The charge was made, during WW2 and afterwards, that the Jews put up only passive resistance to their fate, going like lambs to the slaughter. But this ignores the fact that even Jews in the Polish ghettos, until late in the day, simply could not believe that the daily transports were taking them to camps, not to work, but to exterminate them. Brutal German reprisals certainly inhibited active Jewish resistance, as did the ever present fear of betrayal: it's a shock to learn that in the Netherlands, for example, some 60% of Jews in hiding were betrayed to the Germans - Anne Frank among them -suggesting widespread anti-semitism (in all, some 75% of Dutch Jews were transported to their deaths, the highest rate in western Europe). So acts of Jewish defiance tended to be individual and low key, such as escaping from transports or ghettos. That said, large-scale Jewish resistance did happen as the full horror of German intentions sunk in. The Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943 was a quite deliberate Jewish last stand: at the end most of the surviving fighters, holed up in a bunker, killed themselves and their families. Revolts by Jewish prisoners also took place in the death camps of Treblinka and Sobibor, with scores escaping to freedom. But a large, carefully planned uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau in late 1944 failed: all escapees were recaptured and up to 700 Jewish inmates were killed in the brutal aftermath.
You can learn more about Europe-wide resistance to the Nazis during WW2 by listening to Episode 7 of the new series of Unknown Warriors.
If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again.
An Understanding History Podcast
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