Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror

by Nechama Tec

German directives were continuously pouring in. Severe punishment, usually death, followed disobedience to any of them. On October 15, 1941, a new law mandated the death sentence for any Jew caught outside of the ghetto and involved in “illegal” activities. A violation of this law led not only to the death of the Jew but also to the death of anyone who might have been somehow involved in this transgression.24 German authorities were serious about enforcements of this law. The laws and consequences of breaking them were widely publicized and discussed. Indeed, most German laws were propelled by the principle of collective responsibility.

  Within these continuously evolving environments, most ghetto inmates were confronted by growing oppression. Despite the horrendous circumstances, some Jews engaged in mutual aid activities. Some devoted themselves to the establishment of soup kitchens; others to the building of orphanages; still others to the collection of money and goods for the sick and the helpless. In the ghettos, a large number of women, the young and the not-so-young, tried to take advantage of whatever opportunities they could find to make things better.

  Still, few ghetto inmates could permanently escape the oppressive measures that the authorities imposed upon the Jews. Vladka Meed could not escape from the effects of chronic hunger. “In the ghetto I thought about myself mainly in relation to food. I did not want to be hungry. But I was always hungry.” One day, she was so swollen from hunger that she could not work. “Maybe this saved me, because one day I could not put on my shoes and could not go to work. And just that day there was a selection and all those who came to my working place were taken away.”

  The Germans contributed to the tensions between diverse ghetto inmates by issuing documents that gave the right to live to one inmate—at the expense of another. In the Vilna ghetto, Mark Dworzecki describes how he and his friend appealed for a life-saving pass: “Both of us sat in the dark office corridor . . . waiting for the judgment upon us. We talked to each other . . . at the same time we knew that a life voucher for one of us meant a death warrant for the other.” In the end he got the voucher and not his friend. “I was ashamed to raise my eyes but nonetheless I took the document.”25

  Work assignments and appropriate documents did not necessarily translate into adequate food rations. Officially, in occupied Poland, ghetto inmates were entitled to fewer than 400 calories per day.26 Added to the effects of chronic hunger were severe problems caused by cramped living quarters. The absence of electricity, running water, and adequate toilet facilities led to hygiene problems and epidemics. Overcrowded hospitals lacked basic equipment and medications. The Jewish hospital staff was required to report all patients with chronic and contagious diseases. When identified to the authorities, such patients were immediately killed.27 Ghetto prohibitions extended to school attendance, to private instruction, and to religious observances. All these were a part of the established processes of humiliation and degradation.

  Faced with these and other expanding assaults on freedom, dignity, and survival, many Judenrat leaders and others refused to submit. Collectively and individually they organized a variety of fund-raising events: lectures, theatrical performances, and contests. The leadership imposed taxes on the few ghetto inhabitants who still had money. With these funds they created soup kitchens and bought medications.

  In some of the ghettos, young people of various political groups offered lessons to children and lectured to adult audiences, though this was illegal. One of them was the enterprising Vladka Meed. One of her most vivid recollections is of a lecture she gave about Boncze Szveig, a character in a novel by the Jewish writer Peretz. This lecture was just one of the many cultural evenings, an important part of the Warsaw ghetto life. In her case, it took place in a large room filled with older listeners. The windows were securely covered. A special watchman stood next to the gate of the building, in a secluded corner of the house. Vladka was younger than anyone in her attentive audience, but people were accustomed to these youthful and passionate lecturers. The air was filled with a tension that held until the very end of the presentation, which was followed by questions. Animated, eager to learn, to explore, audience and lecturer were locked in an intense and heated exchange of ideas. This and other similar cultural events had the power to transport the participants away from the ghetto poverty, from hunger, from the devastation, and to inhabit briefly a more meaningful and dignified world. What happened in this and similar rooms was real, and perhaps even more real than that which inevitably greeted each Jew outside of the room.

  In large ghettos in particular, certain morale-building activities also took place. Among them were special committees devoted to the establishment of theatrical presentations, libraries, and a variety of other educational pursuits. Illegal schools seemed to have flourished in the ghettos of Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.

