Resistance
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Chapter One
1. Rytel’s wartime experiences are described on pp. 267–271 in This One Is from My Country, in Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewinowna, Ten Jest Z Ojczyzny Moje (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1969). I interviewed Zygmunt Rytel in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw in 1978.
2. Rytel’s rescue of Jews for which he was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous among the Nations, on January 24, 1967 (Encyclopedia of the Righteous among the Nations [Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004], 689).
3. From now on whenever I quote Z. Rytel, what he says is based on the interview I conducted with him in 1978; for a description of Yad Vashem and the distinctions it offers, see Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 3–4.
4. When pursuing his resistance activities, Rytel relied on the Polish Socialist Party (PPS).
5. For the Third Reich, the decimation of the Polish elites was a top priority. Hence, the murder of the Polish elites was systematic. See Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1946 Nemesis (New York: Norton & Co., 2000), 2:241, 245. See also Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 12–13.
6. This Law was introduced in German-occupied Poland on October 15, 1941. See Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 22–24. See also Lucy S. Dawidowicz, ed., A Holocaust Reader (West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House, Inc., 1976), 67.
7. For an illustration of what life was like for the Jews in the forbidden Christian world, see Nechama Tec, Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
8. Symon Rudnicki, Ruwni ale nie zupelnie (Equal but not quite) (Warsaw: Biblioteka Midrasha, 2008), see specifically 153–156.
9. Ibid., 124.
10. Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 206–207.
11. Israel Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War II (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 29.
12. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1946 Nemesis (New York: Norton & Co., 2000), 245.
13. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 21.
14. For a historical overview of initial Jewish destruction in the freshly conquered Eastern territories, see Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, 191–219. Martin Gilbert, in The Holocaust (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 154–212, concentrates on Eastern Europe in 1941; he includes descriptions of Jewish reactions to these initial assaults.
15. Ibid., 244.
16. Ibid., 244, 245.
17. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 21.
18. Ibid., 22.
19. Ibid.
20. Tec, Dry Tears, 154, 155.
21. Unless otherwise specified, when I describe or quote, it is based on the personal interview I conducted with Bleichman in 1996 in New York.
22. On how the Soviet government responded to this situation, see Tec, Resilience and Courage, 272–273.
23. Ibid., 282–283.
24. Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944), 233–237.
Chapter Two
1. Artur Eisenbach, “Wstep,” in Emanuel Ringelblum, Kronika Getta Warszawskiego (Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto) (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), 5–27. Nechama Tec, “Unheralded Historian Emanuel Ringelblum,” Yalkut Moreshet 75 (April 2003): 32–37.
2. Eisenbach was married to Ringelblum’s sister.
3. This is my translation from the Polish of Artur Eisenbach’s essay: “Wstep,” in Ringelblum, Kronika.
4. Ringelblum, Kronika, 11–12.
5. David Engel, “Writing History as a National Mission: The Jews of Poland and Their Historiographical Traditions,” in Emanuel Ringelblum, the Man and the Historian, ed. Israel Gutman (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010), 119–120; Barbara Engelking, “Moral Issues in Emanuel Ringelblum’s Writings from World War II,” in ibid., 227.
6. Recent publication deserves closer reading in Gutman, ed., Emanuel Ringelblum, the Man and the Historian.
7. J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919-1945, Vol . 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination (Exeter, Devon: University of Exeter, 1988), 1050–1053 (quote on 1052).
8. Trunk, Judenrat, xxv-xxxv.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid. Except for a few clerical positions, women are conspicuously absent from most Judenrat positions.
11. Ibid. 20–21.
12. Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 21–40; Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 53–71.
13. Personal communication, Israel Gutman.
14. This is my free translation of Ringelblum, Kronika, 67.
15. Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations, 42.
16. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 5–9; Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 8.
17. Raul Hilberg, Stanisław Staron, and Josef Kermisz, eds., The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), 200–220.
18. See Hilberg, Destruction of European Jews, 166–168, 174.
19. Chaim Kaplan was particularly critical of the Judenrat, see Scroll of Agony, trans. and ed. Abraham I. Katsh (New York: Collier, 1973), 337–339. See also Philip Friedman, “Social Conflicts in the Ghettos,” in Roads to Extinction, 145–150; Israel Gutman, Jews of Warsaw (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 78; Hersh Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), 53.
20. Friedman, “Social Conflicts in the Ghettos,” 150.
21. Ibid. 144–145. See also Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, eds., Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege (New York: Viking, 1989), 175; Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto: 1941–1944 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 93.
22. Yitskhok Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto (Israel: Ghetto Fighters’ House, 1973), 67, 31, 32, 33. For more information, see the more recent publication of material from Rudashevski’s diary in Laurel Holliday, ed., Children in the Holocaust and World War II (New York: Washington Square Press, 1995), 137–183.
23. Sara Zyskind, Stolen Years (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1981), 42–44.
24. Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 52–69.
25. Marc Dworecki, “The Day to Day Stand of the Jews,” in The Catastrophe of European Jews, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Livia Rothkirechen (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), 367–399.
