altered to describe the slaughter of six million Jews during World War II. The leader of these mass killings was Adolf Hitler. His ideologies of the perfect race, were deemed reason enough to murder millions of human beings. How were the killings done on such a massive scale? Concentration camps. Jews, and other imperfect aryans, (homosexuals, gypsies, and the disabled), were transported to “work” camps. Here, crematoriums, gas chambers, and shootings awaited them. If you made it past your first once-over, you were expected to work in back-breaking conditions throughout
God opened their eyes to all that Hitler was doing showed them the right way. This motivated them to face all the challenges thrown their way and remain unmoving in their stand against Hitler and his ways. They chose to take things they wanted like marriage and safety and put it on hold so they could do something they believed in. These people were working around the clock, they never clocked out or any type of break and if they did it was never long enough. The sacrifices and challenges they faced, were faced in many cases, alone. Many other workers faced them but seldom did they work together. Through all the dangers and sacrifices the resistance workers chose to face them head on and remain unwavering in their stand against
Countless internal factors made Jewish resistance extremely difficult. The most explicit of these were the horrific conditions of the ghettos and concentration camps, which lead to malnourishment, as well as the large amounts of hard labour that was forced upon inmates, which caused a general state of poor health. When the living situation grew even worse with the quickly increasing death rates in the concentration camps between 1940 and 1942, conditions were so poor that survival was the sole focus of inmates; there was no time to think of resistance. As the Jews began to become aware of their imminent ext...