Fighting on all Fronts (19 page)

Partisans are everywhere, even in the city of Minsk. In the last months many Germans have been killed in the streets. You can’t travel along the Vilna-Minsk highway. You can move in the direction of Baranovichi only escorted by tanks…a mine was planted in the city theatre…as a result more than 30 people were killed and about 100 were wounded. Then they blew up an electric power station and the steam tank at the dairy plant.
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The soldiers’ cinema and hostel, a bakery and many vehicles were also targeted, many successfully.

The story of the fate of the surviving underground members after the war is a sorry one. Not only were they not treated as heroes by the Russian regime, but they were arrested and many spent years in prison or keeping their heads down.
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Partisan units were a feature of the northern forest area. The partisan groups were very disparate but Soviet POWs who had escaped from the horrendous Nazi POW camps figured large. In the early days the units tended to be anarchic, loose and disorganised and we should not romanticise the partisan movement. As Nehama Tec says: “few forest dwellers resembled the idealised image of the fearless, heroic fighter”.
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The life of a partisan was extremely difficult and conditions “inhuman”.
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Forest conditions where dirt, hunger, exhaustion, danger and fear were the daily experience naturally bred suspicion, hierarchy, internal conflict—and anti-Semitism. “In these jungle-like forests, a jungle-like culture emerged”.
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Many partisans in Belarus were communists and later the units became more organised as Stalin implemented a programme of control
over them with an eye on post-war Poland.
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The partisan groups would very often only accept young men with arms whereas fleeing Jews often arrived without weapons or skills. Nonetheless approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Jews fought in about 30 Jewish partisan groups and 21 mixed groups; an estimated 80 percent died.
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In 1944 more than 159 Jewish partisans were active in the Parczew forest north of Lublin (Poland). They cooperated with the Soviet partisans in a number of engagements against the Nazis including the takeover of the city of Parczew in April 1994.
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However, not all the partisans were Soviet controlled. When “The Avengers” from Vilna moved into the forest after the liquidation of the town, they destroyed the town power plant and the waterworks. In honour of International Women’s Day, Gertie Boyarski and a friend—both in their teens—demolished a wooden bridge used by the Nazis.
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The dilemma of the ghettos also applied in the partisan setting. What were the many people who fled the ghettos but unarmed and unable to be fighters to do?

About 10,000 Jews survived in family camps which provided shelter and support for non-fighting people as well as armed partisans. The most famous, Bielski Otriad, focused on rescuing Jews and accepted anyone of any sex or age who could reach them.
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Another non-military group was, astonishingly, a musical troupe based near the village of Sloboda in Belarus. The group of 25 included three Jews—Chana Pozner, her father Mordechai Pozner and Yehiel Borgin—and provided entertainment for the partisan units.
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The horrors of life in concentration camps are notorious and the degradation and misery led to bitter and corrupt behaviour. In her diary Hanna Levy-Hass, a communist and inmate of Bergen-Belsen, describes her pain at the collaboration and servitude. But there were also many local and individual instances of resistance. Levy-Hass also describes how she represented 120 women who organised to demand more equitable food distribution.
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Underground organisations arose in many camps and there were uprisings in three of the six extermination camps and 18 work camps.

The name of Auschwitz is virtually synonymous with death camp. It was in fact much more than that. Auschwitz-Birkenau, situated near the Polish town of Oswiecim in south west Poland, consisted of three main
sections including transit camps, labour camps, extermination ovens and 45 satellite camps.
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Resistance occurred in many areas at Auschwitz. The Union Factory (
Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke
), which was owned by Krupp, employed forced labourers who manufactured a range of explosives and armaments. Krupp had complete control over the production while punishment was “inflicted by the SS at Krupp’s request”. Workers, many of whom were Jews, carried out sabotage and participated in the uprising.
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The underground organisation at Auschwitz included Polish political prisoners, forced labourers and Jews from the
Sonderkommando
, the group responsible for dealing with the remains from the crematorium. The Auschwitz underground astonishingly published a newspaper and even transmitted by radio direct to London.
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The group planned a revolt and prepared weapons using gunpowder smuggled out of the Union Factory by women forced labourers such as Rosa Robota.
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Having heard that the
Sonderkommando
was about to be liquidated, on 7 October 1944 camp inmates attacked the guards with axes and knives while the SS responded with machine guns. The
Sonderkommando
members then blew up crematorium IV with grenades made from smuggled dynamite.
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In no time the entire guard force of the camp was mobilised against the rebels. Bullets were flying all over the place. SS with dogs were chasing the…rebels, many of whom fell while trying to escape… When they realised that they had no chance of survival, they set the forest on fire… As the day was coming to an end Auschwitz was surrounded by guards and fires. The crematorium was burning against a dark sky, as were small forests on opposite sides of the camp. The ground was covered with dead bodies of the members of the
Sonderkommando
.
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A total of 250 prisoners died during the uprising and 200 were later shot. None escaped. Perhaps two or three Nazis died with approximately 12 wounded. Rosa Robota and three other women were hanged in Auschwitz the following January only three weeks before the camp was liberated by the Soviets. After the war the Krupp owned Union Factory received 2.5 million marks as reparation for the factory they lost at Auschwitz. The forced labourers received nothing; the allies agreed to postpone claims. The German Supreme Court barred claims from forced labourers. Finally in 1993 a group of 22 survivors sued the former factory, with back pay being awarded in 1997 to one of them only. The court determined that the others were sufficiently compensated by governmental reparations.
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The uprising in Sobibor concentration camp in eastern Poland was more successful. The underground leadership consisted of a Jew, Leon Feldhandler, and a Soviet POW, Sasha Pechersky. Having learned about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising from deportees from that city, they made their own plans. On 14 October 1943 the group lured SS officers into the storehouses and attacked them with axes and knives, killing 11 including the camp commander. The rebels then seized weapons and ammunition and set fire to the camp. Tomasz (Toivi) Blatt describes what followed:

During the revolt prisoners streamed to one of the holes cut in the barbed-wire fence. They weren’t about to wait in line; there were machine guns shooting at us. They climbed on the fence and just as I was half way through, it collapsed, trapping me underneath. This saved me…[as the] first ones through hit mines. When most were through, I slid out of my coat, which was hooked on the fence, and ran till I reached the forest.
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Ultimately 300 of the total of 600 prisoners escaped, of whom nearly 200 avoided recapture; some were hidden from the Nazis by Poles.
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The underground at Treblinka (north east Poland) was organised by a former Jewish captain of the Polish Army, Dr Julian Chorążycki. After months of preparations on 2 August 1943 they stole arms from a warehouse, killed the guards, set the camp on fire and destroyed the extermination area. They then helped prisoners to escape into the forest. All resistance leaders were killed as the Germans retaliated. Out of 1,500 prisoners in the camp, approximately 600 escaped, the majority of whom were recaptured. Some of the escapees were helped by the Polish Home Army or by Polish villagers.
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Despite the losses, these two uprisings resulted in the closure of the camps which must be regarded as an achievement.
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Much is made of Polish collusion with the Nazi extermination of Jews. Yet even the post-war Israeli War Crimes Commission could only identify 7,000 collaborators out of a population of over 20 million ethnic Poles.
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Poland had the most draconian penalties in occupied Europe for helping Jews in any way. In places like France and Germany people attempting to help Jews certainly faced severe consequences. But in Poland not only the person but their whole family would be executed. Up to 50,000 Poles were executed for aiding Jews and thousands more were arrested and sent to labour or concentration camps.
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At the same time Poles were themselves subject to genocidal attacks from the Nazis. For Hitler all Poles were “more like animals than human beings” and ethnic cleansing known as “housecleaning” displaced 900,000 people. Over 3 million non-Jewish Poles died. The Nazi food rationing allowed 2,613 calories for Germans but 669 for Poles—barely above that allowed for Jews.
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Yet even in these conditions people did help Jews. It came in many forms and from both individuals and groups. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe with a secret organisation dedicated to helping Jews: the Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Żydom) known as Zegota which helped approximately half of the Polish Jews who survived the war (thus over 50,000).
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Zegota was founded in September 1942 by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a Catholic activist, and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz (“Alinka”) who was a socialist. Members came from many of the left wing organisations which had opposed anti-Semitism in the 1930s, including the Polish Socialist Party, the Peasant Party and the Bund. But there were also Catholic activists and Polish nationalists, students, the scout association, the writers’ union, medical and social workers and activists in the Polish underground.

The first chairman, Julian Grobelny, had actively helped Jews before he joined Zegota and headed an underground cell composed mainly of Socialist friends of the Bund. Because of his links to doctors and medical workers he was able to hide people in quarantine. And due to his long involvement in trade unions, in particular his contacts with railway workers, he was able to arrange transport for Jews out of Warsaw.

Zegota’s headquarters was the home of a Polish Socialist (Eugenia Wasowska) who had worked closely with the Bund. The organisation held “office hours” twice each week at which time couriers went in and out. Despite the enormous number of people who knew its location, the headquarters were never raided by the Germans. One “branch office” was a fruit and vegetable kiosk operated by Ewa Brzuska, an old woman known to everybody as “Babcia” (Granny). Babcia hid papers and money under the sauerkraut and pickle barrels and always had sacks of potatoes ready to hide Jewish children.

The best known Zegota activist is Irene Sendler, head of the children’s division. A social worker and a socialist, she grew up with close links to the Jewish community and could speak Yiddish. Sendler had protested against anti-Semitism in the 1930s: she deliberately sat with Jews in segregated university lecture halls and nearly got expelled. Irene Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw
Ghetto, providing them with false documents and sheltering them in individual and group children’s homes outside the ghetto.
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Zegota was not the only support group. What Gunnar Paulsson called a “secret city” operated in Warsaw as between 70,000 and 90,000 people helped an estimated 28,000 Jews to live outside the ghetto.
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The divided stand on anti-Semitism of pre-war political currents continued during the war. So while the right wing press contained anti-Semitic diatribes, the Polish Socialist Party and other left wing newspapers published information about atrocities and death camps, as did the organ of the Peasant Movement and those of the Catholic underground groups.
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Importantly, the Polish Underground State took a stand against anti-Semitism. They proclaimed laws against anti-Semitism and executed perpetrators, with details published in their underground newspapers. In early 1943 the Underground State’s official publication wrote that they viewed the murder of Jews with shock and horror and stated that Poles had a duty to help Jews, despite the death penalty awaiting any caught doing so.
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One major contribution of the Polish underground was its pivotal role in conveying news of Nazi extermination policy to the West.
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We often hear people say that the Poles or other non-Jewish nationalities should have or could have done more to help the Jews. For instance, historian Barbara Epstein:

If non-Jewish organisations with substantial influence and resources had done what they could to help the Jews, more Jews would have escaped and survived.
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But Epstein herself points out that most Jews in Eastern Europe died when “the Germans were at the height of their power and when they were engaged in killing not only Jews but also Poles, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, and others”.
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