Jewish partisans

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Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

A number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, some comprised 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 also took part in the other partisan movements in other occupied countries. In all, the Jewish partisans numbered between 20,000 and 30,000.[2]

Contents

[edit] Operations

The partisans engaged in guerrilla warfare and sabotage against the Nazi occupation, instigated ghetto uprisings and freed prisoners. In Lithuania alone, they killed approximately 3,000 German soldiers.[3] They sometimes had contacts within the ghettos, camps, and Judenrats, and with other resistance groups, with which they shared military intelligence. 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]

[edit] Supplies

The Jewish partisans had to overcome great odds in acquiring weapons, food, shelter and evading capture. They typically lived in underground dugouts called zemlyankas (Russian: землянка) and camps in the forests.[2] Nazi reprisals were brutal, as they employed collective punishment against their supporters and the ghettos from which partisans had escaped,[5] and often used "anti-partisan actions" as a guise for the extermination of Jews.[6] In some areas, partisans were supported by local villagers, but due to widespread antisemitism and fear of reprisal, the Jewish partisans were often on their own.[3]

The partisans operated under constant threat of starvation. 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.[2] 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]

[edit] Notable partisan groups

Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the Chkalov Brigade. [1]
Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the Chkalov Brigade. [1]

Some of the best-known Jewish partisan groups were the Bielski partisans who operated a large "family camp" in Belorussia (numbering over 1,200 by the summer of 1944),[7][8] and the United Partisan Organization which attempted to start an uprising in the Vilnius Ghetto in Lithuania and later engaged in sabotage and guerilla operations.[9] Thirty-two Jews from the Mandate for Palestine were trained by the British and parachuted behind enemy lines to engage in resistance activities.[3]

[edit] Notable partisans


  • Mira Shelub: Mira escaped from the concentration camp and joined the partisans, where she met her husband, Nochim.

"In the frost we did not only fight a physical battle, but also a spiritual battle. We were sitting around the fire, singing songs together, supporting each other and dreaming about better days, a better future, and a better tomorrow." -Mira Shelub

  • Eta Wrobel: Eta escaped to the woods, where she assisted the formation of a group of eighty partisans. Eta was not like the other women who did the cooking and washing. She had a different personality and advanced military skills to do things that the other women could not.

"The biggest resistance that we could have done to the Germans was to survive." -Eta Wrobel (Eta passed away on May 26, 2008, in her home in New York.)

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Living and Surviving as a Partisan. Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  3. ^ a b c d Jewish Partisans. The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  4. ^ Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2006-04-21). Review of Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußland by Bogdan Musial. Sarmatian Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 2. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  5. ^ Abraham J. Edelheit. History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary, p. 98. Westview Press, 1995-07-01. ISBN 0-8133-2240-5
  6. ^ Yitzhak Arad. The Murder of Jews in Nazi-occupied Lithuania (1941–1944), in The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews, p. 183, eds. Alvydas Nikzentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, Darius Staliunas. Rodopi, 2004-05-01. ISBN 90-420-0850-4
  7. ^ Ruby (EDT) Rohrlich. Resisting the Holocaust, p. 89, Berg Publishers, 1998-08-01. ISBN 1-85973-216-X
  8. ^ Photo Gallery: Partisan family camp in the Naliboki forests. Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance (1997). Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  9. ^ Jennifer Rosenberg. Abba Kovner and Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto. About.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.

[edit] Further reading

  • Yitzhak Arad. "Family Camps in the Forests", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, vol. 2, pp. 467–469. Illustrations, map.
  • Israel Gutman, Shalom Cholawski, Dov Levin, Shmuel Spector. "Partisans", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, pp. 1108–1122. Illustrations, map.
  • Lester Eckmann and Chaim Lazar. The Jewish Resistance: The History of Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1945. (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1977)
  • Jack Kagan and Dov Cohen. Surviving the Holocaust With the Russian Jewish Partisans. (Mitchell Vallentine & Company, 1998) ISBN 0-85303-336-6
  • Hersh Smolar. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. (USHMM, 1989) ISBN 0-89604-068-2
  • Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans (2001). Documentary film directed by Seth Kramer. (IMDB record).

[edit] External links