1. Holocaust Resistance Compiled by Barbara Kellogg
from A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust at
on 26 Feb. 2007

2. Diary entry while living in the Warsaw Ghetto
"It is almost a mitzvah (an honorable deed) to dance. Every dance is a protest against our oppressors."
Chaim Kaplan
Diary entry while living in the Warsaw Ghetto
February 20, 1941

3. Unarmed Acts of Resistance
Survival
Underground resistance organizations
Provided food
Received and transmitted news and information
Boosted morale
Published opposition newspapers
Secretly practiced forbidden religion

4.                                                                       
In the woods of the Ukraine in 1943, partisans are receiving a transmission from the Soviet Information Bureau. Photo credit: Central State Archive of Film, Photo, and Photographic documents, courtesy of USHMM

5. Unarmed Acts of Resistance continued
Jews created an underground economy
Illegal mills and workshops
Secret marketplace
Smuggling goods in and out of ghettos
Sabatoge at forced labor factories
Slow work
Destructiveness
Starting fires
Damage machinery vs. repair
Secret schools

6. Children scale a wall to smuggle food into the ghetto
Children scale a wall to smuggle food into the ghetto. Conditions were so extreme that they engaged in this activity despite the proclamation issued by Dr. Ludwig Fischer (Governor of the Warsaw District from October, 1939 to January, 1945), imposing a death penalty on Jews who left the ghetto and on those who helped them.
Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce Poland. No. 124.

7. More acts of resistance
Jewish self-help organizations
Arose out of existing pre-war service groups
In the Warsaw ghetto, these groups offered food at public and children's kitchens
Distributed clothing and furniture
Provided child care activities
Helped refugees find housing
Performed other community work
Documentation of persecution
Diaries
Documents

8. Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum Archives
Three of the ten metal boxes and two milk cans used to preserve documents and materials of detailed information about life in the Warsaw Ghetto.
In September, 1946, the metal boxes were discovered under the ruins of a house.
In December, 1950, the milk cans with the second part of the archives were recovered.
These materials and documents are now in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce Poland. No. 150.

9. More Resistance Camps of families in forests who fled persecution
Leaving the country
Sending children away to safer places
Posing as non-Jews
Helping Jews escape persecution
Raising / Housing Jews and passing them off as non-Jewish family members
Continued creation of art, literature, and poetry

10. --Hitler. Nuremberg speech, Sept. 11, 1935
"Art is a noble mission. Those who have been chosen by destiny [Vorsehung] to reveal the soul of a people, to let it speak in stone or ring in sounds, live under a powerful, almighty, and all-pervading force. They will speak a language, regardless of whether others understand them. They will suffer hardship rather than become unfaithful to the star which guides them from within."
--Hitler. Nuremberg speech, Sept. 11, 1935

11. Birkenau. Painting of Königsgraben from the ceiling of the penal company barrack at Birkenau. Photo credit: Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

12. Auschwitz. Cherubs painting and Horseback Riders from a washroom in block 7. Photo credit: Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

13. Armed Resistance
Great Britain and the Soviet Union = primary sources of resistance support
Arms also bought from Poles and Russians, at great cost and at enormous risk
Guerilla warfare
Cutting telephone, telegraph, and electrical lines
Destruction of power stations
Sabotage transportation links by blowing up bridges, roads, and railway equipment
Sabotage of factories that produced materials for the Axis powers

14. Partisan Group in Naliboki Forest
                                                                                           
This group of partisans operated in the Naliboki forest (Baranowicze region) of Poland. Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce Poland. No. 506

15. Resistance in the ghettos
There was some armed resistance in several ghettos
Jewish resistance was concentrated in the Polish ghettos of Warsaw, Krakow, Bialystok and Vilna.
Warsaw's insurgency was the most notable.
In November, 1942, the Warsaw ghetto-based Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) was formed.
Mordechai Anielewicz was the brave commander-in-chief of this armed uprising.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943, and continued for about a month.
Battle initiated by the Jewish fighting forces in Warsaw when German troops entered the ghetto to begin the final round of deportations.

16. One way Nazis suppressed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was to burn blocks of buildings. Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

17. LEFT: A woman hangs from a balcony, preparing to drop to the street and the waiting SS. Photo credit: Glowna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.
Below Photo Credit: Poland National Archives.
RIGHT: Mattresses and furniture lie piled next to an apartment building to provide a place for the inhabitants to jump during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The original German caption reads: "A place that had been readied for jumping and escape."

18. Captured Jews from the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are led by the SS to the Umschlagplatz for deportation. The original German caption reads alternately: "To the Umschlagplatz" or "Deportation of Jews." Photo credit: Poland National Archives

19. One of the most famous pictures of the Holocaust
One of the most famous pictures of the Holocaust. German stormtroopers force Warsaw ghetto dwellers of all ages to move, hands up, during the Jewish Ghetto Uprising in April-May Photo credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.

20. Resistance in the death camps
Escape - On August 2, 1943, inmates of Treblinka, in an armed revolt, killed SS men and escaped the death camp. Fleeing to the woods, some joined the partisan struggle.
Revolt - On October 14, 1943, an armed revolt took place in Sobibor.
Testimony = art, writing, telling
Survival
Sabatoge

21. Pre-War picture of Ala Gertner
Born about in Bedziner
One participant in the Sonderkommando uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau
Assigned to the Union Munitions factory
Acquainted with Roza Robota (recruited Ala to resistance movement within Auschwitz)
Ala then recruited Estusia and Hanka Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn since they had direct access to gunpowder.
They passed whatever they could steal to Ala
Transferred it to Roza
Gave it to members of the Sonderkommando.
Plan = blow up crematorium and start general uprising
Crematorium IV destroyed on October 7, 1944
4 women were directly implicated in the theft of the explosives
All four were arrested and tortured
Jan.5, 1945, all four publicly hanged
Photo credit: Anna and Joshua Heilman Collection, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.