A number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, some made up of a few escapees from the Jewish ghettos or concentration camps, while others, such as Bielski partisans, numbered in the hundreds and included women and children. They were most numerous in Eastern Europe, but groups also existed in occupied France and Belgium, where they worked with the local resistance.[1] Many individual Jewish fighters took part in the other partisan movements in other occupied countries. In total, the Jewish partisans numbered between 20,000 and 30,000.[2]
In Eastern Europe, many Jews joined the ranks of the Soviet partisans: throughout the war, they faced antisemitism and discrimination from the Soviets and some Jewish partisans were killed, but over time, many of the Jewish partisan groups were absorbed into the command structure of the much larger Soviet partisan movement.[4][bettersourceneeded] Soviet partisans arrived in the western Ukraine in 1943,[5] and consisted of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews,[6] and were smaller in size than units in Belarus, which was more suitable for partisan warfare.[7] Released Soviet archive data suggest that Jews accounted for 5.2% of the partisans in Ukraine.[5]
Jewish partisans had to overcome great odds in acquiring weapons, food, and shelter and in evading capture. They typically lived in dugouts (known in Russian as zemlyankas, землянка) in forest camps.[2] Nazi reprisals were brutal, employing collective punishment against their supporters and the ghettos from which the partisans had escaped,[8] and often using "anti-partisan operations" as pretexts for the extermination of Jews.[9] In some areas, Jewish partisans received support from villagers, but due to widespread antisemitism and fear of reprisal, the Jewish partisans were often on their own.[3] The farmers were struggling to supply all the different forces which were demanding food, at times leading to conflict.[10][11][12] As Allan Levine noted, "That Jewish partisans and fugitives were guilty of stealing food from Polish farmers is an uncontested fact. It happened regularly.", but at the same time notes that such robberies were their only choice other than starvation.[13]
The food situation varied between units, while some faced starvation, others were well supplied and sent their food stocks to Soviet Union.[14] In order to survive, Jews had to put aside traditional dietary restrictions. While friendly peasants provided food, in some cases food was stolen from shops,[2] farms[3] or raided from caches meant for German soldiers. As the war progressed, the Soviet government occasionally airdropped ammunition, counterfeit money and food supplies to partisan groups known to be friendly.[2]
Those who managed to flee the ghettos and camps had nothing more than the clothes on their backs, and their possessions often were reduced to rags through constant wear. Clothes and shoes were a scarce commodity. German uniforms were highly prized trophies: they were warm and served as disguises for future missions.[2]
Those who were wounded or maimed or fell ill often did not survive due to the lack of medical help or supplies. Most partisan groups had no physician and treated the wounded themselves, turning to village doctors only as a last resort.[2]
The forests also concealed family camps where Jewish escapees from camps or ghettos, many of whom were too young or too old to fight, hoped to wait out the war. While some partisan groups required combat readiness and weapons as a condition for joining, many noncombatants found shelter with Jewish fighting groups and their allies. These individuals and families contributed to the welfare of the group by working as craftsmen, cooks, seamstresses and field medics.[2]
Approximately 100,000 Jews fought in the Polish army against Nazi Germany during the German invasion of Poland. They made up 10% of the Polish Army, commensurate with the percentage of Jews within the general population. Approximately 30,000 Jews were killed in that campaign, captured or declared missing.[18] The Polish Home Army provided training and weapons to the Warsaw Ghetto's Jewish Combat Organization, and included in its ranks Jewish individuals and Jewish units, such as Lukawiecki Partisans commanded by Edmund Łukawiecki and working under the umbrella of the Home Army,[19][20][21] as well as the Jewish Platoon Wigry which took part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.[22] It also collaborated with Jewish units in self-defence operations.[23] Other Jews joined units affiliated with the Soviet partisans in Poland.[24] Eventually the Armia Ludowa (AL) was founded as the main communist-affiliated partisan group in occupied Poland. This group was provided with weapons by the Soviet Union. There were around 30 Jewish partisan detachments and most of these were connected to the AL. About half of these were detachments off in forests.[25] Independent partisan groups also operated in these forests, working to liberate Jews from local ghettos without outside support or coordination. Notably, the Swirz partisans, founded by brothers Isidore and Hersch Karten, liberated over 400 Jews in Eastern Galicia.[26]
