Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
4/5
()
About this ebook
No act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust fired the imagination quite as much as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943. It was an event of epic proportions in which a group of relatively unarmed, untrained Jews managed to lead a military revolt against the Nazi war machine.
In this riveting, authoritative history, a Holocaust scholar and survivor of the battle draws on diaries, letters, underground press reports, and his own personal experience to bring a landmark moment in Jewish history to life—offering “a dramatic and memorable picture of the ghetto” and showing how a vibrant culture shaped the young fighters whose defiance would have far-reaching implications for the Jewish people (Library Journal).
“Superb, moving, richly informative history.” —Publishers Weekly
Note: Some photos and maps contained in the print edition of this book have been excluded from the ebook edition.
Related to Resistance
Related ebooks
The Last Jews in Berlin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violinist of Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grapes of Wrath Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sun Also Rises Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave (Illustrated) (Two Pence books) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTriangle: The Fire That Changed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great Expectations (with a Preface by G. K. Chesterton and an Introduction by Andrew Lang) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Painted Bird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twelve Years a Slave (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Were the Lucky Ones: by Georgia Hunter | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Side of Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mrs. Dalloway Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The House of the Dead: Or, Prison Life in Siberia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave, a True Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad (The Samuel Butler Prose Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Holocaust For You
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Choice: Embrace the Possible Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary and Analysis of Man's Search for Meaning: Based on the Book by Victor E. Frankl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swingtime for Hitler: Goebbels’s Jazzmen, Tokyo Rose, and Propaganda That Carries a Tune Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All But My Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devil and His Due: How Jordan Peterson Plagiarizes Adolf Hitler, Volume One Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mein Kampf: My Struggle: (Vol. I & Vol. II) - (Complete & Illustrated Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story Of Auschwitz [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Resistance
23,267 ratings550 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my favorite books, hands down. Probably the top.Read it. Relate to it ('cause you really will). And start thinking.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After hearing about this book since 1984, I have been wanting to read it. As an adult, it was fascinating to read about George Orwell's version of the future which is now in the distant past. I actually believe the technology in the book with the telescreens keeping track of Oceania's residents is something easily imaginable in 2019 but would have been a stretch to imagine 35 years ago. Some of his forecasts were eerily true, especially in some parts of the world. Fortunately not all. The book really made you think and was a great discussion for book club. Personally I believe the book was a little dark (think terrible torture and brainwashing) and a lot of it will go over my daughter's head next year when she reads it for school as a high school sophomore.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked the idea of the book. Ended weirdly.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/52 2=5 stars
That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
George Orwell is the greatest writer of all time. Fight me.
This is so well written; it is consistently engaging, intriguing, and lyrical. I was never bored, even in long passages of solely exposition, because the world was so totally interesting. The first third of this book, constiting of part 1, was mostly exposition and set up, for example, but I was just as invested as I was at the very end. And the end, for that matter, was just as well-paced as the beginning, and the twists were expertly executed.
The political structure was so harrowing and unthinkable, and yet, horribly believable. This book was meant as a warning and reads perfectly as one. The world doesn't feel like an inevitability, but an awful possiblity. And I absolutely loved it.
Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occured to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.
The Characters
Winston Smith: He was so real. A middle-aged paranoid intellectual cynic, Winston was the perfect protagonist for this book. He dreams of a better world, a world less bad at least than his current life, and does even what he knows will result in either nothing or in utter destruction because it makes him feel something other than existential dread, and for that, I commend him.
"You're only a rebel from the waist downwards," he told her.
She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight.
Julia: She was a very complex person, just like Winston, except that she joys in small rebellion and doesn't much dream of a better world, only in finding the better parts of the life she's been dealt. She's 20 years younger than Winston, and therefore sees the world through fresher, but also more sheltered, eyes.
O'Brien: Oh my gosh I have too much to say, so I'm not going to say anything at all.
"Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all."
Conclusion
I loved everything about this book. Literally everything, even the horribly depressing ending, because it's a book that makes you think, and makes you reflect on yourself and your world almost more than on Winston and his world.
