by Tec, Nechama
In the early 1960s, two more Bettelheim publications appeared, featuring extensive discussions of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. Figuring prominently in these works are assertions that Jews’ passivity had contributed significantly to their doom. In making his case, Bettelheim points to the case of Anne Frank, her family, and the Jews who had shared their hiding place in Holland. He argues that “the Franks could have provided themselves with a gun or two, had they wished. They could have shot down at least one or two of the ‘green police’ who came for them. There was no surplus of such police. The loss of an SS with every Jew arrested would have noticeably hindered the functioning of the police state. The fate of the Franks would not have been any different because they all died anyway except for Anne’s father, (but) . . . they could have sold their lives dearly instead of walking to their death.”6
Bettelheim continues in a similar vein, disapproving of the Franks’ selection of their hiding place, referring to it as “a trap without an outlet.” In effect, he blames the hidden Jews for failing to build an emergency escape passage, through which at least some of them could “have tried to escape while one or two of the men blocked and defended one of the small entrances with a homemade barricade.”7
Such objections underscore how little Bettelheim understood about the insurmountable obstacles Jews had to overcome when trying to find shelter in the Christian world. Guns were unattainable. Virtually every Jew who attempted to purchase weapons failed, and many who tried were murdered in the attempt. Moreover, Jews who wanted to hide among Christians could not find shelter. The Franks and those who joined them were a select minority. Suggestions about their finding more suitable hiding places assume there were options, which there were not. Actually, finding any hiding place was virtually a miracle. But, despite these serious misconceptions, as a former victim of the Nazis, as a successful psychoanalyst, as a talented writer, as someone who had presented himself as a Holocaust survivor, Bettelheim was listened to.8
Support for Bettelheim’s interpretations came from Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Concentrating on the wartime Jewish Councils, Arendt concludes that the Germans “created Jewish Councils who almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another with the Nazis.”9 She continues that “to a Jew, this role of Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story [the Holocaust]. It had been known about before, but it has now been exposed, for the first time, in all its pathetic and sordid detail by Raoul Hilberg [in The Destruction of the European Jews].” Without citing specific page references, Arendt offers vivid descriptions of a wide range of humiliating, extremely cruel anti-Jewish measures, which culminated in Jewish deportations to various concentration camps. She goes on, focusing upon the complicity of the Jewish Councils, claiming that, “In the matter of cooperation, [with the Germans] there was no distinction between the highly assimilated Jewish communities of central and western Europe and the Yiddish speaking masses of the East. . . . In the Nazi-inspired, but not Nazi-dictated manifestoes they issued, we still can sense how they enjoyed their new power.”10
Hilberg’s manuscript, the above-mentioned The Destruction of the European Jews, served as a source for her interpretation of the wartime activities of the wartime Jewish Councils. Hilberg himself objected to Arendt’s interpretation of his research. As a co-editor of the Czerniakow wartime diary, the head of the Judenrat in Warsaw, Hilberg’s views about the Jewish Councils, at times critical, were far more nuanced and complex.11
But Arendt was persistent. For additional “confirmation” of her views, Arendt turned to the prominent Jewish Dutch historian, Louis de Jong. Supposedly, from her exposure to de Jong, she had concluded that the Judenrat in wartime Holland, “quickly became an instrument of the Nazis.” We as readers, however, are never told where this statement came from. Nor did my familiarity with quite a number of de Jong’s publications direct me to any of these sources. Arendt continues writing that out of the 103,000 Dutch Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, with the cooperation of the Jewish Council, only 519 returned. Next, still presumably relying on de Jong, she notes that of the Dutch Jews who lived illegally in the forbidden Aryan world, 40 to 50 percent of them managed to survive the war. Finally, in a strange twist of logic, she blames the Jewish Council of Holland—for both the death of the Dutch Jews in Auschwitz and for the fact that not more of them had escaped into the Aryan world, where more could have eluded being murdered.12
Hilberg’s seminal contribution to the Holocaust literature, published first in 1961, retains its prominent position to this day. The author has revised his book twice, most recently in 2003. Each new edition has benefited from the infusion of additional historical evidence. Hilberg has consistently emphasized that his work concentrates on the perpetrators, the structures, and processes they employed as they pursued the annihilation of European Jewry. In the recently revised version, as in the two earlier ones, Hilberg states that “[p]reventive attacks, armed resistance and revenge were most completely absent from Jewish exilic history . . . for the Diaspora Jews; acts of armed opposition had become isolated and episodic. Force was not to be a Jewish strategy again until Jewish life was reconstituted in a Jewish state . . . during the catastrophe of 1933–45; the instances of opposition were small and few. Above all, whenever and whichever they occurred, they were actions of last (never first) resort.”13
Hilberg assumes an absence of Jewish resistance and attributes it to the long tradition of Jewish passivity. Introducing himself as an expert researcher on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, he nevertheless frequently returns to the topic of Jewish resistance. But Hilberg’s descriptions of Jewish uprisings are consistently brief. Critical facts are missing from these accounts. It must be a daunting task to describe events which had required months of preparations and fit them into a single paragraph of a sentence or two. Such brief treatments of complex topics cannot do justice to their historical significance. In fact, Hilberg’s comments about Jewish resistance show consistent patterns of omissions about central facts and circumstances.
