Upstanders[1] in the Holocaust and Other Genocides

By the Education Staff of the

"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." Elie Wiesel

In this curriculum, students reflect on the Holocaust from the point of view of those who actively resisted Nazi persecution. After reviewing the history of the Holocaust, in order to understand the legal and bureaucratic authority with which the Nazis systematically enforced their policies, students debate the options for resistance and the likely outcomes. Working with the archives of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and library resources, they gather facts about resistance and rescue during the Holocaust and other genocides. Students will reflect in a journal format on their own role in keeping this spirit of resistance/rescue alive today by considering situations in which they must decide to be a bystander or an upstander. There are other suggested activities throughout this curriculum to choose from, based on time and focus of the individual teacher.

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this lesson students will be able to:

  • Analyze and discuss the evidence of resistance/rescue in the Holocaust and other genocides preserved in archival documents and in oral traditions.
  • Discuss the moral questions and dilemmas inherent in confrontation with and resistance/rescue during the Nazi regime and in the face of the oppressors in other countries in which ethnic cleansing has taken place.
  • Understand the danger of indifference and apathy in the face of hate, abuse, and attempted destruction of an ethnic group.
  • Understand the importance of speaking up for victims who cannot speak up for themselves.
  • Understand the Eight Stages of Genocide, and how they apply to the Holocaust and other genocides.
  • Identify behavior and attitudes that can lead to bullying and persecution of selected victims within their school.

Instructional Objectives

Students will learn that:

1. There are various responses to dealing with a threat of abuse or persecution.

2. The Jews did resist during the Holocaust, despite a common misconception to the contrary.

3. Resistance can take many forms, both armed and unarmed.

4 The inaction and complicity of the world community reduced the extent to which the Jews could resist during the Holocaust.

5. There were many non-Jews, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Miep Gies, Oscar Schindler, and others who risked their lives to save Jews from destruction.

6. Though Jews faced repeated obstructions to their efforts to emigrate from Nazi-occupied countries, steps were taken by some nations to rescue Jews, Denmark being the archetypical example.

7. There are similarities between the Holocaust and other 20th century genocides when discussing how and why they happened.

8. There have been instances of resistance and rescue in other genocides.

9. Silence and apathy only aids the perpetrator and never helps the victim.

  1. Introduction to Upstanders in the Holocaust

Upstanders in the Holocaust are those who resisted the actions of the perpetrators or rescued the targeted victims from the clutches and influence of those perpetrators.

Suggested Activities

1. The History of the Holocaust

Before beginning this lesson students should have a basic understanding of the Holocaust and the trajectory of events from the 1930s through to the end of World War II. You may wish to review the sections in your textbook on the Holocaust, or review and discuss the timeline of events from Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 through the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945, included on your teacher packet CD or on the museum’s website.

Among the many incomprehensible aspects of the Holocaust, students may find it most difficult to understand that, under Nazi law, the systematic persecution and killing of Jews and other “inferior” peoples was legal and state mandated. Stress that while deep-seated prejudice was at the root of the Holocaust, it was the translation of prejudice into official policy, the organization of prejudice into a set of laws, and the enforcement of prejudice by judicial and bureaucratic authorities that made the Holocaust truly horrific and made resistance/rescue all but futile.

2. Moral Dilemmas: Risk and Resistance

In this activity students will begin to explore the moral dilemmas implicit in resistance to the Holocaust through a class debate. Divide the class into three groups, and then assign one set of questions to each group. Students in each group should discuss the following questions:

Group 1

  • In a society where all the forces of law and order are directed against one, what can be accomplished by violent resistance? What are the likely outcomes of violent resistance, for the fighter and for those whom he or she intends to protect?

Group 2

  • It was common during the Holocaust for a group, even a whole community, to be punished for a single individual’s violation of the rules. Is it right to risk bringing such retribution down on one’s relatives and friends by challenging the forces of law and order? And what hope would one have of significantly weakening those forces in any case?

Group 3

  • In a situation where one is not part of the group of people being persecuted, why would that person risk himself and others to resist in the form of rescuing a member of the targeted people?

Each group should present the questions they were assigned and the findings of their discussions to the rest of the class. Students should be careful to weigh all sides of the issues in their discussions. Each student could then write a journal entry responding to any or all of the scenarios above.

3. The Faces of Resistance in the Holocaust

Divide the class into groups and assign each group the archival records of one incident of resistance/rescue (suggestions are below). If possible, have them supplement the archival record with library resources in order to prepare a report on the event and its consequences, both for those involved and those whom they fought to protect.

