Fighting on all Fronts (22 page)

54
    Two major sources for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising are Yitzhak Zuckerman,
A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
(University of California Press, 1993), and Edelman, 1990.

55
    For instance, the Labour Zionist youth group newspaper called for armed self-defence in March 1942. “Call to Armed Self-Defense, from an Underground Publication”, Yad Vashem website,
www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part2/doc125.html
.

56
    Edelman, 1990, p71.

57
    The right-wing Zionists, led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, known as the Revisionists, were organisationally isolated from mainstream Zionism in the 1930s and 40s.

58
    Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p21.

59
    Cited in Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p21. “Bandits” was the Nazi term for the non-Jewish Poles who fought alongside Jews in the uprising.

60
    Edelman, 1990, p112.

61
    “Marek Edelman”,
The Telegraph
, 4 October 2009,
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/6259900/Marek-Edelman.html
.

62
    Cited in Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p20.

63
    John Rose, ”Marek Edelman: Last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis”,
The Independent
, 17 October 2009, accessed on-line at
www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/marek-edelman-last-surviving-leader-of-the-1943-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-against-the-nazis-1798644.html

64
    Antony Polonsky,
The Jews in Poland and Russia
, vol iii, 1914-2008 (Littman, 2010), p537, cited in Tec, 2001, p23.

65
    Brenner, 2014, p233.

66
    Edelman, 1990, p55.

67
    Abraham Brumberg, “The Bund’s last battles”,
The Jewish Daily Forward
, 10 October 2003, online at
forward.com/articles/8322/the-bund-s-last-battles
(accessed 10/10/2014); Daniel Blatman,
For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland 1939-1949
, translated by Naftali Greenwood (Vallentine Mitchell, 2003).

At a meeting in March 1942 Avrasha Blum from the Bund youth group was in favour of a joint fighting organisation but felt he had to defer to his senior Maurici Auzach who was against, and the ZOB was formed in July without the participation of the Bund. Nazi attacks in the meantime resulted in a very high attrition rate and by the time they joined in November only 20 to 25 members of the Bund were left. “Avrasha Blum—Activities of the Zukunft in the Warsaw Ghetto”,
Organization of Partizans, Underground and Ghetto Fighters
, Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust website,
c3.ort.org.il/Apps/WW/page.aspx?ws=496fe4b2-4d9a-4c28-a845-510b28b1e44b&page=5d675d48-68df-4fc3-833c04a23648f70e&fol=e5b35888-e7db-4e50-9ce4-e132ae92de2e&box=3e0902e0-b315-412ca5ec-927e5dab4302&_pstate=item&_item=7ef98fee-ea87-44cb-b2c1-0689e149e8b2
.

68
    Brumberg, “The Bund’s last battles”; Daniel Blatman,
For Our Freedom and Yours
.

69
    Emmanuel Ringelblum, “Comrade Mordechai: Mordechai Aniliewicz—Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising”, in Yuri Suhl (ed),
They Fought Back: The story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe
(Shocken, 1975), p102.

70
    Yitzhak Zuckerman (in debate),
Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust
, p150, cited in Brenner, 2014, p234.

71
    Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. “Biala Podlaska”. Holocaust Research Project website,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/bialapodlaska.html
.

72
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Jewish uprisings in ghettos and camps, 1941-1944”.
Holocaust Encyclopedia
,
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005407
. “Killing center revolts”,
www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007747
. Tec,
Resistance during the Holocaust
.

73
    Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto website
www.zabludow.com/bialystokghettofighters.html
. Tec, 2001, p10.

74
    
Yael Margolin Peled, “Gusta Dawidson Draenger 1917-1943”. Jewish Women’s Archive,
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/draenger-gusta-dawidson
; Edelman, 1990, p57.

75
    Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto website
www.zabludow.com/bialystokghettofighters.html
. Aktion Reinhardt Camps Website, “Bialystok Ghetto“,
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/bialystok%20ghetto.html
.

76
    Holocaust Research Project website. “Efraim Barasz. Chairman of the Bialystok Judenrat.”
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/barasz.html
.