  Yitskhok Rudashevsky, the teenage boy in the Vilna ghetto, underscored the value of these efforts: “Finally I have lived to see the day,” he wrote in his diary. “Today we go to school. The day passed quite differently. Lessons, subjects both of the sixth classes were combined. There is a happy spirit in class. Finally the club too was opened. My own life is shaping in quite a different way. We waste less time. The day is divided and flies by very quickly . . . yes, that is how it should be in the ghetto, the day should fly by, and we should not waste time.” This hopeful assessment was followed shortly by the author’s death.28

  Although the Germans had utilized Jewish labor from the start of the occupation, more systematic economic exploitation followed the establishment of ghettos. Eventually, compulsory employment applied to Jewish women as well. Those whose husbands could not support them were glad to work, even for inadequate rewards. Large-sized ghettos had two kinds of workers: a municipal labor system and employment by private enterprises. The municipal labor system was more extensive and it was arranged via the Judenrat, who were under pressure to deliver Jewish workers to the Germans. The Judenrat received starvation wages for inmates’ jobs. The occupational authorities closely supervised all labor transactions, including those involving private enterprises, most of which were owned by German firms that had the freedom to exploit low payment for Jewish workers, which translated into enormous profits. The Jews themselves were motivated to work hard. Some equated their economic contributions with personal survival.29

  Everyone—Jews and the occupational authorities—knew that ultimately survival depended on access to adequate food. By controlling the ghetto food deliveries, the Germans had the power to turn the wartime ghettos into death traps. In Poland alone, an estimated 20 percent of the ghetto populations died of hunger. But for the Germans this figure was not high enough.30 Around 1942 and beyond, the occupational authorities were determined to do away with “useless” ghetto Jews. This translated into the murder of the old, the sick, children, and even the unborn.

  Eager to speed up the process of Jewish annihilation, some Germans by 1942 must have guessed that time was not on their side. After the initial, spectacular German victories at the eastern front, the Soviets stiffened their opposition. Hitler’s army continued to incur losses. With these changes German victory was becoming less certain. As prospects of military conquests continued to dwindle, the Third Reich began to concentrate on winning a different war: the war against the Jews.31

  With time, this war against the Jews heightened awareness about Jewish women, especially their function as vehicles for the perpetuation of the Jewish race. Among the weapons directed against the Jews were more extreme labor demands and laws that prohibited the birth of children.32 Children represent the future. In the ghettos women, propelled by their own special ties to children, by tradition and by views about the future, continued to gravitate to activities related to children. But precisely because ghetto children promised a Jewish future, the Germans targeted them for annihilation. Because Jewish children did not contribute to the wartime economy through labor, they were not even temporarily exempt from annihilation. The severity of German opposition t
o Jewish children and procreation varied with time and place. Humiliation, starvation, and the accompanying oppressions themselves reduced the chances of successful births. When pregnancies did happen, to avert punishments, Jews often relied on abortions.

  Dobka Freund-Waldhorn was caught in a web of conflicting orders and wishes: prohibitions against Jewish motherhood and the desire to give birth to a baby. Dobka came from a wealthy Orthodox family of nine children. Her father in particular saw her as a rebel. He even saw her 1939 marriage to Julek Frohlich as a form of resistance to his authority. Handsome, intelligent, from a respectable family, Julek was deemed unsuitable because he was not Orthodox. The war and the opposition to Dobka’s marriage pushed the young couple to Vilna and from there into the Vilna ghetto.

  When Dobka was transferred from the Vilna ghetto to a nearby estate, she realized that she was pregnant. By then Jewish women were prohibited from giving birth. Dobka’s husband and a Polish doctor at the estate pleaded with her to discontinue her pregnancy. She refused. She wanted Julek’s child.

  When she was seven months pregnant, as a concession to her husband, Dobka went to the ghetto hospital to learn first-hand about her options. Although sympathetic, the doctor in the ghetto hospital urged her to give birth and “to dispose” of the baby. Unless she followed his advice, he said, both she and the baby would die. The doctor admitted Dobka into the ghetto hospital and tried to induce delivery. “I stayed in the hospital for a long time, maybe a month. They gave me medication to have the water move, but there was no birth. They increased the dosage. They did all kinds of things, but the child refused to be born. Eventually, I got a fever, high fever. I think that it was already the eighth month. Only then it happened. She was alive. They showed me the little girl. She was so beautiful. She looked just like my husband, and we were so much in love! Then, they took her away.” Later her husband came to the hospital. “He knelt next to my bed. . . . He took my hands into his, and he cried . . . terribly, terribly. ‘You will see, we will have children, there will be children.’”

