Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror

by Nechama Tec

  FIGURE 2.1 Emanuel Ringelblum. (Courtesy Yad Vashem)

  Artur Eisenbach, Ringelblum’s friend and brother-in-law, had urged him to leave Poland.2 Eisenbach and Ringelblum were both historians and shared connections and insights. Later, separated by the war, Eisenbach was convinced that German assaults against the Jewish people brought the finest out of Ringelblum, whose commitment to humanity and to the Jewish people became more firmly intertwined with his uncompromising feelings of resentment toward fascism. To Eisenbach and others, Ringelblum became a symbol of dedication and self-sacrifice.3

  From Eisenbach we learn that on the evenings of September 6 and 7, 1939, not even a week after the German invasion, friends and family gathered in the Ringelblum apartment with one overwhelming objective: to persuade their hosts to depart Warsaw, which they themselves had decided to do immediately. Their destination was the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Many Jews—an estimated 250,000 to 300,000—fled into parts of Poland that were then Soviet territories (according to the terms of the German-Soviet pact). The arguments of Eisenbach and other friends fell on deaf ears, however. Ringelblum and his family were staying. No matter how perilous the situation became, and no matter how often those close to him urged him to move away from the German-occupied territories, Ringelblum insisted that it was his duty to remain in Poland, extending aid to as many as he could. The German occupation eventually created situations in which their needs surpassed Ringelblum’s abilities to respond. Still, for the rest of his life, he never gave up trying.

  Significantly, Ringelblum’s outstanding work as a welfare organizer would eventually feed into his determination to collect large amounts of evidence about life and death under the German occupation of Poland. From 1940 on, this hard-working historian and activist attracted a dedicated group of writers, teachers, scholars, and social activists, all of whom were devoted to the documentation of the evolving tragedy of Polish Jewry.4 Historian David Engel notes that “of all the people of occupied Europe, only the Jews in the Polish ghettos seemed to have assigned supreme values to activities directed toward the distant future.”5 As a keen observer of the events in Warsaw leading to the establishment of the ghetto and after, Ringelblum wanted to study and learn from all of the individuals and groups that were a part of this unique period. Whatever groups or activities Ringelblum and his coworkers observed, they tried to broach their historical implications and significance. In the view of Ringelblum and his associates, no topic was unworthy of thorough, careful exploration. The wealth of knowledge that grew out of their labors is a unique and invaluable archive, and collectively referred to as “Oneg Shabbat,” or “the pleasure of the Sabbath.”6

  On September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, ordered that a “Council of Jewish Elders” be established in every Jewish community and that “as far as possible” it consist of leading figures and rabbis. This council was to be made “entirely responsible, within the meaning of the word, for the exact and prompt fulfillment of all instructions which have been or will be given.”7 In other words, these Jewish Councils, or Judenrats, were special administrative bodies designed to transmit German orders.8 At first, they tried to recruit prewar communal leaders to serve, but many had escaped, while others refused to become involved with the German authorities in any way. The history of the Judenrat is clouded by a number of unresolved debates.9 The character and functions of these councils were perpetually in a state of flux. At the slightest sign of independence, the Germans would execute a part or even an entire Judenrat, then immediately replace it with a new one.

  With one notable exception, aside from a few women who performed clerical jobs, all these newly appointed councils consisted of men.10 One exception was Wieliczka, a small town near Krakow. Here the initial German takeover was marked by the immediate execution of most Jewish men. Their murder traumatized the community and the remaining male survivors refused to become a part of a Judenrat. The Germans insisted, threatening reprisals. When no men responded and the threats grew, women volunteered to take their places, one of them as chair. Women had traditionally filled gaps created by the absence of men. The Wieliczka Judenrat changed in 1941 when two male refugees from Krakow took over.11

  By October 1939—six weeks into the occupation—German authorities had issued special decrees making work by Jewish men mandatory. These decrees called for random and sometimes violent captures of men, many of whom were unfit for hard labor. Whenever the Germans seized rabbis, prominent intellectuals, or successful businessmen, they would assign them to the most degrading and debilitating jobs, like cleaning toilets or doing road work. These roundups made clear that men rather than women were in particular danger.12 It has been estimated that two-thirds of those who fled to the Soviet-occupied territories were men.13 For those Jewish men who stayed on in German-occupied Poland, assaults continued. In addition to street violence, many were forced to clear rubble, fill anti-tank ditches, shovel snow, and perform other kinds of hard labor.