Farewell for now, proles. We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm not sure what took me so long to read this one. It was very good. There are a lot of parallels between concepts like "double think," "crime stop," and "thought crime," and the what can be seen in the world today. If facts go against someone's political beliefs, they will often just twist, distort, or deny the facts just as the characters in 1984 would say they have "always been at war with Oceania." This makes the book continue to be poignant and relevant to the twenty-first century reader, and it will probably still be poignant in the thirty-first century. A lot of this is just human nature that the Orwell exposes for us to consider.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5never trust fear news
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This may be more timely then when it was written. Winston Smith is not following the Party's rhetoric. He is thinking and realizes he has other memories and thoughts than what the Party wants good Party members to have. He finally sees a way to rebel but the Party gets to him.There is so much in this book. It is a story of a regimen that controls everything including people's thoughts. It is also a story that can be likened to our day and society. Power and money are held by a few who control everything. Winston thinks the proles will one day rise up but those in power know they won't because they don't think for themselves. They listen to what the Party tells them and believe it and never question it. Those in the Outer Circle of the Party believe what is told them also. If they are caught thinking and remembering other pasts, they are arrested and tortured, reeducated, and eventually murdered so that they fall back into the Party line. I thought Winston would make it. I hoped Winston would make it. But the Party got him. It broke my heart.This is my first time reading 1984. I have to admit I wish I could write an essay about it and how our politics and society are becoming what Orwell was warning us about. He talks about the technology, the oligarchy, the Newspeak used, emotions voided, everyone thinking the same, . I see it so much of his vision happening today. We grow further apart from one another. We use technology instead of communicating face to face. Families are broken and fewer marry and have children. Education becomes rote because of teaching to tests. 1% of the population has more money than over half the lower income people. Corporations have more rights than people. Wages have frozen and backslid because of rising costs of housing, transportation, and food. The government does not help the proles. It keeps them downtrodden and poor. So much could be expanded upon.I also enjoyed this book because it made me think. It used 50 cent words. I had to use a dictionary. I haven't had to do that for a while. It is not a book I will forget any time soon. If you haven't read it, I urge you to read it. Wow!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read 1984 in high school and didn't think as much of it as I do now, with the rise of populism especially in the US but also abroad. It's eerie how accurate Orwell's statements are in this book and how insanely applicable they are to those in power (and individuals' lack of willingness to stand up or to even understand what's happening around them).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I liked the book up until the point that Winston got arrested. I wanted them to overthrow big brother.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engsoz, Neusprech und Doppeldenk brauchen eines ganz sicher nicht: eine weitere laienhafte Rezension oder Interpretation des Romans. Was es aber dringend braucht: Dass möglichst viele in unserer Gesellschaft dieses Buch (wieder) zur Hand nehmen, um zu erkennen, wie aktuell die Thematik in der heutigen Zeit ist. Damit Krieg nicht Frieden, Freiheit nicht Sklaverei und Unwissenheit nicht Stärke wird.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Frightening book. A must-read for fans of dystopian literature.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Awesome book. Still very relevant today what with all the privacy issues surrounding the internet and video cameras being everywhere and googlemaps taking pictures of everyone's house all the time. Big Brother really is watching. Someone is watching us all the time. But we haven't quite been taken over by the thought police yet.I really enjoyed the beginning when Winston Smith is trying to find a way to rebel without giving himself away, but towards the end it becomes rather violent which was a little too gruesome.The Gov't of Oceania is called Ingsoc, short for English Socialism. They have their own language called Newspeak, the purpose of which is to limit the number of words anyone knows such that it's difficult to think of anything heretical because there are no words for it. Including homosexuality. All possible crimes are covered by the word crimethink. The language bit is chilling.They are also destroying history and literature as part of a campaign to completely rewrite the past so that nothing can be learned from history. If there has never been another way of life than Ingsoc it's harder to imagine how to possibly rebel against it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The classic dystopian novel about a Stalinist-like state that takes over England after some kind of cataclysmic war or revolution. Especially thought provoking today.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Do you think it matters greatly that Orwell may have plagearised a good portion of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" because of the significance of the novel? Funny how soon this novel has passed the 60 years mark and we're just now "finding this all out". In our world - the age of the internet, it seems these things are found out immediately.I was always aware that "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was about Russia/Soviet Union given his experience fighting on the communist side during the Spanish Civil War and all that entailed. Due to the Stalinists executing the Trotskyites (the POUM) on whose side Orwell fought, he left Spain after almost being murdered himself disillusioned with Communism altogether. Then he wrote and published "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". In the US, students in the 1960s and 1970s always assumed "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was about us in Europe. It became popular and a part of our culture to think Orwell had Europe in mind as the state on which his novel was based. Big Brother indeed has been alive and well, along with all the conspiracy theories we hold so dear to our hearts here (grassy knolls abound all over the country).Interesting that those authors who predict futures - Phillip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard are other examples - aren't the greatest of prose writers. The urgency to communicate their ideas must bypass the need to edit out the stodge/purple prose passages.I find all Orwell's books have that same problem - great ideas and images but solidly written rather than inspiring and then I think if he's managed to plant those ideas and images into the imagination - does it really matter? I'm not suggesting for one moment that artistry isn't vital but you do remember Orwell for the images rather than his prose style. I think writers are motivated in two different ways mainly: one is to entertain, the other is to represent life as truthfully as possible. The latter sort are usually interested/driven by social conditions of the time and seek to put their concerns into the novel form; they rarely make great novels but they do make good interesting ones.Charles Reader in “Never Too Late To Mend” did this and he seemed in doing it to be really a sociologist/philosopher who wanted to reach the mass audiences that were spellbound by Dickens. He produced a fair read revealing the inhumanity of the treadmill in a London prison, and the humiliations of the Australian gold rush. Social concern also is the driving force of “Mary Barton”, Elizabeth Gaskell's novel of the extreme pressures working class people were under in the throes of Industrial England. Not great literature but a most interesting read; a novelised pamphlet. Thackeray's “Vanity Fair” is a great work of literature because he manages to prioritise the aesthetics of plot and characterisation so that the social and political aspects don't come across as 'messages'.Orwell was political through and through but not a great novelist; he was more interested in revealing the class system as an exploiter of humans to the extent of degrading humanity to a pathetic degree. Many readers see this as more a service done to the reader; one feels that the eyes are opened to life as it really is. I thought the “Road to Wigan Pier” was a good book, and “Coming Up for Air” showing that he could be very funny about social change as well as deeply serious. But “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is really frighteningly relevant to today and one feels that he got it wrong only temporarily; it is slowly happening.'Plagiarism' is often used but seldom understood and it would be fairly impossible to 'plagiarise' a novel written in a different language since to plagiarise you would need to copy parts of the book word for word, which would be pointless if writing for an English readership. Happily, writers are free to use ideas they come across and make something of them in their own way but this isn't plagiarism. I think the only way this can be rectified in the future is to give both authors credit for having written “Nineteen Eighty-Four” with a portion of any royalties to Zamyatin's heirs if there be any.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5what happens when we let truth slip away
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I listened to this as an audiobook on my ipod while at work a few months ago. It took about ten hours, I'd say, though I didn't keep track.
