The Forgotten History of Jewish Resistance
Are They Victims or Warriors?
This guest post by Anna K from the JPF family was originally published on Medium.
I think, now more than ever, we need to hear stories of Jewish resistance, of fighting back, of NOT taking crap dished out by an antisemitic world. This is one such story.
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The Forgotten History of Jewish Resistance
“Women to the left, men to the right!”
This is one of the first scenes of Sobibor, a movie about survival and revolt in a Nazi death camp during World War II. A train full of Jews arrives at the Sobibor station in Poland, and the barking commands of the SS officer shake the air on a cold winter morning:
“Hold on to your luggage slips! You’ll get your bags back shortly!”
The Jews slowly get off the train. The majority of them are young and well-dressed. Many of them are newlywed or just engaged couples who can’t imagine themselves being separated even for a few minutes. The women’s outfits and jewelry speak of good taste and wealth. The officer’s commands make them worry. Why do we have to be separated? Where are they taking us? What about our husbands?
As a Jew growing up in Ukraine, I can completely identify with those women. If I had been born some thirty years earlier, I could’ve been among them — fragile, lost souls, anxious about what’s next. What about my son, my parents? Where are they taking them?
One of the men, Shmuel, a typical Orthodox Jew in a big black hat — a jeweler, as we learn later — tells his young wife, “I made this ring for your birthday but thought I’ll give it to you now so it won’t be lost.”
“Why would it be?”
“You’ll never know.”
The shouting officer’s commands are like bullets fired into the crowd: “Women — to the shower! To the left!”
As women are herded to the gray one-story building, one of them sighs in relief. Finally! A shower! It’s so nice after being on the train for two weeks!
The SS officers take the women to a narrow room, where they order them to strip naked and form a line to get a haircut — for disinfection, as they say. You see how the beautiful long locks fall lifelessly to the floor. The women touch their suddenly bared necks and ears with embarrassment, but they have no time to worry about their looks. The officers herd them to the shower room in the basement, where they anxiously wait to get the promised shower. The officers turn on the faucets, but instead of water, a thick cloud of gas covers the room. Their deaths are painful. The women vomit and fall to the floor in a matter of minutes.
A camp commandant watches them through the basement window while we hear a whisper from another officer looking at his superior from a distance: “Do you think he is still getting hard?”
Later on, Shmuel, who was forced to work at the camp, finds the ring that he gave his wife the last time he had seen her. He can’t believe that she was murdered, and he slowly loses his mind. He wanders around the camp, showing everyone the ring, asking tearfully, “Where is my wife?” He looks dirty. His thick hair and beard, unwashed for months, turn into a large mop. His trembling lips and hands tell the story of this sick, defenseless man.
Of course, it can’t last too long. The officers have a big party at the camp, entertaining themselves by harnessing the prisoners like horses to the carts and taking rides, whipping the people to death. They are definitely having fun. They are all pretty drunk when the poor man approaches them, asking his usual question: “Where is my wife?” That amuses the officers even more. They pour vodka over him and set him on fire. What a spectacle it is!
I wrote this story not only because I want to bring back memories of the Holocaust and despicable Nazi cruelty — we have heard a lot about it, and it’s really up to everyone as to how they perceive it. Are we outraged? Do we shudder at the thought that it could happen in civilized Europe while the rest of the world was silent, or do we choose to ignore it? Those are not questions for me as a Jew growing up in a family that survived World War II. It is a reality I would never forget.
The reason I wrote this story is that this movie is about resistance. One of the prisoners, Alexander Pechersky, was able to organize and lead the revolt and escape from the Nazi camp. It seemed an absolutely unrealistic task, but nevertheless, he made this happen. People who came from all parts of Europe and spoke different languages trusted him. The plan he put in place was unprecedented, and I couldn’t believe he would’ve ever succeeded — but he did. However, as a result of the escape of three hundred prisoners from Sobibor, only fifty survived to see the end of the war in 1945. After the uprising, which was the largest escape from a prison camp during World War II, Sobibor was bulldozed to the ground, and trees were planted on the site to remove any sign of its existence. It was a huge embarrassment for the Nazis.
The Holocaust is portrayed today as endless stories of Jewish suffering and victimization, and that’s the absolute truth. The Jews were herded to the gas chambers like cattle to the slaughterhouse, but we rarely hear stories about their resistance. They survived. They fought. They won. Let’s not forget that.
Jews better start fighting now instead of begging black racist politicians who are in power where they live to protect them which ain’t going to happen.
Instead of organizing for the idiotic social justice bull shit they’re so addicted to , Jews in the West better start organizing with AR 15s and 9mm and start learning how to use them.
Whining to others ain’t going to fix the problem
Here, in the US, during the late 1930s, a wild and disparate amalgamation of Jews did a similar thing to crush the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Newspaper reporters working undercover, Walter Winchell, the nascent HUAC,NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (whose mother was Jewish), a vaudeville strongman, the so-called “ordinary people,” and the boys of the Jewish mob did their best. It worked.