Fighting on all Fronts (18 page)

Unfortunately the remaining Bund leaders were reluctant to unite in an underground organisation with the Zionists. They rejected the call for unity in March 1942 and only came to an agreement in October. For virtually their entire history they had (rightly) opposed Zionism. But the situation faced by the population of the ghetto was beyond normal political conflicts. The Nazis planned to annihilate Jews of all political currents and military action required unity with anyone who was prepared to take up arms. It took the efforts of the youth group, in particular its leader Abrasha Blum, to convince the adults of the Bund to join in a united fighting organisation.
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The Zionists in the ghetto on the other hand were hamstrung by their politics in a different way. In the first period even the youth groups mainly engaged in communal activities. Emmanuel Ringelblum described how Anielewicz regretted the delays and failure to face up to the necessity of armed resistance and felt that they “had wasted three war years on cultural and educational work”.

We had not understood that new side of Hitler that is emerging, Mordechai lamented. We should have trained the youth in the use of live and cold ammunition. We should have raised them in the spirit of revenge against the greatest enemy of the Jews, of all mankind, and of all times.
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Yitzhak Zuckerman, a founder of the ZOB and later a major historian of the Warsaw uprising, stated baldly: “The Jewish Fighting Organisation arose without the parties and against the wish of the parties”.
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The failure of the ZOB to unite with the ZZW may also have weakened them, although they did fight together. Politically the ZZW were associated with the right wing Revisionist Zionists to whom the ZOB remained hostile. Their role was played down by the post-war Polish government and their actual contribution remains contentious.

In June 1942 the head of the Jewish Social Relief Organization in Biala Podlaska expressed the views of many when he angrily asked: “How much longer will we go as sheep to the slaughter? Why do we keep quiet? Why is there no call to escape to the forests? No call to resist?”
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There was never going to be a general call to resist. But in spite of the almost hopeless situation, Jews did fight back against the Nazis far more extensively than is currently recognised. They did not go as sheep to the slaughter.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is well known but it was not the only expression of resistance. There were underground resistance movements in approximately 100 ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe (about a quarter of all ghettos) and uprisings occurred in five major ghettos and 45 smaller ones. In addition there were uprisings in three extermination camps and 18 forced labour camps. Some 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish partisans fought in approximately 30 Jewish partisan groups and 21 mixed groups while some 10,000 people survived in family camps in the forest.
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There can be no strict division between the various means of resistance. Ghetto underground organisations communicated with partisans and provided them with information or supplies; carried out non-military sabotage; helped POWs and escapees; distributed illegal information and money; forged documents; and published newspapers and proclamations. Individuals and illegal groups helped Jews to find the necessities of life in the ghettos, to escape and to find arms.

One feature of this fragmented and dangerous activity was the thousands of couriers who worked to overcome the isolation of the ghettos at great risk to themselves. Often they were women because they could pass as non-Jews more easily (Jewish men were all circumcised). Tema Schneiderman, a courier for the Jewish underground in Bialystok, Vilna and Warsaw, secretly delivered news and ammunition. Ania Rud, a former member of the Bialystok Ghetto underground, lived outside the ghetto as a White Russian and acted as a contact between couriers, the local underground and forest partisans. Marylka Rozycka, a member of the Communist Party in Lodz, was Jewish but looked like a Polish peasant. She maintained contacts between the Communist Party and the ghetto underground and later joined the partisans in the forest.
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Major efforts went into collecting information and recording events. Krakow activist Gusta Draenger was arrested after a grenade attack on a Nazi coffee shop. She recorded the history of the Krakow underground on toilet paper while in prison. This document still exists. Bund member Zalmen Frydrych met escapees near Treblinka and obtained information about the death camps.
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The underground in Bialystok (Poland) began in late 1941 with the establishment of groups to help Russian POWs, who received appalling treatment from the Nazis. The activists, the majority of whom were young, established contacts with Polish supporters and were able to smuggle in some weapons.

In late 1942 the Warsaw ZOB decided to organise armed resistance in the other key ghettos and sent Mordechai Tenenbaum (Josef Tamaroff ) to Bialystok. Under his leadership all political factions including the Communists, Bundists, Labour Zionists and other Zionists united and started to prepare for an uprising.
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The Bialystok
Judenrat
, on the other hand, was dominated by older people. Although the Zionist chairman Efraim Barasz was aware of the mass murders and destruction of communities, he refused to cooperate with the underground, arguing that because the ghetto was “productive” the Germans would leave it alone.
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When the
Judenrat
handed 6,000 Jews over to the Nazis in February 1943 some underground groups put up armed resistance, including 20 young men led by Edek Borak. Others resisted with acid, axes, knives and boiling water.
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Afterwards people
searched for informers who had led Nazis to hideouts. “When a cry of ‘traitor’ was heard, crowds rushed to the scene. They would tear and claw at the suspect, and lynch him on the spot”.
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May Day 1943 saw a strike among the forced labourers in the factories. Protest demonstrations or absence from work were not possible. But the workers stood idle near their inactive machines, turning them on when they saw a German approaching and off the moment the German left.
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Strategically the underground activists in the ghettos faced a terrible dilemma. An armed uprising could not hope to achieve anything if it was isolated; it would require the support of a significant section of ghetto inhabitants. But the ghettos were full of children, old people and other non-combatants and arms were difficult to come by. The other option was escape, usually with an intention of joining the partisans. While this had a better chance of success for individuals or small groups, it meant leaving the rest of the population to its fate.