I didn't read "1984" in high school, like many of my friends did. Somehow, it just never showed up on a required reading list, and now that I'm a more mature reader I'm quite glad of it. It's a philosophical, meandering story that requires an open mind and lots of time to turn all the ideas proposed over in your head.
I liked it a great deal, and it kept me from dying of boredom at work. :) - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I found 1984 interesting in that it takes place around 1950 and told about how are freedom and democracy are fragile and big brother is watching and the dangers of Soviet threat to the world which can still apply today. One quote I did like was: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." The book also cautioned against excessive power of mass media which is very prevalent with all the fake news that is coming out of our mass media today. I would recommend reading it as it is remembered as one of the the most important and moving works of fiction to be published in this generation.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There are so many classic novels that don't hold up after many years and some that probably stunk in the first place and someone silly decided that everyone should read them. 1984 is what I think a good classic novel should be and I can understand it being on so many "must read" lists. You can tell it's a bit dated but it still holds up, it's creative and it has a good story to tell along with some life lessons. This was one of the classics that I was actually happy to read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A man living in an oppressive, hopeless society is oppressed and hopeless.Okay. The characters don't feel real. The story arc is crap. But it's strongly evocative. Its importance is justified because it's really good at doing what it does. I'm just not sure that Being A Novel is one of the things it does.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I can't believe I had never read this book before now. The story was so familiar to me from simply being culturally-literate that there were no surprises. I enjoyed the story and could see the many allusions to Soviet era government. I thought the sections where the main character reads through the rebel "textbook" made the book drag. The conclusions from that section should have been obvious to any read at that point in the book. I think that if I was reading this at the time it was published, it would have hit me more deeply. Either way, I enjoyed it and am glad I read it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flawless until the final act, which seemed a little rushed, or at least slightly underdeveloped.Far more sophisticated than Brave New World - better written too - though maybe it's a little too despairing. The noir menace could've been a bit less heavy-handed, maybe. The sunlit field could've been a little less bright, too.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/51984, while an iconic book, was not my cup of tea. The characters are all believable, I suppose, as was the plot, but sometimes it felt so...unreal, that it somehow broke my suspension of disbelief. At least when I read it for the first time.The second time, it made my skin tingle a little bit in it's accuracy of how media can manipulate society.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I hate reviewing books like this, they are famous and highly rated by so many people. Which leaves me thinking I must have missed something. I found the first 3/4 of this book a chore. The first 3/4 felt like instead of being in the world the book was trying to describe you were simply left reading descriptions of world. I couldn't help but skim through many of the pages just trying to get anything that wasn't pure description. The book picked up during the last 1/4 of the book, but for the majority I found it rather boring.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An important book, usually first experienced as required reading in high school. Unlike a lot of fiction of this type, it actually has a story and characters that seem to be more than simple didactic mechanisms. In sum, a talented writer making a strong case as to how the danger of political extremism will take us to a place where thought itself is forbidden.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/51984 blijft, zelfs na de val van het sovjetcommunisme, een indrukwekkend boek. Het toekomstbeeld dat geschetst wordt is hallucinant tot in detail uitgewerkt. Er zijn amper zwakke kanten: de romantische verhaallijn is wat mager en sommige documentaire gedeelten zijn aan de saaie kant. Maar dat wordt ruimschoots goedgemaakt door de spanningsopbouw die uitmondt in de wrede martelscenes en de ontnuchterende "genezing" van de hoofdfiguur
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51984 is very well written and sends a very clear and important message to the world. Orwell crafted one of the best dystopian books I have ever read. The atmosphere absolutely chilling and every detail is wonderfully placed throughout the novel. There were, however, some short sections of the book that made is a little bit boring.The characters throughout the book are very interesting. 1984 follows the life of Winston Smith, a middle class man living out his life in the city of London. We follow his life as his thoughts, personality, and outlook change with encounters with events and other people. Only a few characters really make a prominent impact throughout the entire novel. However, these characters really help bring out the character of the book.The book sends a very clear message about authoritarian power and the problems of an over controlling government. The events throughout the book show how life could be like if the governments become powerful. The ruling elites establish absolute control over the middle and lower classes of society. Near the middle of the book, Orwell sneaks in passages explaining some sort of political theory that explains the situation in the world in 1984. This part adds to increasing knowledge imparted to us through Orwell's novel.There are some points throughout the book were I found myself trying to keep reading. The middle section of the book is a clear example of this. This part of the book really dragged on even though it was only a small section of the book. It started out pretty interesting but it begun to drag as it got longer.1984 is a very good book. The message is sends about the dangers of the power of the government is truly amazing and furthered my view on the world. It is clear that this book set the stage for other books just like it. However, it is not for everyone. Some of the nightmarish scenarios presented could turn off some people. 1984 is an amazing book and everyone should try to read it at one point in their lifetime.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A famously written account of a future dystopian world where 'man' & 'woman' really are just pawns for massively all-powerful global supra-states.Orwell's premonition of the way the world was headed post-WW2 - a ghastly tyrannical mind-sucking uniformity of thought & deed - has been cited many times since as presaging the so-called East-West/Communist-Capitalist 'Cold War' divide etc., opinions differ as to its actual accuracy - for sure 1984 was not the end of humanity & individual freedom: however, the sharp, distinct style of the author must be read as a masterful example of setting words & scenes to match the tone of a grimly sombre storyline. Winston & Julia are the book's lead characters, but nothing about them is heroic in the classic sense & why would they be when the all-embracing State & Big Brother, its ever-looming, ultimate figurehead of all-knowing dominance pre-determines & watches over their every move & sets the entire agenda for their minds' thought every minute of every hour of every day of their lives!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this book in high school for a class and it was fantastic will never forget this book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I checked out this Signet Classic version of "1984" at our county library. I should have read the Appendix - The Principles of Newspeak, first. There is also an Afterword essay by Eric Fromm at the back of the book which could have served as an introduction. In light of the state of worldwide politics and particularly the results of the 2016 presidential election I thought it was well worth my time to read this fictional classic. I found reading the later pages of the book, about the torture of Winston Smith, particularly difficult reading. I recommend that young people and all voting citizens read this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Obviously I can't say anything that hasn't already been said, but absolutely loved 1984. The story is terrifyingly timeless, much of the Newspeak and doublethink is relevant even to today. Gaslighting and controlling the past wasn't something I had a notion of in terms of how to brutally control a population. The fact that this was written 69 years ago and is perhaps more important that ever before speaks to how genius Orwell was and how brilliant this book is.
Book preview
Resistance - Israel Gutman
Published in association with the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright © 1994 by Israel Gutman
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print version as follows:
Gutman, Israel.
Resistance : the Warsaw Ghetto uprising / Israel Gutman.
p. cm.
A Marc Jaffe book.
A publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-395-60199-1 ISBN 0-395-90130-8 (pbk.)
1. Jews—Poland—Warsaw—Persecutions. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) —Poland—Warsaw. 3. Warsaw (Poland)—History— Uprising of 1943. 4. Warsaw (Poland)—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DSI35.P62W2728 1994
943.8'4 —dc20 93–46767 CIP
Campo dei Fiori
from The Collected Poems by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Ecco Press.
Note: Some of the photos and maps contained in the print edition of this book have been excluded from the e-book edition due to permissions issues.
eISBN 978-0-15-603584-2
v3.0414
In memory of Irit
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to colleagues and friends who encouraged me along the way as this work was carried out.
I wish to thank my friend Mr. Jeshajahu Weinberg, the Director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, who initiated the project of writing this book, and Professor Michael Berenbaum, Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute, who contributed many constructive suggestions as well as his editorial skills.
Mr. Marc Jaffe, the editor of this work for Houghton Mifflin, has demonstrated friendship and patience. His experience and advice were of substantial importance in the process of shaping the structure of the book.
My thanks to Mrs. Ethel Broido, who translated the manuscript with dedication and skill from Hebrew to English.
This book is one of the initial publications of the United States Holocaust Research Institute. (Founded in December 1993, the Institute is the scholarly division of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Its mission is to serve as an international resource for the development of research on the Holocaust and related issues, including those of contemporary significance.) Several of its staff members contributed to the publication of this book.
Betsy Chock graciously and selflessly assisted with the typing of the manuscript. Linda Harris and Bryan Lazar scanned chapters into the computer. Scott Miller assisted with some translation and fact checking. Genya Markon and Teresa Amiel of the museum’s photo archives helped select the photographs and write the captions. Dewey Hicks and William Meinecke prepared the maps. Dr. David Luebke, former Director of Publications at the museum, assisted in preparing this work for publication. So too did Aleisa Fishman, who proofread the manuscript and handled other chores in preparation for publication. Janice Cook and Jeffrey Burridge helped in the editing of this work.
Lydia Perry and Deirdre McCarthy, who served as assistants to Professor Berenbaum, were gracious and able. Their assistance was invaluable. Ms. Perry typed sections of this manuscript and saw to it that other sections were ready for editing. Ms. McCarthy saw to it that the work was ready for publication.
I am pleased that telling the story of resistance in the Warsaw ghetto was so central a concern to this institution.
ISRAEL GUTMAN
Jerusalem
December 1993
Introduction
NO ACT OF Jewish resistance during the Holocaust fired the imagination quite as much as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943. It was an event of epic proportions, pitting a few poorly armed, starving Jews against the might of Nazi power. The ghetto Uprising was the first urban rebellion of consequence in any of the Nazi-occupied countries and was a significant point in Jewish history. The Uprising represents defiance and great sacrifice in a world characterized by destruction and death.