The Soviet Union was late in having partisan groups. The first ones started around 1941–1942. These groups mainly appeared in forests, as 6,000–8,000 Jews were able to escape to the forests. Many did not make it, but if they did they joined Soviet partisan detachments. One partisan group in the Soviet area was the Minsk Ghetto. The Minsk Ghetto was the fourth largest ghetto in Europe. The group was led by the Jewish communists. The group within the Minsk ghetto was supported by the Jewish council which allowed them to organize a mass escape into the surrounding woods. This escape released between 6,000 and 8,000 Jews, who tried to join existing partisan groups. They were known for their resistance movements. There were a large number of partisan groups in the Soviet Union but not much information can be found on them due to Soviet record keeping.[25]
Lithuania
In Lithuania, there were four ghettos that remained after the mass murder campaign by the Nazis in 1941. There were armed resistance groups in three of them – Vilna, Švenčionys, and Kovno. The Vilna Ghetto was the site of the first Jewish resistance group known as Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye or FPO. The FPO tried to persuade the occupants within the Vilna Ghetto to revolt against the Nazis but it failed. This led the group to leave after an armed altercation in September 1943. The partisan group left the ghetto because of a lack of support and went through the sewers to escape to the eastern Lithuanian woods. However the partisan group in the Kovno Ghetto had no intention of fighting in the ghetto itself. They had always planned to fight outside of the ghetto. They organized a large escape from the ghetto that took place over a long period of time. It led to many people escaping and joining outside partisan groups, which eventually led them to create their own.[25]
Yugoslavia
Jewish contribution to the Yugoslav Partisan movement was significant. There were 4,572 Jews listed as partisans, 3,000 of whom were in fighting units.[28] Those who joined were those fleeing deportation, or those that had escaped or had been liberated from concentration and labour camps. One such example was that of the Rab battalion, which consisted of hundreds of Jewish inmates liberated from the Italian Rab concentration camp in September 1943.[29]
1,318 Jews fighting for the partisans were killed during the war, ten Jewish members were awarded Yugoslavia's highest medal at that time, the Order of the People's Hero.[28]
Notable partisans
Jewish Partisans Memorial in Bat Yam, Israel. On the bottom, words of the partisan song Zog nit keyn mol in hebrew and yiddish: "don't say this is my last way"
↑ Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość - nr 2/2003. Adam Puławski. Postrzeganie żydowskich oddziałów partyzanckich przez Armię Krajową i Delegaturę Rządu RP na Kraj. page 298
↑ E. Kossoy, Żydzi w powstaniu warszawskim, „Zeszyty Historyczne” 2004, nr 147.
↑ Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość - nr 2/2003. Adam Puławski. Postrzeganie żydowskich oddziałów partyzanckich przez Armię Krajową i Delegaturę Rządu RP na Kraj page 297-298
↑ Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość - nr 2/2003 Adam Puławski Postrzeganie żydowskich oddziałów partyzanckich przez Armię Krajową i Delegaturę Rządu RP na Kraj page 281
1 2 3 Bauer, Yehuda. "Jewish Resistance and Passivity in the Face of the Holocaust". Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews: 235–251.
Eckmann, L.; Lazar, C. (1977). The Jewish Resistance: the history of the Jewish partisans in Lithuania and White Russia. New York: Shengold. OCLC473836052.
Gutman, I. (1990). "Partisans". Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. Vol.3. New York: Macmillan. pp.1108–1122. OCLC698360042.
Kagan, J.; Cohen, D. (1998). Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish partisans. London: Vallentine Mitchell. ISBN9780853033356.
Levin, D. (1985). Fighting back: Lithuanian Jewry's armed resistance to the Nazis, 1941–1945. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN9780841908314.
Levin, D.; Brown, Z. A. (1962). The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews of Kovno. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. OCLC460277004.
The Home Army was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.
Yitzhak Arad was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of the Holocaust.