The situation in Bialystok illustrates the predicament. The underground met on the evening of 27 February 1943, believing the Germans planned to attempt liquidation of the ghetto the next day. Minutes of this meeting have survived. The leader Mordecai Tenenbaum commented: “It’s a good thing that at least the mood is good. Unfortunately, the meeting won’t be very cheerful… We must decide today what to do tomorrow”. He went on:

We can do two things: decide that when the first Jew is taken away from Bialystok now, we start our counter-Aktion… It is not impossible that after we have completed our task someone may by chance still be alive… We can also decide to get out into the forest… We must decide for ourselves now. Our daddies will not take care of us. This is an orphanage.
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In fact liquidation did not occur until later in the year. The planned attack and mass escape into the forest failed. The underground staged a heroic ten-day uprising from 16 August 1943 but having failed to previously win the support of the ghetto population it was isolated.

Vilna (Lithuania) was an important Jewish cultural centre. The underground United Partisan Organisation (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO) was formed on 1 January 1942 when Abba Kovner spoke at a clandestine public meeting held in the soup kitchen. Also known as “The Avengers” they carried out many sabotage operations. In their first action Vitka Kempner and two companions blew up a Nazi military transport carrying 200 soldiers on the outskirts of the town.
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Abba Kovner recorded:

Lithuanians did not do it, nor Poles, nor Russians. A Jewish woman did it, a woman who, after she did this, had no base to return to. She had to walk three days and nights with wounded legs and feet. She had to go back to the ghetto. Were she to have been captured, the whole ghetto might have been held responsible.
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The action was memorialised in a famous song by Hirsh Glik,
Still the Night Was Full of Starlight
.
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Vitka became one of Kovner’s chief lieutenants and was later involved in many acts of resistance. She died in February 2012.

Eighteen months later when the liquidation of the ghetto was imminent, the FPO issued a manifesto inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and called on the remaining Jews to resist deportation. It declared: “We will not offer our heads to the butcher like sheep. Jews defend yourselves with arms… Active resistance alone can save our lives and our honour”.
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But the
Judenrat
opposed the call and refused cooperation, arguing that armed resistance would lead to destruction of the ghetto population. When the Nazis liquidated the ghetto virtually all of its inhabitants went to their deaths in forced labour camps, Sobibor death camp or were murdered directly. A few hundred members of the underground organisation including Kovner escaped to become partisans in the forest.
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In Kovno (Kaunus, central Lithuania) a large underground of 600 members was led by Chaim Yelin, a Jewish Communist who was able to unite the Communists and Zionist youth groups.
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The
Judenrat
actively supported the underground as did a number of the ghetto’s Jewish police. Among the Poles who helped the Jewish underground in Kovno was Dr Kutorghene. She explained why she risked her life in this way:

You gave me courage, you gave a new lease of life, encouraged me. I feel I am stronger when I am with you and do not want you to go even though we both risk our lives and lives of our family members…
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Ultimately there was no uprising but some 500 ghetto fighters escaped to join Jewish partisan groups. When the ghetto was liquidated the population refused to present themselves for deportation following an appeal from the underground. Many people went into hiding and hid as long as possible although the Nazis set the ghetto on fire.

Of the smaller ghettos Lachva (Belarus) was among the first to show resistance as a united community in August 1942, possibly because the
Judenrat
supported the underground.
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The uprising started during the
liquidation of the ghetto. People had no guns so they set fire to the ghetto and attacked the Nazis with axes, knives, iron bars, pitchforks and clubs:

The fire and smoke, along with the spontaneous Jewish attack, created panic among the Germans. The Jews took the opportunity to break through the ghetto fences. Under heavy fire, hundreds of Jews ran towards the swamps in the forest. 600 people escaped…including elderly people, women and children.
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Approximately 150 people made it to the swamps and later joined the partisans.

Minsk deserves attention as the location of one of the most successful of the underground organisations.
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Minsk, in present day Belarus, had been part of the Soviet Union before the war. Their experience during the war was perhaps unique in that Jews and non-Jews were united in one communist-led underground organisation across the ghetto and the main city. Historian Barbara Epstein emphasises the “culture of solidarity between Jews and non-Jews” within the underground organisation but also points to personally based support and interaction outside the formal underground organisation.
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Formed in late 1941, the underground ran a clandestine press and smuggled Jewish children out of the ghetto to hide them in other parts of the city. Jews and non-Jews both engaged in sabotage within Nazi factories. For instance, shoemakers put nails into shoes to make them unwearable and tailors sewed left arms into right armholes of coats and vice versa.

Participation in the underground was very dangerous. One well known example is the case of Masha Bruskina, a 17-year-old Jewish member of a communist underground group located outside the ghetto who helped wounded Soviet POWs. Captured in October 1941, she was hanged with two other non-Jewish members of underground Krill Trus and Volodya Sherbateyvich, the first public execution of resisters.

Rather than armed uprising, the Minsk underground focused on flight, which their circumstances particularly favoured. A barbed wire fence (rather than the high wall found in other ghettos) and relatively lenient guards made access to the nearby dense and impenetrable forest
dangerous but possible. A major factor was also the support from the first two
Judenräte
which were more closely intertwined with the underground than elsewhere. The courageous stand of the
Judenrat
members no doubt contributed very significantly to the high number of escapes but they paid a high price once exposed.

Led by child guides and helped by non-Jewish contacts, roughly 10,000 Jews made their way into the forests; most of them survived the war. This was the most successful ghetto resistance in terms of numbers saved and deserves to be as widely recognised as Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The Minsk underground supported and sent supplies to the partisans and also carried out successful sabotage within the town. A letter in a German newspaper in June 1943 describes the situation: