During the Holocaust, thousands of jews were taken from their homes and forced to work in concentration camps or killed. Once they arrived at these camps, they were dehumanized in almost every way possible by the Nazis. Somehow though many of these people kept their faith and kept believing that it would get better until the end and refused to believe the stories of what was to come until it was to late. My question was how did the jews resist the Nazis or did they try to fight back?
Resistance by the jews could be as simple as holding secret prayer sessions or as well thought out and organized as smuggling weapons and attacking their captors. Simply surviving could be considered revolting because just by not giving up they were going against the very thing the Nazis were trying to accomplish. The camps were well guarded and there were little ways to escape.
They also new that if they did manage to escape without getting caught or recaptured, everyone else in their group would be automatically shot, which often meant friends and family members. This and the fear of breaking up the family stopped many jews from revolting or trying to get free.
On the trains that were taking the jews to, for many of them, their deaths, mothers who had heard of and believed what was to come often killed their young babies to spare them from having to go through what was happening. Those who did resist on the way there either by running from the trains or attacking their captors faced certain death. Some took advantage of this situation and were summarily executed on the spot. Others chose to take their own lives when faced with the hopelessness of the situation. It might be argued that...
Fantastic essay on resisting oppression
The internees in the World War II concentration camps were heroes even if they didn't receive medals for their valiant efforts. It is hard for us to imagine the hopelessness which must have daily haunted the tragic internees. The despair couldn't have been better described than in a sign from Dante's "Inferno" proclaiming: "Leave aside all hope ye who enter here." The human spirit is so indomitable that many clung to hope anyway and we can all learn from their brave example.
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