26. Charles G. Roland, Courage under Siege (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Dawid Sierakowiak, The Day of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). These are examples of books that discuss starvation and hunger in ghettos. They can be further multiplied.
27. Adina Blady Szwajger, I Remember Nothing More (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
28. Rudaszevski, Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, 65.
29. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 39–40.
30. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, 174.
31. Lucy Dawidowicz coined the phrase with publication of her book: The War against the Jews (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1975).
32. See Tec, Resilience and Courage, 163–166.
33. Dobka Freund-Waldhorn, personal interviews, Kvar Shmariahu, Israel, 1995, 1996.
34. Ringelblum, Kronika, 347.
35. Ibid.
36. See “Historical Perspective: Tracing the History of the Hidden Child Experience” in Jane Marks, The Hidden Children (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 273–291.
37. According to an additional source, the Germans received 2,613 calories per day, the Poles 669 calories, and the Jews 184 (Gutman, Resistance, 86).
38. For descriptions of welfare activities in the Warsaw ghetto, see Gutman, Resistance, 62–70.
39. Slapakowa had to interrupt her research because she was deported to Treblinka, where she was gassed. See Ringelblum, Kronika, 473–474.
40. Yad Vashem, JM/25/5. M
y translation from Polish.
41. Ringelblum, Kronika, 462–463.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 393.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 395.
46. Ibid., 402.
47. Ibid., 507.
48. Gutman, Resistance, 47.
49. Ringelblum, Kronika, 470.
50. Yisrael Gutman, “Adam Czerniakow—The Man & Destiny,” in The Catastrophe of European Jewry, ed. Y. Gutman and L. Rothkirehen (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), 451–489; Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Stram and Josef Kermicz, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow (New York: Stein & Day, 1982).
51. Ringelblum, Kronika, 447–448.
52. Ibid., 451.
53. Ibid., 452.
54. Ibid., 453.
55. Ibid., 431.
56. Ibid., 409. This comment seems surprisingly cold, surprisingly unfair.
57. Ibid., 409.
58. Ibid., 23.
59. Ibid. Contrary to the previously established pattern, during the big deportations all documents showing working affiliation with shops failed to protect the Jews who had them.
60. Ibid. Remba was deeply touched by the fate of Korczak and his orphanage, which he described in Ringelblum, Kronika, 603–607.
61. Ibid., 404.
62. Introduction to Kronika, by Anthony Eisenbach, 18.
63. Ringelblum, Kronika, 421.
64. Gutman, ed., Emanuel Ringelblum, the Man and the Historian, 34. Ringelblum is emphasizing in his comment that the Jewish underground, the Jewish Military Union (ZZW), was a group which politically was more to the right than Ringelblum’s group (ZOB).
65. Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 273–274.
66. Ibid., 202–203.
67. Ibid. Most references to Lejkin’s assassination assume that his killer was not identified. I. Gutman suggests that the Jewish underground, ZOB, ordered Lejkin’s killing. See Gutman, Resistance, 169.
68. Youths cooperated greatly and successfully (ibid., 126–130).
69. Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 22. Also Nechama Tec, “Life in the Ghetto,” in Resilience and Courage, 338–339. This is an example of how one Jewish woman was murdered because she failed to follow this law. The Holocaust literature is filled with such sad examples.
70. The Jews did not prepare for withdrawal (ibid., 199).
71. The young relied too much on the view of the older generation. For an enlightening discussion of these issues, see Ringelblum, Kronika, 500–503.
72. Gutman, Resistance, 195.
73. Ringelblum, Kronika, 441.
74. Gutman, Resistance, 152–153.
75. Ibid., 199.
76. Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 287.
77. Gutman, Resistance, 183. Gutman refers to “Zuckerman as saying that the revolt in January made possible the ghetto uprising in April.”
78. Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 349–350.
79. Gutman, Resistance, 204.
80. Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 310.
81. Ibid., 204.
82. Joseph Kermish in Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations, 302.
83. Ibid., 304–305.
84. Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 357.
85. Ibid., 196–197.
86. General Stroop was imprisoned with an AK officer Kazimierz Moczarski, who was eventually released from prison. In contrast, General Stroop was convicted and hanged on March 6, 1952, for the crimes committed against the ghetto and its inhabitants. For more information, see The Stroop Report: The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more! (New York: Random House, 1979). See also Kazimierz Moczarski, Rozmowy Zkatem (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1978). Moczarski collected the material from Stroop while the two shared the prison cell in Warsaw.
87. The Stroop Report (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), Warsaw, May 24, 1943, Report.
88. Zukerman, A Surplus of Memory, 236.
89. These distinctions were clearly presented by Barbara Engelking and I found them both useful and interesting. See Engelking, “Moral Issues in Emanuel Ringelblum’s Writings from WWII,” 207–227, in Emanuel Ringelblum, the Man and the Historian.