The Polish writer Kazimierz Bradys called Warsaw the invincible city.
Warsaw,
he wrote, was the capital of World War II,
for the city symbolized all that was both sublime and tragic during the war—and the ghetto was the heart of the Warsaw tragedy. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a historical event, but it also has become a symbol of Jewish resistance and determination, a moment in history that has transformed the self-perception of the Jewish people from passivity to active armed struggle. The Uprising has shaped Israel’s national self-understanding. It is viewed as the first Jewish rebellion since the heroic days of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 C.E. The Uprising has become a universal symbol of resistance and courage.
The commanders of the Uprising were young men in their twenties, Zionists, Communists, socialists—idealists with no battle experience, no military training. With but a few weapons and limited ammunition, they knew that they had no chance to succeed. Their choice was ultimate: not whether to live or to die, but what choice to make as to their death.
We begin this work at the end: the ghetto, which only two years earlier had become the home of 400,000 Jews, is empty. Bereft of its population, the ghetto is reduced to rubble. Buried beneath its streets are the material remains of Jewish culture and civilization. Some sixty miles away in the skies around Treblinka are the ashes of the Jews of Warsaw who were brought in the summer of 1942 by train to its gas chambers. Within hours of their arrival, their material possessions confiscated, their hair shaved, they were gassed and their bodies cremated, sent up in smoke.
To understand the full meaning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, we must sojourn among the Jews of Warsaw on the eve of World War II. Warsaw was a metropolis, the capital of the Polish Republic, and the largest center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. It was also the heart of Eastern European Jewish culture during a time of transition and intense creativity. Political movements were centered in Warsaw; Zionists and Bundists, Communists and socialists competed for the allegiance of the young. Jewish theater and film thrived in Warsaw, Jewish newspapers proliferated. Jewish-Polish relations were changing as Jews entered the mainstream of Polish society. Jewish religious life was intense and devout. The religious community was piously observant, the secularists ardently secular. The religious community was deeply divided among the Hasidim and their opponents (mitnagdim), Mizrachi (Zionist Orthodox Jews), and the fiercely anti-Zionist Agudath Israel. The tensions and diversity within pre-war Warsaw’s Jewish community continued in the ghetto and shaped ghetto life.
Just before World War II, Warsaw’s Jewish population was 375,000, almost 30 percent of the city’s total. One could not think of Warsaw without considering its Jews, who were to be found in every part of the city, though it was its northern part that contained the traditional Jewish neighborhoods. Jewish Warsaw was a city of contrasts. Offices of Jewish political parties and of many welfare, educational, and religious institutions were headquartered in Warsaw. Most of the Jewish periodicals, published in a variety of languages, were located in Warsaw. There were Jewish publishing houses, theater groups, and sports clubs. Warsaw was the home of writers and poets, including S. Anski (author of The Dybbuk), Y. L. Peretz, and the Singers—Isaac Bashevis and Israel Joshua. The Warsaw that was flourishing with Jewish culture stood in stark contrast to the depressed status and abject poverty of the Jewish masses who constituted so visible a part of the city.
The Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, transformed and divided the city. By September 8 the Nazis stood at the gates of Warsaw. The Poles decided to resist as long as possible, thus the city was bombarded from the air; twenty days later it fell. More than one quarter of its buildings were destroyed or damaged. Casualties were high: fifty thousand dead or wounded. The German entry into Warsaw ended an era; the diversity, intensity, and distinctness of the pre-war city were gone. Three and a half years later, Jewish Warsaw stood in ruins, its ghetto reduced to rubble.
After occupation, the Nazis followed a familiar pattern established in Germany: Jews were first identified, and by December they were required to wear the Jewish star. Jewish property was confiscated and the remaining Jewish shops were marked. From local shops to art collections, from factories to private libraries, the Nazis followed a disciplined procedure of confiscation. All radios were taken. Collective responsibility and punishment were imposed: the deed of one endangered all. Jews were isolated from their former neighbors and concentrated into restricted living quarters. Forced labor was required, and the Jewish Council members were charged with the task of gathering the needed workers. The poor substituted for more affluent conscripts in response to ever increasing German demands. Class divisions deepened. They were soon to narrow: both the rich and the poor grew increasingly poorer. By the summer of 1940, more than 100,000 workers, more than 2.5 percent of the Jewish population, were conscripted by the Nazis. They faced long hours, no pay, and sadistic masters.
The Jewish Council was formed with the remnants of previous leadership. Adam Czerniakow, an engineer who had previously served on the Jewish Community Council, was appointed its head. The behavior of the Judenrat in Warsaw during the Holocaust has always been a matter of considerable controversy. The debate intensified with the charges made by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem that had the Jews been leaderless and without formal institutions, the task of killing them would have been considerably more difficult. Arendt charged that Jewish leaders, wittingly or unwittingly, became tools of the Nazis. In the past three decades the ardor of this debate has not diminished. Czerniakow struggled to serve two masters—the Nazis, who viewed the Judenrat as an indispensable instrument of their policies, and the Jews, whose ever growing needs he desperately tried to meet.