  A close observer of historical shifts, Ringelblum describes how these events were reflected in the lives of Jewish women under the German occupation. He notes that:

  [W]omen maintain the home. The men stay home. The woman keeps pace with things that must be done. The woman is ready to follow the Germans who have power, asking for and complaining about the circumstances she doesn’t approve of. Women join long lines which promise some rare and valued acquisitions. The elegant lady who used to spend hours in coffee shops has disappeared. Now, Jewish women visit official offices, trying to make sense out of current circumstances. Women’s elegant hats have also disappeared. They have been replaced by simple head scarves. When Jews must pay a visit to officials in power, daughters and mothers step in. If this is not possible, these women remain standing and waiting in the hallways. When there is an opportunity to remove heavy packages from stores and living quarters, this is done by a husband or brother. But this too is often accomplished under the watchful eyes of the wife on the opposite side of the street. Busy with many chores, women still find time to attach themselves to long lines which promise the sale of coal. Accordingly, on the city streets, one encounters many more women than men. Many Polish men have been caught for compulsory labor in Germany.14

  Less punitive, yet still degrading, were Warsaw’s long bread lines, created by food shortages. Vladka Meed (figure 2.2) was the daughter of a haberdashery store owner. During World War I, her father had positive experiences with the German military, so when Vladka’s family joined their neighbors in their shelter, her father assured them that they had nothing to fear from the Germans, that they were cultured and unlikely to harm civilians. Vladka knew that her father was more interested in reading books than in attending to his haberdashery business. In fact, she admired him for it. When the German bombs demolished parts of their store, he consoled his family; substantial quantities of materials had been salvaged and they would be fine. When the Germans occupied Warsaw, he took it in stride, not anticipating any special hardships.

  FIGURE 2.2 Vladka Meed poses in Theater Square (Plac Teatralny). Vladka moved into the newly created Warsaw ghetto with her entire family in 1940. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin Miedzyrzecki Meed)

  The first morning of the occupation of Warsaw, Vladka’s father, Shlomo, joined a group of Poles in a bread line. It took him a few minutes to comprehend that they were screaming at him, insisting that as a Jew, he had no right to the bread. Their shouting attracted the attention of a German soldier, who pulled Shlomo out of the line and began beating him mercilessly. The experience made clear that the Germans had changed since his World War I experiences.

  Ringelblum observed that from the moment Polish anti-Semites helped the Germans drive Jews away from the food lines, the “street” was where they joined forces, “for this was where both victors and collaborators found their Jewish prey.”15

  Ghettos were set up as temporary Jewish quarters, a first step to Jewish annihil
ation. Before the actual construction of these ghettos, Jews lacked clear-cut information about their character and purpose, and what contradictory information they heard heightened their apprehensions. Here and there among the grim reports was a hopeful note. Some claimed that future Jewish quarters would be autonomous communities with free access to the surroundings. But, on the whole, these rumors failed to calm the people.16

  Responding to the mounting tensions, Adam Czerniakow (figure 2.3), the newly appointed head of the Warsaw Judenrat, petitioned the German authorities to halt construction of the ghetto.17 The Germans responded by establishing two ghettos, one in Warsaw and the second in Lodz. This was followed by a phase of intensified construction of ghettos, which eventually numbered an estimated 400.18 Their common traits outweighed by far their differences. All ghettos were located in the most dilapidated parts of urban centers, lacking running water and electricity. Several families were assigned to one room, and the accumulation of filth led to all kinds of epidemics. Death could and did come from a variety of sources: starvation, sporadic violence, disease, and, indirectly, from forced deportations to concentration camps. Ghetto inmates were cut off from the world around them and, thus deprived of information, made decisions based on limited and subjective observations and experiences. The Judenrats, for example, were viewed by the ghetto population with suspicion. Sometimes these suspicions evolved into accusations of betrayal. In part these stemmed from the direct contact that Judenrat members had with the Germans. Probably, too, the relative advantages that the Judenrat members and their families seemed to have and the growing deprivations of the rest of the ghetto population fueled resentment. In some instances, actual corruption by some Judenrat members might have contributed to these accusations.19

  FIGURE 2.3 Adam Czerniakow, Jewish Council chairman, works in his office in the Warsaw ghetto. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Zydowski Instytut Historyczny imienia Emanuela Ringelbluma)

  However, the Judenrat was by no means the sole focus of conflicts and dissension within the ghetto. The German occupation had made the ghetto into a community in which most traditional social orders were shattered and in which the new ones were, as historian Philip Friedman noted, kept in flux. “Social distinctions in the ghetto and survival depended on shrewdness, audacity, indifference to the plight of others, physical strength, manual dexterity, and external factors such as direct access to German authorities.”20

  The heterogeneity that was characteristic of the ghetto populations contributed to the conflicts among inmates. Large portions of ghetto inhabitants had come from the surrounding, generally smaller, communities. Also among the new arrivals were Jews who had converted to Catholicism and were known for their virulent anti-Semitism, and gypsies who shared with the Jews only a range of mutual suspicions. New arrivals also included Jews from Western Europe who looked upon Eastern European Jewry with contempt.21 In addition, the periodic removals of ghetto inmates to concentration camps, or for mass shootings, continually modified the composition of the ghetto populations and contributed to general instability.

  This, of course, was the point. The German authorities knew that cohesive ghetto populations could try to unite against them. They also recognized that diversity of the populations, and the resulting distrust and hostility, prevented cooperative action. In the end, the Germans were hugely successful in the achievement of their goals. Nonetheless, Jewish underground opposition emerged in the ghettos, as did plans to escape into the Christian world. Some Jews, like Ephraim Bleichman, escaped to the forest, where they hoped to elude the Germans. The odds were stacked against escape, however. The Nazis had seen to it that ghettos were partly “led” by former Jewish leaders who were powerless, resigned, and ineffective. In general, the ghettos were ravaged by hunger, disease, and terror; they were sealed off communities, isolated from the world, and left to their own meager resources.

