Jews Did Fight Back

Contrary to a popular misconception, Jews did fight back during the Holocaust – both in ghettos (the biggest were in Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos) and even in death camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz).

Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos where they interned the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews (there were ghettos in other Nazi-occupied countries as well).

In most ghettos the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although forced isolation had severely limited their access to resources. The Jewish fighters ghetto took up arms during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust known as Operation Reinhard (extermination of all Jews in Poland). No surprise here – now they had nothing to lose.

Uprisings took place in over 100 locations – overwhelmingly in eastern Poland. Some of these uprisings were more massive and organized, while others were small and spontaneous. The uprisings erupted in five major cities, 45 provincial towns, five major concentration camps and killing, as well as in at least 18 forced labor camps.

The best known and the biggest of all Jewish uprisings during the Holocaust took place in the Warsaw Ghetto between April 19 and May 16, 1943, and in Bia;ystok in August. In Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 56,065 Jews were either killed on the spot or captured and transported aboard Holocaust trains to extermination camps before the Ghetto was razed to the ground.

At the Bia;ystok Ghetto, following deportations in which 10,000 Jews were led to the Holocaust trains, and another 2,000 were murdered locally, the ghetto underground staged an uprising, resulting in a blockade of the ghetto which lasted for a full month.

The other most significant ghetto uprisings took place in Slonim (June 29, 1942), Lakhva (September 3, 1942), Mizocz (October 14, 1942), Minsk Mazowiecki (January 10, 1943), Czestochowa (June 25-30 1943), Bedzin (August 3, 1943).

Almost all these uprisings were suicidal, often leading to the wholesale burning of the ghettos such as in Ko;omyja (now Kolomyia, Ukraine), and mass shootings of women and children as in Mizocz. Still, it was worth is as fighters died with valor, dignity and honor – not as sheep in the slaughterhouse as all others.