No matter how complex or perilous Jewish resistance efforts were, Hilberg never discusses the obstacles which Jews had to overcome, nor the great sacrifices they were ready to make and made. Similarly, he never bothers to describe the ingenious strategies that were continuously devised by the Jews in order to survive. Hilberg’s special emphasis is illustrated by his statement that, “[m]easured in German casualties, Jewish armed opposition shrinks into insignificance.”14 Hilberg’s concluding remarks about Jewish underground operations consistently repeat how inconsequential Jewish resistance was because so few Germans were killed. In a variety of ways, over and over again, he stresses that Jewish resistance failed to diminish Germany’s overall military power.
He is right. The Jews were never in a position to undermine or diminish the effectiveness of the German Army. Still, those Jews who stood up to their oppressors were realistic both about their limited aims and the expected consequences of their opposition. They were aware of German superior power just as they were aware of their own powerlessness. Through their opposition, nonetheless, these resisters tried to achieve a certain measure of autonomy, such as by choosing their ways of dying. What they wanted was to die fighting. Through disobedience, they resisted the Germans’ brutality.
Is it appropriate to evaluate Jewish or any other kinds of resistance only in terms of how much concrete damage it had inflicted upon its enemy? Perhaps it should also be examined in terms of the moral effects it might have had upon the resisters themselves, upon the majority of the victims, most of whom could not be directly involved with any underground movements?
Some light might be thrown upon these and other questions by describing an encounter that happened in Warsaw during the 25th commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was an encounter between two men, a journalist who covered this event and Yitzhak Zuckerman, the second in command of the Warsaw g
hetto uprising. The journalist asked Zuckerman what kinds of strategic lessons have been learned from the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Zuckerman replied, “I don’t think there is any need to analyze the uprising in military terms. This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army and no one doubted how it was likely to turn out. . . . If there is a school to study the human spirit, there it should be a major subject. The really important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youths, after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. I don’t know if there is a standard to measure that.”15
Bettelheim, Arendt, and Hilberg came to their respective views from diverse directions, bringing with them a variety of experiences, perceptions, and conclusions. And yet, rather surprisingly, with some qualifications, their overall interpretations about Jewish resistance and Jewish Councils reveal only limited differences. Bettelheim and Arendt conclude that the Jews were passive, and in a real sense they had given up their opportunities to stand up to the Germans. Through their refusal to resist they had cooperated in the destruction of the Jewish people.
Both Bettelheim and Arendt present their arguments as if these were based on facts.16 In reality, Bettelheim’s discussions rely on hypothetical images and value judgments, not on facts. Arendt’s discussions also grew out of a particular context. Some were closely related to her journalistic assignment—covering the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Relying on personal views rather than on factual materials, Arendt introduced the concept of the “banality of evil,”17 through which she asserts that human beings are capable of assuming roles of both victims and murderers.
Arendt’s assumption met with strong oppositions from Primo Levi. As a former underground fighter, an Auschwitz prisoner, a survivor, and a respected thinker and writer, Levi argued that in the banality of evil Arendt was confusing the roles of victims and murderers. He wrote: “I do not know and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation, or a sinister sign of complicity, above all in the precious service rendered intentionally or not to the negators of truth.”18
Hilberg’s conclusions are more ambiguous. When it comes to the idea about Jewish wartime passivity, as expressed through an absence of Jewish resistance, the differences between Bettelheim, Arendt, and Hilberg are minimal. Nevertheless, their respective arguments vary. While Bettelheim and Arendt simply assume that there are facts behind their assertions, Hilberg is concerned about checking the veracity of his conclusion. Relevant here is the fact that Hilberg’s views come from his particular definition of Jewish resistance. As we have seen, for him the existence of resistance, particularly Jewish resistance, is contingent on its effectiveness in reducing the strength of the powerful oppressors, the Germans. This means that he focuses purely and narrowly on armed resistance. Resistance exists only if it achieved its intended goals—a diminished or defeated enemy.
Facts do not necessarily speak for themselves. Researchers give to their facts voices and view them through particular lenses. In social science, in particular, facts are easily undermined by the researchers’ value judgments. Needless to say, this is more likely to happen when, for a variety of reasons, researchers are more devoted to their own value judgments than to empirical evidence.
