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Read Related Article #3: Targeted groups
Read Related Article #4: Liberation
Read Related Article #5: Survivor Profile: Werner Kleeman
Read Related Article #6: Where they went
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During the Holocaust, members of the Jewish population still found ways to defy their captors through various forms of resistance, both big and small.
Insofar as the Jews were cut off from all forms of communication, Bonnie Gurewitsch, the archivist and curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, said that one form of resistance was “to create and maintain contact.” She explained that so-called “couriers” would travel from one ghetto to another to get information and share it. There were also those who would sneak out and mix in with the population so that they could read newspapers.
Jews also found ways to continue with school, which had been forbidden by the Nazis. They formed secret hospitals in the ghettos. Gurewitsch said that in the Warsaw Ghetto, there was even a secret medical and nursing school that lasted for 14 months. The grades from it were smuggled into Warsaw University where the students continued their education after the war.
Jamaica resident and Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher was only a child when she and her parents were sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto. Even though only a little girl, she found a way to resist by holding on to her doll, Marlene.
The doll has since been donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington but is currently on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage as part of their exhibition “Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust.”
Along with there being many other forms of non-aggressive resistance, there was also armed resistance. There were numerous armed uprisings within ghettos and even in some of the camps where killings occurred.
There were also Jews who resisted the Nazis through their involvement in various partisan groups.
