Holocaust, Resistance

The Holocaust, the calculated and mechanical Nazi extermination of Jews, political dissidents, criminals, homosexuals, and any other group that the Nazis took to be a danger to their racial and ideological purity, occurred roughly during the span of World War II, though instances such as Kristallnacht that took place prior to the war should be taken into account. From the uniqueness of the Holocaust as an historical phenomenon arises the question what exactly is meant by resistance. In a situation designed to dehumanize and exterminate targeted individuals, and where any action could cause sudden death, the availability of traditional forms of resistance is lessened significantly. Clearly any material impeding of the functioning of the Nazi concentration camps and war efforts, the armed resistance within and outside the camps, must be considered, but some have argued that the [Page 694]term resistance itself must be broadened to take into account fully the efforts of courageous individuals to prevent the Nazi success in dehumanizing and murdering such an enormous population.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissenboim popularized a form of resistance that he called the sanctification of life. Sanctifying life as a form of resistance can be seen as any act of nonviolent Jewish survival (though clearly this type of action applies to non-Jews as well). Sanctification of life is a useful framework as it takes into account both the systematic murder practiced by the Nazis, as well as the efforts to destroy the humanity and culture of targeted groups, an area often ignored by accounts of resistance, which focus on the more martial anti-Holocaust activity. Examples in the Warsaw Ghetto include delousing campaigns, the foundation of Jewish children's schools, and ghetto house committees. These house committees were democratically elected groups that functioned almost as a neighborhood coalition that would organize support for the sick or starving, rehousing for children whose parents had already been taken by the Nazis, and to collect funds to support soup kitchens and maintain the houses. Examples of sanctification of life as resistance did not occur only within Warsaw. In the Gross-Rosen camp, the opera Die Fledermaus was performed from memory, and in Auschwitz, the largest death camp, the women recited and collected Yiddish poetry. The smuggling of food and medical supplies into ghettos and camps across Europe, as well as the collection of diaries and memoirs as a testament to the future, can also be considered a form of resistance through the sanctification of life.

Some have claimed that interpreting actions that “sanctify life” as resistance serves only to make it seem that those under Nazi control did more to resist than they actually did. Some have argued that Nazi control of the camps and ghettos was so total that resistance as it is generally recognized was a near impossibility and thus absent. Others have said that the lack of obvious resistance was due to a general passivity in the face of the Nazi threat. Sanctification of life can be viewed, however, as a form of resistance that refuses to “become one's oppressor.” By resisting, not through violence, but by building and preserving culture, those who sanctify life do not emulate the Nazis and their collaborators. While it can be claimed that the Nazi armies and police were so powerful one knew that even to attempt resistance was a mistake, the many recorded attempts can attest that resistance to the Holocaust did, in fact, exist.

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