On November 16, 1940, the ghetto was sealed. Over the next years, the population of the Warsaw ghetto would vary from 380,000 to 440,000 Jews. Death was pervasive throughout the ghetto. In 1941, 43,000 inhabitants died inside the ghetto, more than one in ten of its residents. Every day, ghetto residents struggled for survival. Jewish Self-Help manned the soup kitchens and provided fuel and coal, meager resources in the struggle for survival in the cold Polish winter. The formal structure of the ghetto as prescribed by the Germans and the Judenrat coexisted alongside the informal structure of the ghetto as it emerged in real life. The Judenrat developed into a multilayered government with a series of departments, which often functioned as fiefdoms for their directors. Those who worked for the Judenrat were seemingly protected. Tensions developed between those with protection and connections,
and those without. Religious tensions were rampant between the devout and the secular, and between Jews and Catholics of Jewish origin who were defined as Jews by the Nuremberg race laws. (Daily services were held for converted Jews
at the ghetto’s Roman Catholic Church, which in the end was the only building left standing in the ghetto.) The informal structure was more creative, but no less developed.
A political underground published a vital clandestine press; youth movements and cultural life continued; political movements pushed their partisan agendas; education, religion, and culture endured in this hostile environment. Often ghetto institutions had a double life, one legal and open, the other clandestine and secret. Youth movements and urban training communes were camouflaged as soup kitchens. Cells of the Jewish underground were disguised as agricultural workers’ groups.
There were basic tensions between the formal structure of the ghetto and informal structures that filled the vacuum of leadership and alleviated, at least in some small way, the harsh conditions of ghetto life. Children were indispensable to smuggling food, and family life was preserved despite the strains.
By mid-July 1942 the ghetto was in a panic. Rumors of deportation were rife. Czerniakow heard these rumors, and sought reassurance for his people. The leader of the Judenrat sought exemptions for children and for orphans. In the end, the order for deportation appeared, without Czerniakow’s signature. The wife of the Judenrat chairman was held hostage to ensure his compliance with the Nazi master. On the evening of July 2.3, the ninth day of Av—the day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish people—Czerniakow completed the ninth book of his diary. To continue writing, he would have had to open a new book. Instead, that very same day he swallowed cyanide. There were no words of warning, only a final tragic confession of failure: The SS wants me to kill children with my own hands.
He could not participate.
Even in death Czerniakow remained controversial. Those close to him felt that his suicide was testimony to his personal courage, to his sense of public responsibility, an act of ultimate integrity. Underground circles were less charitable. They saw his death as an act of weakness. He had not even summoned the courage to warn the ghetto and to call for resistance.
During the days that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews were dragged to the Umschlagplatz (assembly and deportation point) and transported in cattle cars to Treblinka. Initially, the task of rounding up the Jews for deportation fell to some extent to the Jewish police, but within a week the SS, aided by Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian soliders, as well as by the German gendarmerie—some two hundred men in all—took the lead and systematically laid siege to blocks, buildings, and streets. Those awaiting deportation were anxious; families struggled to stay together while some sought to escape the ghetto, to find a place to hide on the other side of the wall.
Others, such as Janusz Korczak and his orphans, went together—children and educators. Emanuel Ringelblum described the scene: "Korczak set the tone: everybody was to go to the Umschlagplatz together. Some of the boarding school principals knew what was in store for them there, but they felt they could not abandon the children in this dark hour and had to accompany them to their death." Korczak had firmly resisted all personal offers of safety.
The first to be taken were the weakest. Then came those who lacked papers and permanent jobs. They, in turn, were followed by relatives of those who had exemption papers, and finally even workers with proper papers were taken. Everyone was a potential victim. Families had to decide whether to stay together. Should mothers go with their children? What of the fathers?
Among the young and the resistance, demoralization set in after the deportations. Demoralization and recriminations were especially prominent, since in the early days of the July deportation a decision had been made that the time was not yet ripe for resistance. The survivors were frustrated and enraged that they had not fought the Germans or even struck out against the Jewish police. Remorse was deep. As Yitzhak Zuckerman reported on a conversation:
Jewish resistance will never come into being after us. The nation is lost. If we couldn’t organize Jewish force while there were still hundreds of thousands in Warsaw, how can we do so when only a few thousand are left? The masses did not place their trust in us. We do not have—and probably never will have—weapons. We don’t have the strength to start all over again. The nation has been destroyed; our honor trampled upon.
Because there was no choice, despair soon gave way to a firm determination to resist. Yet first, deep political divisions had to be overcome and alliances had to be forged among Jewish fighting factions torn by deep ideological rifts. Zionists of the right and the left, religious non-Zionists, socialists, Bundists, and Communists were at odds with each other, divided over what tactics and strategies to employ, when to strike, whom to trust, what contacts to make. Divisions were so deep that the Revisionist Zionists established their own fighting unit, with only marginal contacts with the major resistance organization. Even the Nazi threat of total destruction could not unify the Jews, but the unification that was finally achieved represented almost all major political and social streams in Jewish life.
The Germans were hesitant to destroy the entire ghetto population. They did not want to lose the assets of the ghetto, including enterprises they wanted to transfer intact. Furthermore, they required Jewish labor to gather, store, and guard existing property. The deportation of July–September 1942 reduced the ghetto population from 400,000 to between 50,000 and 60,000 people. After the summer deportations the ghetto was left a mere remnant consisting mostly of men, whose chances for survival were enhanced by their usefulness for heavy labor. Almost all were between the ages of fifteen and fifty.