Abba Kovner was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murder all Jews. His attempt to organize a ghetto uprising failed. He fled into the forest, joined Soviet partisans, and survived the war. After the war, Kovner led Nakam, a paramilitary organization of Holocaust survivors who sought to take genocidal revenge by murdering six million Germans, but Kovner was arrested in British-occupied Germany before he could successfully carry out his plans. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, which would become the State of Israel one year later. Considered one of the greatest authors of Modern Hebrew poetry, Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970.
The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II. The clandestine organisation was established by communist and Zionist partisans. Their leaders were writer Abba Kovner, Josef Glazman and Yitzhak Wittenberg.
The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas (Kovno) during the Holocaust. At its peak, the ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort. About 500 Jews escaped from work details and directly from the ghetto, and joined Jewish and Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
The Bielski partisans were a unit of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Novogrudok and Lida in German-occupied Poland. The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the community.
The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland.
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
The Ponary massacre, or the Paneriai massacre, was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by German SD and SS and the Lithuanian Ypatingasis būrys killing squads, during World War II and the Holocaust in the Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland. The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary, a suburb of today's Vilnius, Lithuania. 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 2,000 Poles, 8,000 Soviet POWs, most of them from nearby Vilnius, and its newly formed Vilna Ghetto.
The Dzyatlava Ghetto, Zdzięcioł Ghetto, or Zhetel Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto in the town of Dzyatlava, Western Belarus during World War II. After several months of Nazi ad-hoc persecution that began after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the new German authorities officially created a ghetto for all local Jews on 22 February 1942. Prior to 1939, the town (Zdzięcioł) was part of Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic.
Defiance is a 2008 American war film directed by Edward Zwick, and starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski, Jamie Bell as Asael Bielski, and George MacKay as Aron Bielski. Set during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany, the film's screenplay by Clayton Frohman and Zwick was based on Nechama Tec's 1993 book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, an account of the eponymous group led by Polish Jewish brothers who saved and recruited Jews in Belarus during World War II.
Tuvia Bielski was a Polish Jewish militant who was leader of the Bielski group, a group of Jewish partisans who set up refugee camps for Jews fleeing the Holocaust during World War II. Their camp was situated in the Naliboki forest, which was part of Poland between World War I and World War II, and which is now in western Belarus.
The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, to the end of the Battle of Memel on January 28, 1945. At first the Germans were welcomed as liberators from the repressive Soviet regime which had occupied Lithuania. In hopes of re-establishing independence or regaining some autonomy, Lithuanians organized a Provisional Government that lasted six weeks.
The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest in the Byelorussian SSR, and the largest in the German-occupied territory of the Soviet Union. It housed close to 100,000 Jews, most of whom were murdered in The Holocaust.
The Šiauliai or Shavli Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established in July 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Šiauliai in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the Holocaust. The ghetto comprised two areas – one in the Kaukazas suburb and one on Trakai Street. Both were liquidated by July 1944, and their inhabitants were killed or transferred to Nazi concentration camps. In 1939, one quarter of the population of Šiauliai was Jewish, about 8,000 persons. By the end of World War II, only about 500 Jews of the city had survived.
Rachel Margolis was a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor, partisan, biologist and Holocaust historian.
Švenčionys, Svintsyan or Święciany Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Švenčionys. It operated from July 1941 to April 1943. At its peak, the ghetto housed some 1,500 prisoners. It was located in what today is a city park; the location is marked by a wooden menorah carved by Juozapas Jakštas.
Josef Glazman was a Lithuanian-Jewish resistance leader in the Vilna Ghetto. A member of the Revisionist Zionism movement prior to the German invasion of the Baltic states in 1941, afterward, he took part in the resistance and youth movements in the ghetto. He also worked in the Jewish-run ghetto administration – first in the police, then later in the housing department. Glazman's relationship with the head of the ghetto, Jacob Gens, was difficult and led to Glazman's arrest several times. Eventually, Glazman left the ghetto with a group of followers and formed a partisan unit in the Lithuanian forests. His partisan band was surrounded in October 1943 and Glazman and all but one of the members were killed by the Germans.
Rikle (Ruth) Glezer was a World War II partisan who composed popular songs about The Holocaust during the war.
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