Not surprisingly, inevitably, the concept of Jewish passivity, and by extension complicity in the systematic destruction of European Jewry, eventually did come under attack. Prominent among these attacks was Nathan Eck’s lengthy 1967 article.19 Such objections led to a mixture of history, polemics, and myths in much of what has been written about Jewish passivity and its accompanying accusations.20
One of the results was the emergence of new definitions of what resistance or underground opposition meant. By itself the term “underground movement” suggests an organized entity. In fact, most publications on the topic refer to collective resistance forms. These in turn are further differentiated into armed and unarmed, spiritual and non-spiritual, urban and rural, as well as many other dichotomies. When observed directly, all underground activities were dynamic rather than static, appearing under many guises. They were fluid. Moreover, resisters could simultaneously engage in a variety of acts, suggesting that the many varieties of resistance were not necessarily mutually exclusive. The multiplicity of forms, and their transformations and flexibility, underscore the complexity of the subject, and even hint at contradictions.
Frequently “resistance” conjures up images of actual combat. In reality armed confrontations between oppressors and their victims are rare. Under the German occupation most opposition involved hit and run tactics by resisters. For example, urban national resistance to the Germans frequently focused on the collection and dissemination of information, on forging documents, and on the accumulation of arms. The few actual armed uprisings occurred late, like the 1944 revolt in Paris, when the Allies were already at the gate. Another example is the August 1944 Warsaw uprising, which ended with the destruction of the city and an estimated death toll of over two hundred thousand Poles. In fact, a consistent policy of most leaders of national underground movements was to prevent premature uprisings. Correctly, these leaders assessed early uprisings as suicidal gestures.21
Given the German goal of Jewish annihilation, some scholars have argued that any Jewish effort to stay alive, and any and all efforts to undermine the Nazi goals, qualified as a form of resistance. Others, however, believe that this definition is too broad and that it would cloud our understanding of the subject. From another perspective, Jewish day-to-day survival efforts are an order of activity very different from derailing trains or participating in an armed uprising. Attempting to live represented resisting death, not resisting an oppressor. Some of these objections seem valid; others less so. A compromise is possible.
Collective humanitarian activities on behalf of others, such as those in the ghetto, required extraordinary moral strength. Such efforts contributed to the perpetuation of Jewish life, while denying Nazi policies of annihilation. Organized and selfless attempts to protect others do constitute resistance of a kind, even if they do not result in concrete rewards. They affirm moral values. A more realistic and inclusive definition of resistances should include a range of prohibited armed and unarmed activities, such as: humane acts on behalf of others, the collection of prohibited historical evidence, and the rescuing of the persecuted.
Review of the Holocaust literature on resistance provides insights into how some assumptions about Jewish resistance evolved and endured. Philip Friedman, for one, questioned the view of Jewish Councils as contributors to Jewish destruction. A Polish Jew and historian, Friedman left a lasting impact on Holocaust research. In his relatively short career, Friedman covered a wide range of topics, including Jewish resistance, Jewish Councils, gentiles who rescued Jews, ghettos, and many more. His research concentrates on the victims rather than on the perpetrators. He had a keen awareness about the complexity of wartime history and an equally keen sense about its moral dilemmas. Friedman’s research echoes a position taken by the prominent wartime historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who insisted that all of Jewish history—the admirable and the less admirable—must be recorded. Indeed, Friedman stayed close to the empirical evidence, consistently warning against rush conclusions. His research about the Jewish Councils carefully distinguished different kinds of Judenrat groups. His findings show how varied these Councils were, ranging from the heroic to the collaborationist, therefore questioning any conclusions about Jewish complicity in their wartime destruction.22
In 1977 came Isaiah Trunk’s pathbreaking research about the Judenrat,23 a book that retains its place as the definitive study on the subject. Trunk’s results show how diverse the reactions
of the Judenrat groups and individual Judenrat members were. His systematic survey of the roles played by the wartime Councils covers a wide range of behaviors, including full support for underground ghetto movements, heroic, collective and individual opposition to German orders, individual and collective suicides to protest calamitous orders, as well as reactions that verge on collaboration with the enemy.
Trunk’s research offers no simplistic, uniform conclusions. All along, he emphasizes the complexity of the subject, inviting readers to venture their own interpretations of the data. His volume also explores the unprecedented historical changes that were an inherent part of the Holocaust. His exhaustive research undermines persistent assertions about Jewish passivity and complicity.
Focusing on Eastern Europe, Ruben Ainsztein specifically set out to refute accusations about Jewish passivity. He proceeded by documenting Jewish participation in a wide range of underground operations. Ainsztein’s book Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe sought to rehabilitate the Jewish honor by showing how widely and often heroically the Jews participated in anti-German struggles.24 His book was followed by They Fought Back, which is a collection of articles by different individuals, each describing how Jews struggled in a variety of European countries and in a variety of wartime settings.25
Over the years, Israeli Holocaust historians have contributed important research about Jewish resistance under the German occupation.26 Outstanding among these historians is Israel Gutman, whose publications on the Warsaw Ghetto and Warsaw Ghetto revolt are enduring classics.27 As a holocaust survivor, a Warsaw Ghetto uprising underground fighter, and through his personal connections to the underground movement in Auschwitz, Gutman provides a unique, first-hand perspective of the meaning and implications of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