90. Israel Gutman, “Emanuel Ringelblum, the Chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies 3 (1988): 7.
91. Tec, “Unheralded Historian Emanuel Ringelblum,” 41–42. See another article, “A Glimmer of Light—Reflections on the Past Challenges for the Future,” in The Holocaust and the Christian World: Reflections on the Past Challenges for the Future, ed. Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith, and Irene Steingeldt (London: Kuperard, 2000), 151–154.
Chapter Three
1. Obedience to rules does not fit well into the lives of guerrilla fighters. In contrast to regular soldiers, partisans are freer and more independent. And since they only very reluctantly bow to authority, they are much harder to control than regular army men. Because partisans are usually well acquainted with the surroundings, they also have much greater freedom of movement than regular soldiers. In part greater mobility and familiarity with the environment counteract the disadvantages that stem from small size and inadequate military equipment. By definition, guerrilla fighters are not as big or as well equipped as a conventional army that they oppose. See John A. Armstrong and Kurt DeWitt, “Organization and Control of the Partisan Movement,” in Soviet Partisans in World War II, ed. John A. Armstrong (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 73–139, at 73; Henri Michael, “Jewish Resistance and the European Resistance Movement,” in Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Proceedings of the Conference on Manifestations of Jewish Resistance (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1972), 365–375.
2. Violence also becomes a part of the guerrilla fighter’s life. Use of violence is often backed up by moral rationalizations. See J. K. Zawodny, “Guerrilla and Sabotage: Organization, Operations, Motivations, Escalation,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 341 (May 1962): 8–18.
3. Nicholas P. Vakar, Belorussia: The Making of a Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 174–175.
4. For a few examples, see Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974), 307–308; Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, 28–58; Levin, Fighting Back, 206–227.
5. Zvi Shefet, personal interview, Tel Aviv, 1995.
6. Ibid. Unless otherwise specified, discussions about the fate of the Shefet family are based on this interview.
7. Hitler’s attitudes toward the Poles were extremely negative. He insisted that “the Polish Intelligentsia were to be deprived of any chance to develop into a ruling class.” See Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, 245. Saul Friedlander emphasizes how orderly and determined Hitler was in promoting the murder of the Polish intelligentsia. See Friedlander, Years of Extermination, 13–14.
8. Nechama Tec, In the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
9. “Working for the Authorities,” ibid., 92–105.
10. Zvi Shefet interview.
11. The first anti-Jewish Aktion took place on July 17th. It was known as “Bloody Thursday.” For a description, see Alpert Nachman, The Destruction of the Slonim Jewry (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), 45–49.
12. Michael Temchin, M.D., Memoirs of a Partisan (New York: Holocaust Library, 1983) emphasizes how this shortage of physicians gave him certain advantages. Leon Berk, Destined to Live: Memoirs of a Doctor with the Russian Partisans (Melbourne: Paragon, 1992) shows that his medical degree did not necessarily result in an acceptance into a partisan unit (97). This issue will come up again.
13. For a discussion of issues related to the fate of Jewish women in the forest, see Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 154–169.
14. For a broader discussion of Jewish women and resistance, see Tec, Resilience and Courage, 256–339.
15. I would like to thank Zvi Shefet for sending me a tape in Hebrew of Judith Graf’s testimon
y, Yad Vashem No. 2978, group 220.
16. These ideas were emphasized by Zvi Shefet during my interview with him in Tel Aviv in 1995.
17. Becoming a mistress of a commander has not necessarily protected women from suffering. In Soviet partisan units, the birth of newborn babies led to their “mysterious” disappearances. One such case is touchingly described by Berk, Destined to Live 163–164; another case was a baby girl born to the Chief of Staff Prognagin and his mistress Irka. They took away the child from her and she was never able to find it. This mother is currently a professor in the United States. I heard about this case from Mina Volkowisky, who met her with the newborn baby in her arms in the forest when she was visiting Sikorski’s Brigade.
18. General Sikorski employed Michael Pertzof as his translator and interpreter. I interviewed Michael Pertzof in Israel in 1995. Pertzof concurs that Sikorski was always drunk. Once he was called by this general in the middle of the night. As usual the general was drunk. The German soldier who was there was on the verge of death. He uttered no words. Michael explained: “The General demanded that I should first talk to the German and then shoot him. It was terrible. He was dead.… yet I had to shoot him … but after that I could not eat, I could not sleep so, if I were to write about something like this? Would anybody believe me?”
19. Tadeusz Pankiewicz wrote a memoir, The Pharmacy in the Cracow Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987).
20. On February 10, 1983, Yad Vashem had recognized Tadeusz Pankiewicz as the Righteous among the Nations. See Tadeusz Pankiewicz, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Poland (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), 2:579.
21. About expressions of hopes, struggles, and cooperative efforts in the Krakow ghetto and beyond, see Every Day Lasts a Year, ed. Christopher R. Browning, Richard S. Hollander, and Nechama Tec (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
22. Julian Alexandrowicz, Kartki z Dziennika doktora Twardego (pages from Dr. Hard) (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001), 29.
23. Ibid., 29–30.
24. Ibid., 40.
25. Ibid., 47.
26. Ibid., 61.