77
    Arnold Zable,
Jewels and Ashes
(Scribe, 2005), p146.

78
    Zable, 2005, p151.

79
    Szymon Datner, “The Fight and the Destruction of Ghetto Białystok”, 1945. Landsmanschaft of Bialystok and the surround website
www.zchor.org/bialystok/testimony.htm
.

80
    The Holocaust Resource Center, Yad Vashem website. “The Discussion on Fighting Aims by the Activists of the Bialystok Ghetto, February 27, 1943”,
www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20573.pdf
.

81
    “Vitka Kempner”, Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation website.
www.jewishpartisans.org/t_switch.php?pageName=mini+bio+short+bio+1&fromSomeone=&parnum=40
.

82
    Cited in “Hirsh Glik” Aktion Reinhardt Camps Website,
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/glik.html
.

83
    Still the Night (Shtil, Di Nacht Iz Oysgeshternt):

The still night was full of starlight,

And the frost—was burning;

Do you remember how I taught you

To hold a revolver in your hand?

A girl, a sheepskin and a beret,

And in her hands she clutches a gun.

A girl with a face as smooth as velvet

Keeps an eye out for the enemy’s caravan.

Aimed, shot, and right on target

Did the small pistol strike.

With one bullet she halted

A truck stacked with ammunition.

At dawn she crawled out of the woods,

With snowy garlands on her hair,

Encouraged by her little victory

For our new, free generation.

Milken Archive of Jewish Music website,
www.milkenarchive.org/works/lyrics/717

84
    Cited in Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p15.

85
    Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p13.

86
    Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p17. “Resistance in the Kovno ghetto”. Miles Lerman Centre. Holocaust Memorial Museum,
www.ushmm.org/research/the-center-for-advanced-holocaust-studies/miles-lerman-center-for-the-study-of-jewish-resistance/medals-of-resistance-award/resistance-in-the-kovno-ghetto
.

87
    Chaim Yelin and Dimitri Ghelpernus, “The Gelpernus Diary: Resistance in the Kovno Ghetto”, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/gelpernusdiary4.html
.

88
    Stephen Pallavicini and Avinoam Patt, “Lachwa”,
Holocaust Encyclopedia
,
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007233
.

89
    “Lachva—The revolt that saved the town”, based on an account by Yitzhak Lichtenstein, Organization of Partizans Underground and Ghetto Fighters. Jewish resistance in the
Holocaust website.
c3.ort.org.il/Apps/WW/page.aspx?ws=496fe4b2-4d9a-4c28-a845-510b28b1e44b&page=5d675d48-68df-4fc3-833c-04a23648f70e&fol=e5b35888-e7db-4e50-9ce4-e132ae92de2e&box=3e0902e0-b315-412c-a5ec-927e5dab4302&_pstate=item&_ item=41d7228f-be22-4788-b02c-61dc1fc96eec
.

90
    All information on Minsk from Barbara Epstein,
The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism
(University of California Press, 2008), unless otherwise indicated.

91
    Epstein, 2008, p18.

92
    Cited in Epstein, 2008, p252.

93
    Epstein, 2008, pp228-257. This was partly due to an assumption by the Soviets that anyone who came under Nazi rule and survived must have been a collaborator. The whole process was exacerbated by a local Communist who invented an account of a massive evacuation from Minsk in order to conceal the fact that he and his friends had fled. Those arrested were not exonerated until 1962.

94
    
Partizaner-marsh
(Partisan march) by Shmerke Kaczerginski, a writer of revolutionary poems and songs who had worked with communist youth as a young man and participated in the formation of the FPO (United Underground) in the Vilna Ghetto. This song was written in August 1943 when many were going to the partisans.

Hey FPO!

We are here!

Boldly and with courage into battle.

Today partisans

Are going to beat the enemy,

In the struggle for workers’ power.

Shirli Gilbert,
Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps
(Oxford Historical Monographs, Clarendon, 2005), p73,
www.questia.com/read/120194534
.

95
    Tec, 2003, p284.

96
    Comment by Eva Kracowski quoted in Tec, 2003, p309. “Bernard Druskin“ Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation website,
www.jewishpartisans.org/t_switch.php?pageName=mini+bio+short+bio+1&parnum=34

97
    Tec, 2001, p11.

98
    Tec, 2003, p283.

99
    Shmuel Krakowski,
War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland 1942-1944
(Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1984), p301, cited in Tec, 2001, p11.

100
  Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p32.

101
  “Gertrude Boyarski” Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation website,
www.jewishpartisans.org/t_switch.php?pageName=mini+bio+short+bio+1&fromSomeone=&parnum=8

102
  Tec, 2003, p300. A fascinating account of the Bielski brothers’ partisan group can be found in Tec,
Defiance
(Oxford University Press, 1993).

103
  “Songs and Dances”. Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust webpage,
c3.ort.org.il/Apps/WW/page.aspx?ws=496fe4b2-4d9a-4c28-a845-510b28b1e44b&page=5d675d48-68df-4fc3-833c04a23648f70e&fol=fe71099d-270f-4c68-8def-25ee7cc7f81b&box=3e0902e0-b315-412ca5ec-927e5dab4302&_pstate=item&_item=2ed434f9-7319-4c81-99bb-7a17a49c1685

104
  Hanna Levy-Hass and Amira Hass,
Diary of Bergen-Belsen: 1944-1945
(Haymarket Books, 2009).

105
  The experiences of Roma (gypsies) in many ways parallels that of the Jews. They were imprisoned in dedicated camps or sometimes Jewish ghettos and some participated in partisan activities or assisted underground activities. Approximately 20,000 Roma were herded into a “family camp” in Auschwitz where they lived in conditions appalling even by Auschwitz standards. On 15 May 1944 SS guards armed with machine guns surrounded them to transport the remaining 6,000 to the gas chambers. The Roma resisted with knives made from scraps of sheet metal, iron pipes, clubs and stones. The Nazis did not confront
them directly, but after removing work-capable adults, eventually murdered the remaining approximately 3,000 inmates in the gas chambers. The book of wider Roma resistance to the
Porajmos
(Romani Holocaust) is yet to be written.

Tec,
Resistance during the Holocaust
, pp28, 36. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Genocide of European Roma (gypsies), 1939-1945”,
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219
, accessed 23/11/2014.

106
  Lore Shelley,
The Union Kommando in Auschwitz
(University Press of America, 1996).

107
  Witold Pilecki, a member of the underground Polish Home Army (AK), voluntarily smuggled himself into Auschwitz in 1940 and set up an underground organisation whose main purpose was to send information out of the camp. He escaped in 1943 after realising that the Allies did not intend to liberate the camp, “Witold Pilecki”, Jewish Virtual Library website,
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Witold_Pilecki.html
; Witold Pilecki,
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery
(Aquila Polonica, 2012), p168.

108
  Those familiar with Slavic languages might think this is a nickname but it is in fact the real name of a woman who deserves recognition.

109
  Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
; “The Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau”, Jewish Virtual Library,
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/aurevolt.html
.

110
  Tec, 2001, p14.

111
  Shelley, 1996, p8. Klaus-Henning Rosen, “Eine Stadt zeigt Betroffenheit”,
Vorwärts
, 1 June 1985, no 23, p8, cited in Shelley, 1996, p7. Mary Williams Walsh, “German Judge Awards Back Pay to WWII Slave Laborer”,
Los Angeles Times
, 6 November 1997.

112
  “Tomasz (Toivi) Blatt”,
Holocaust Encyclopedia
, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/idcard.php?ModuleId=10006539
.

113
  “Sobibor”,
Holocaust Encyclopedia
, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005192
.

114
  Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, p26,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_ camp#Treblinka_prisoner_uprising
.

115
  Tec,
Resistance During the Holocaust
, pp26-27.

116
  Hanna Szper Cohen: “To this day I say—since Jews have bad feelings about Poles…we who survived, a small percentage though it be, none of us would have survived if in some moment he did not get help, usually without ulterior motives, from some Pole.” Julian Cohen, “Escape from Belzec: Saved By a Pair of Heels”, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team website,
www.savingjews.org/docs/clergy_rescue.pdf
,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/belzecescape.html
.