In this assignment students will use the interactive archives at the EDSITEment reviewed website the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum – or the website for Yad Vashem – to provide them with evidence that the impulse to resist remained alive during the Holocaust. Ask students to complete the following task:

Search the website archives for information on the following incidents:

  • The April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising:
  • The August 1943 revolt at the Treblinka death camp;
  • The October 1943 break out at the Sobibor death camp,
  • The October 1944 bombing of a crematorium at the Auschwitz death camp.
  • The rescue of the Danish Jews.
  • Oskar Schindler and the “Schindler Jews”
  • Yad Vashem and the “Righteous among the Nations”
  • Zegota in Poland
  • England and the Kindertransport
  • Le Chambon, a village in France opposing the actions of Vichy France

You can also conduct a “subject” search using the keywords resistance and resistance fighter, and rescue. In addition to archival photographs, your search will provide summaries of many survivor accounts of these incidents.

Library Resources – books they might consult include:

  • Yehuda Bauer, They Chose Life: Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust (1973).
  • Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943 (1982).
  • Chaim Kaplan, The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan (1973).
  • Ben Mark, Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (1979).
  • Adina Blady Szwajger, I Remember Nothing More (1990).
  • Rittner, Carol and Sondra Myers, The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, (1943).
  • Lyman, Darryl, Holocaust rescuers: Ten stories of courage, (1999).
  • Levine, Ellen, Darkness over Denmark: the Danish resistance and the rescue of the Jews, (2000).
  • Geier, Arnold, Heroes of the Holocaust, (1993)
  • Gilbert, Martin, The Righteous, (2003)
  • Crowe, David, Oskar Schindler: the Untold Account of His Life,
    Wartime Activities and True Story Behind the List, (2007).

When each group has completed their report on the incident, combining archival and library resources, they should present their findings to the rest of the class.

4. The Range of Resistance –

Students have already researched the archival and library resources on some of the more well-known and organized incidents of resistance, but are these the only forms of resistance? The authors of the Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust point out that resistance took many forms during the years of Nazi genocide:

Spiritual Resistance

“Resistance…usually refers to a physical act of armed revolt. During the Holocaust, it also meant partisan activism that ranged from smuggling messages, food, and weapons to actual military engagement. But resistance also embraced willful disobedience: continuing to practice religious and cultural traditions in defiance of the rules; creating fine art, music, and poetry inside ghettos and concentration camps. For many, simply maintaining the will to remain alive in the face of abject brutality was the surest act of spiritual resistance.”

Have students search the archives of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website for examples of such non-violent (spiritual) resistance, using religious observance, art, music, and poetry as keywords. They will be able to find another example of such non-violent resistance is the Piesn Obozowa “Camp Song” featured on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website.

When students have finished their research ask them to explain how actions like these can be regarded as resistance. Encourage them to recognize that, within a system of organized prejudice like that created by the Nazis, almost any affirmation of one’s humanity—saying a prayer, whistling a tune, saying hello to a friend, standing up after one has fallen—springs in some measure from that impulse to resist, to strike out against the denial of human rights.

Suggested Activity: Conclude this activity by having students reflect in a journal entry on their part in keeping this spirit of resistance alive. Their journal entries should include discussions of the following questions:

  • In what sense is remembering the Holocaust and preserving it as an historical event an act of resistance against the forces that brought it about?
  • How does memory, and the sharing of memories through study and discussion, affirm our humanity?

Resistance by Protest

Protesting Nazi occupation and plans for the Holocaust took many forms ranging from letter writing to mass demonstrations to destruction of propaganda. Upstanders were involved in protest at every level. Protests brought international media attention to the atrocities being committed and raised both public and government awareness of the scope of the murders of Jews.

•Letters

•Poland: Wladyslawa Choms' letter to President Roosevelt

•Speeches and sermons

•Reverend Martin Neimoller

•Friedrich Bonhoeffer

•1941, Catholic bishop protests euthanasia

•US: Rabbi Wise press conference

•Confessingchurch theological declaration

•Demonstrations

•US: 1938 NYC anti-Nazi rally

•Poland: 1940, Lodz ghetto demonstrations on starvation

•Germany: 1943 “German” wives of Jews demonstration

•US: 1943, Stop Hitler Now rally in NYC

•US: NYC Pagaent to memorialize murdered Jews

•US: 1943, 400 Rabbis protest at the White House

•US: 1933, Madison Sq garden NYC

•Bulgaria: May, 1943, marched through streets to protest deportations, succeeded in stopping deportations of Bulgarian Jews., Rittner, 81.