  Merely being transferred into a ghetto involved a series of personal hardships. One teenage boy, Yitskhok Rudashevski, whom the Germans murdered after the liquidation of the Vilna ghetto, left behind his diary in which he described what a ghetto transfer entailed:

  The streets are turbulent. A ghetto is being created for Vilna Jews. . . . The Lithuanians drive us on, they do not let us rest. I think of nothing: not what I am losing, not what I have just lost, not what is in store for me. I do not see the streets before me, the people passing by. I only feel that I am terribly weary, I feel that an insult, a hurt is burning inside me. Here is the ghetto gate. I feel that I have been robbed; my freedom is being robbed from me. My home and the familiar Vilna streets I love so much are gone. I have been cut off from all that is dear and precious to me. People crowd at the gate. . . . We settle down in our place. Besides the four of us there are eleven persons in the room. The room is a dirty and a stuffy one. It is crowded. The first ghetto night [w]e lie three together on two doors. I do not sleep. In my ears resounds the lamentation of this day. I hear the restless breathing of people with whom I have been suddenly thrown together; people who just like me have suddenly been uprooted from their homes.22

  Confined to crowded spaces, removed from gainful employment, forced into jobs that offered only meager food rations, Jewish men became despondent and unable to protect their families. Women’s roles, although obviously affected by the war, were not subject to the same dramatic changes as the men’s. In the uncertain environment of the ghetto, the ability to survive physically, to evade notice, and to keep their families fed—these mattered the most. Each required special efforts and called for special skills. Women’s traditional roles as caregivers, housekeepers, and cooks remained essential. Deprivation and hunger made those who could procure and skillfully handle food particularly valuable. Women were well suited for fulfilling these roles. Thus, in the ghetto, unobtrusively yet consistently, women contributed significantly to survival.

  This was especially true for women with families. Their contributions ranged from tangible help, such as the smuggling of food, to keeping up the spirit and the morale of those around them. Of the survivors I met with, especially those whose parents survived with them, most mentioned fathers who were broken by German oppression. At the same time, they described strong mothers who refused to capitulate and who kept the family going, often helping others whom they saw as more needy. Some of these women stepped into spaces created by the loss of their husbands. Others took over the roles of husbands, who were too despondent to act on behalf of their families.

  Vladka Meed moved into the newly created Warsaw ghetto with her entire family. Initially reluctant to admit that men and women behaved differently, she soon changed her mind.

  I have a feeling that women could withstand the difficult conditions more easily than men. The women were more practical, more of an organizer, and able to take over what had to be done in those days. The men had a profession, an occupation, a business. But when these things were taken away then they were lost, they had nothing to cling to. More often than not the women were at home. They were among those who knew how to deal with the home and its needs and they worried about the entire family. It is also true that in many ghettos, most of those who were buying and selling were women. This was probably wise. If a German passed by he would more likely notice a man than a woman. . . . I am not so sure that I am right, but the devotion, the ability to sacrifice for others, were more strongly developed in the ghetto in the women than in the men . . . when a mother was hungry she could cope with this situation better than a man.

  Again and again, Vladka talked about her father in the Warsaw ghetto, describing him as helpless, depressed, and malnourished. He eventually contracted pneumonia and died. She contrasts his passivity to her mother, who “was able to keep our house clean only with water and a strong will,” and in the process fighting disease, particularly typhoid fever. She was a woman of considerable willpower:

  When my brother was almost thirteen, our mother, though starving—there was a swelling under her eyes from
hunger—would save a slice of bread for the rabbi who came to teach my brother for his bar mitzvah. The bread she hid under her pillow. She had no money to buy extra bread, but in exchange for the bread the rabbi would give bar mitzvah lessons to my brother. A simple, uneducated woman, this mother refused to sell her husband’s books for food.

  The reason? She thought that sometime in the future “her children would learn from these books.” It seems significant that this woman, who in the past had been annoyed by her husband’s devoting too much attention to his books, should now refuse to sell some of them even though his family was hungry. By refusing to part with her husband’s books, she was showing her family’s respect for the memory of their father and her husband.

  Vladka’s assessment is also reflected in Sara Zyskind’s experience. In the Lodz ghetto, this teenager watched her mother supplement the family’s income by selling hot coffee to ghetto inmates who, early in the morning, had to pass close to their dwelling. At first this daughter was embarrassed by her mother’s efforts. With time her attitude shifted to admiration. “It never occurred to this intelligent and gentle woman to turn up her nose at the lowest tasks, as long as she was able to help her family. Although selling coffee was not a profitable venture, it made it possible for us to buy an additional ration of bread for father, acquired at the black market, and buy an adequate supply of coal. Now our room was heated, greatly lessening the fear of the winter.” After a short time her mother died, leaving Sara and her father in a more deplorable situation.23