Belated efforts were made to forge a fighting organization. Political solidarity was required as was a unity of purpose and program. These were not easily achieved amidst the tensions and anguish of the post-deportation ghetto. The Jewish Fighting Organization, the ZOB, its leadership and fighters, emerged from the shadows of the first deportation. The ZOB members saw themselves as rejecting a Jewish tradition of passivity and compliance and returning to the heroic days of Jewish fighters of biblical times. And they conceived of themselves as an expression of Jewish national redemption.
Mordecai Anielewicz, who was to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Uprising, returned to Warsaw after the deportations from eastern Silesia, where he was engaged in underground work. Because he had been outside the ghetto during the decisive days of July–September, he was also free of the hesitation and powerlessness that had eroded the spirit of some of the ZOB members when they recognized the full consequences of their failure. He was soon to become a hero because of his extraordinary accomplishments during the few months of dynamic preparations and at the height of the battle.
The first act of resistance was an assassination attempt against the chief of the Jewish police, Jozef Szerynski, who, in the words of one diarist, aided in the execution of 100,000 Jews.
Soon Jacob Lejkin, another prominent policeman, was assassinated. Within a month, the first Judenrat official, Yisrael First, was killed. The ZOB were convinced that the ghetto could not be transformed into a fighting force unless the fifth column elements were eliminated. They also understood that the Nazis would not intervene in internal Jewish vendettas.
The ZOB insisted that there could be no next time, no further deportations, at least not without a fight. They proclaimed, in a public manifesto:
Jewish masses, the hour is drawing near. You must be prepared to resist. Not a single Jew should go to the railroad cars. Those who are unable to put up active resistance should resist passively, should go into hiding . . . Our slogan must be: All are ready to die as human beings.
On January 9, 1943, Heinrich Himmler paid a visit to the ghetto. Two days later he ordered the deportation of eight thousand remaining Jews, who constituted the illegal element.
This time, the Jewish reaction was different. Ghetto streets were deserted, many went into hiding. A group of fighters under the command of Anielewicz attacked the Germans, and the first street battle occurred in the ghetto. By the third day of the Aktion the Germans were reduced to shooting wildly—and for the first time Jews had shot German soldiers. Armed resistance had begun. The Germans were suddenly hesitant and cautious. They did not go down to cellars, and each Jew they captured was searched. Streets became the scene of battle.
The Aktion ended within a matter of days. The remaining Jews were electrified. They falsely assumed that Jewish resistance, not Jewish compliance, had brought the deportations to a halt. Again they reproved themselves for their inaction during the fateful deportations. Hideouts were fortified, resistance units were strengthened. The January revolt made the April revolt possible!
said one of the major leaders of the Uprising.
No doubt remained regarding the fate of the ghetto, and the only decision to be made was the response of those who remained. The ghetto had to be purged of dangerous collaborators. Money was desperately needed to purchase arms, cultivate contacts on the Aryan side, and acquire modest but substantial aid from the Polish underground. Planning for battle began in earnest. The leadership rejected a plan to transport some Jews to partisan areas clandestinely, and thus rescue at least a remnant. The reasoning was simple, Yitzhak Zuckerman said:
We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one . . . a pioneer force not only from a Jewish standpoint but also from the standpoint of the entire embattled world—the first to fight. For our hour had come without any sign of hope or rescue.
The attitude within the ghetto had changed completely. When the Germans approached the leader of the Warsaw Judenrat, Marc Lichtenbaum, to speak to Jewish workers, his response was, I am not the authority in the ghetto. There is another authority—the Jewish Fighting Organization.
From January onward, Jewish forces stood on high alert, ready for action if the need arose. The high alert lasted eighty-seven days.
The Uprising itself, which began on April 19, 1943, the first night of Passover, continued until the final liquidation of the ghetto. Three days were allocated for liquidating the Warsaw ghetto. The battle of the bunkers continued for more than a month.
As the ghetto was set aflame, some Jews escaped through the sewers. One survivor reports:
On May 10, 1943, at 9 o’clock in the morning the lid of the sewer over our head literally opened and a flood of sunlight streamed in. At the opening of the sewer Krzaczek [a member of the Polish resistance] was standing and calling us to come out. We started to climb out one after another and at once got on a truck. It was a beautiful spring day and the sun warmed us. Our eyes were blinded by the bright light, as we had not seen daylight for many weeks and had spent the time in complete darkness. The streets were crowded with people, and everybody stood still and watched, while strange beings, hardly recognizable as humans, crawled out of the sewers.
The Uprising was literally a revolution in Jewish history. Its importance was understood all too well by those who fought. On April 23 Mordecai Anielewicz wrote to his comrade in arms Yitzhak Zuckerman:
What we have experienced cannot be described in words. We are aware of one thing only: what has happened has exceeded our dreams. The Germans ran twice from the ghetto . . . I have the feeling that great things are happening, that we have dared is of great importance. . . .
Keep well, my dear. Perhaps we shall meet again. But what really matters is that the dream of my life has become true. Jewish self defense in the Warsaw ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and the retaliation have become a reality. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.