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Suggested Activity: Have the students look for a current situation in the media which shows people being treated unfairly – Have them write a letter to the editor giving their opinion of how the situation should be changed and why.

Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide

Millions of Jews were ordered to board trains and were locked in until the trains arrived at an unknown destination. Thousands worked in forced labor. Millions of others led a brutal existence in concentration camps, slowly wasting away until they died. Questions have been raised as to whether the Jews went like sheep to the slaughter, or whether there was resistance. Since the death camps required the work of Jews in order to make the camps function efficiently, the question has also been raised as to whether Jews share some of the responsibility for the horror of the Holocaust.

For most of the Jews who died in the gas chamber, the issue of resistance was not an issue at all. Until as late as mid-1942, the Jews were unaware that the Final Solution was being implemented. Stripped of weapons, facing starvation and disease, the prospect of deportation combined with offers of food was an incentive for Jews to board the trains which took them to their deaths. Most believed what they were told that they were going to be relocated to work. For virtually all, the reality that they faced immediate death did not occur until the doors of the gas chambers were sealed, the lights were turned off, and the smell of gas was perceived. By then, it was too late. Those who did resist, either by running from the trains, or attacking their captors, faced certain death. Some took advantage of this option and were summarily executed on the spot. Others chose to take their own lives when faced with the hopelessness of the situation. It might be argued that suicide under these circumstances was itself resistance.

For others, deciding not to commit suicide, but rather to make an attempt at survival amidst the hopelessness and despair of this situation was their resistance. Those that resisted more actively found that any success resulted in unintended consequences. The Nazis practiced the doctrine of collective responsibility. Thus, if a Nazi soldier was murdered by a Jew, not only was that Jew executed, but also his family, and perhaps a hundred other Jews. As a result, few Jews even considered carrying out this active resistance for fear of reprisals.

Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos

While there were examples of courageous armed uprisings in the ghettos, resistance also took forms without weapons. For many, attempting to carry on a semblance of “normal” life in the face of wretched conditions was resistance. David Altshuler writes in Hitler’s War against the Jews about life in the ghettos, which sustained Jewish culture in the midst of hopelessness and despair.

“All forms of culture sustained life in the ghetto. Since curfew rules did not allow people on the street from 7 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning, socializing had to be among friends living [in] the same building or visitors who spent the night. Card playing was very popular, and actors, musicians, comics, singers, and dancers all entertained small groups who came together for a few hours to forget their daily terror and despair.”

Artists and poets as well entertained, and their works, many of which survive today, are poignant reminders of the horrors of the period. Underground newspapers were printed and distributed at great risk to those who participated. Praying was against the rules, but synagogue services occurred with regularity. The education of Jewish children was forbidden, but the ghetto communities set up schools. The observance of many Jewish rituals, including dietary laws, was severely punished by the Nazis, and many Jews took great risks to resist the Nazi edicts against these activities. Committees were organized to meet the philanthropic, religious, educational, and cultural community needs. Many of these committees defied Nazi authority.

Some Jews escaped death by hiding in the attics and cellars and closets of non-Jews, who themselves risked certain death if their actions were discovered by the Nazis.

The writings and oral histories of survivors of the labor and concentration camps are filled with accounts of simple sabotage. Material for the German war effort, for example, might be mysteriously defective, the result of intentionally shoddy workmanship by Jewish slave labor.

Despite the myth to the contrary, Jewish armed resistance to the Holocaust did occur. This active resistance occurred in ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps. Many of those who participated in resistance of this type were caught and executed, and their stories will never be told. However, there are many verifiable accounts of major incidents of this resistance:

Armed Ghetto Resistance

1. Tuchin Ghetto: On September 3, 1942, seven hundred Jewish families escaped from this ghetto in the Ukraine. They were hunted down, and only 15 survived.

2. Warsaw Ghetto: this was the first urban revolt against the Nazi regime. By 1943, the ghetto residents had organized an army of about 1,000 fighters, mostly unarmed and without equipment. They were joined by thousands of others, mostly the young and able-bodied, still needed for forced labor. By that time, the half-million original inhabitants had been depleted to about 60,000 as a result of starvation, disease, cold, and deportation.