1
The First Weeks of War
BY MID-MAY 1943, the rebellion of the Warsaw ghetto had come to an end. The last groups of Jews had been murdered or sent to death camps. Perhaps a few thousand were hiding underground. The people were gone; so too their homes, apartments, workshops, factories, public and welfare institutions, synagogues, makeshift houses of prayer, hospitals, and old-age homes—all had been systematically erased from the face of the earth, vanished forever.
On the fifteenth of May 1943, SS General Jürgen Stroop, whose forces had destroyed the Warsaw ghetto, triumphantly reported that the guards on duty the night before had encountered only six or seven Jews in the ghetto area. Only a handful of Jews remained within the ruins of the ghetto. Stroop also noted that he had blown up the great synagogue of Warsaw, located outside the ghetto area. This imposing structure, the work of the architect Leandro Marconi in 1878, was the pride of many Jews. To the Nazis, its destruction symbolized the final victory of German power and spirit. The Jews of Warsaw had been destroyed. The material remains of Jewish life would also be eradicated.
General Stroop began his report of May 15 with an enthusiastic description of the victorious military campaign. Heavy artillery had been employed; thousands of casualties had been inflicted on the enemy. In the words of his summary: The Jewish quarter in Warsaw is no longer.
Indeed, Jewish life in Warsaw had ended. For nearly four years, Jews had fought for their lives, their children, and their homes. The non-Jewish world ignored their struggle or simply became resigned to the situation. Only a few, a very precious few, risked their lives by coming to aid the Jews.
The final chapter of the Jewish community in Warsaw had begun only four years earlier, on September 1, 1939.
In the summer of 1939, Germany presented Poland with an ultimatum demanding changes in the boundaries between the two countries; German inducements were tangible, its threats veiled. Poland stood firm. Along with the rest of the world, Polish leaders had followed the Reich’s trail of broken agreements, dictates, and territorial expansion. Poland knew from the sad experience of Czechoslovakia and Austria that initially restrained German demands soon would be followed by ever-growing claims and threats to destroy the enemy and all European democracies. The Polish affair would end with the German occupation of its enfeebled neighbor. An attack could be expected; the only question was when.
Warsaw took some modest steps to prepare for war. Volunteers dug trenches around the approaches to the capital. Members of the Polish intelligentsia, who had never held a shovel, stood shoulder to shoulder with caftan-clad Jews, and they worked feverishly to protect the capital city. On August 19, 1939, Warsaw mayor Stefan Starzynski told residents, Yesterday, more than 20,000 men dug trenches. Therefore, there are now a dozen kilometers of trenches already in a proper condition.
The Polish political crisis occurred just as Europe was abandoning its policy of appeasement, which was particularly strong in Great Britain. Public opinion was shifting against the Nazis. The abrogation of the Munich Agreement shortly after it was signed in March 1939 and the subjugation of Czechoslovakia, perhaps the most stable and successful democracy created by the Versailles treaty, convinced many that Hitler would not be satisfied by redressing the inequities resulting from World War I or gathering all Germans into one state. The German leader was intent on conquests and war.
The British policy of appeasement and the country’s desperate attempts at negotiation had convinced Hitler that Great Britain and France would be reluctant to defend Poland despite their treaty obligations. Unwilling to display any weakness, Hitler resolved to attack Poland, correctly assuming that Poland would remain isolated during a short campaign. The last step that isolated Poland and ensured Hitler’s fast victory was the Nazi-Soviet pact signed on August 23. Hitler and Stalin, who were until then outspoken ideological and political rivals, united in the plot to give the Nazis a free hand in their invasion and to divide conquered Poland between themselves.
The first of September was a sunny summer Friday. Polish children were about to begin their new school year, but instead they were awakened by the sound of bombing. Zila Rosenberg, a Jewish girl who later became a member of the resistance in Vilna, remembered her terror: I am lying in an open field, trying to shrink, to turn into a tiny invisible dot. Low-flying heavy German bombers are passing overhead. My heart is beating like a thousand hammers: oh, God, don’t let them harm me.
No official declaration of war by the Nazis preceded the attack. Rather, German prison inmates were dressed in Polish military uniforms and armed with rifles, and they initiated what the Nazis claimed was a Polish attack on a radio station in the small German border town of Gliwice. The ruse was successful, and the bombing of Warsaw took its inhabitants by surprise. At about 7:00 A.M., hours after the bombing began, Polish radio broadcast the first warnings:
At 4:45 A.M., the German army, without declaring war, crossed the Polish borders from the north and the west . . . the first air-attack on Warsaw this morning caused damage in the airport area Okiecie and in residential quarters . . . the newspapers printed during the night do not give any news as yet of the beginning of these acts of war.
On September 3, Britain and France declared war against Germany. Euphoria swept through Warsaw. The national anthems of Great Britain and France were broadcast endlessly. No one asked how the Allies would reach the Polish battlefields or where and when the western front would be set up. Excited crowds streamed toward the British embassy, then continued toward the presidential palace. A young Jew grasped a microphone:
Brothers, Poles, Jews. The enemy is beating and murdering us, burning and destroying our houses, our property, the effort of generations. I am a simple tinsmith, I don’t understand politics. But it is clear to me