  With Julek Frohlich, there were no more children. He died in the concentration camp Klooga. After the war, Dobka remarried and gave birth to two sons.

  After the birth of my second son, with my second husband, I dreamt that my first husband, Julek, came to me. He looked very neglected, [had] not shaved. “Where were you?” I asked, “so many years? I have a husband and children.” He answered, “Yes, but you will come back to me.” In the dream I thought how could I go back to him? But to him I said: “I will come back to you.” I woke up and found my pillow soaking wet from my tears.33

  Like many women in the ghettos, Ringelblum was particularly sensitive to the suffering of Jewish children. He anguished over their fate. He noted that “the Hitlerite beast wants to devour that which is most precious, that which arouses most compassion, most tenderness and sympathy, namely, innocent children.” The suffering was ever-present: “Mortifying and incredible are the street children who beg for alms, reminding us of their homelessness . . . each evening at the corner of Leszna and Karmelicka Streets, the children are there, their faces flooded with bitter tears. After these encounters, sleep eludes me for most of the night. The few pennies I offer them fail to ease my conscience.”34

  In his writings, he shared a story others had told him. It was about a six-year-old boy lying on a Warsaw ghetto street, trying to reach for a slice of bread someone must have thrown to him from a balcony. Next morning, the boy was found dead; close to him was his untouched slice of bread.35

  Efforts to protect Jewish children were part of a life-or-death struggle. It was also an uneven struggle, one with many child victims and few survivors.36 Still, all ghettos had organizations devoted to helping children. As mentioned, even as ghetto congestion and deprivation continued to mount, paradoxically they were matched by a proliferation of welfare activities, including a wide range of health services, and educational and cultural pursuits.37

  Within the ghetto, the Judenrat was entrusted with the implementation of German orders and with helping the refugees to settle in. In Warsaw as in most other places, the councils gradually expanded their operations to oversee the employment of the ghetto inmates, organize public kitchens, instigate educational and cultural activities, and much more. A significant part of the welfare organizations was sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, known as the JDC. The “Joint” retained many of its prewar leaders.

  Similarly important in the Warsaw ghetto were the House Committees. By 1943, practically each building had such a unit, bringing the total to about 2,000. As with most other ghetto organizations, House Committees also diversified their functions over time. They likewise created public soup kitchens, offered health care, collected and distributed clothing to the poor, and attended to the educational and cultural needs of children and others.38

  Some of these ghetto organizations functioned as covers for underground activities. Collectively and individually, occasionally overlapping and competing with each other, they became symbols of survival and, in their way, of resistance. And again, very often, they were run by women. Emanuel Ringelblum, as the head of the Oneg Shabbat archives, commissioned Cecylia Slapak to conduct a survey about the fate of Jewish women during the war. Findings from this research point to two groups—those whose primary goal was to protect themselves and their families from the German oppression, and those whose response to life-threatening disaster was to engage in activities that reached beyond mere self-preservation and the preservation of their immediate families. Whether as private individuals or as employees of welfare organizations, they devoted themselves to helping a wider circle of people. Slapak reported that this second group was able to identify with the suffering of strangers and with the Jewish community at large.39

  One example of this second type was a professional librarian identified in Slapak’s survey as “Mrs. B.” In the Warsaw ghetto, Mrs. B’s job had to do with sorting old clothes. Nonetheless, she also found time to devote herself to building a children’s lending library. She began by collecting books and contacting potential volunteers. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she persevered. Eventually, Mrs. B’s dream came true and she was appointed Director of the Children’s Lending Library.

  In a wartime interview with Slapak, she shared her feelings about this accomplishment: “My library job has a wonderful psychological effect on me. It gives me life. I believe in the importance of this kind of work for the present and for the future. Before, when I used to sort clothes under much better physical conditions, and I also had then more strength, I frequently felt exhausted and sick. With my library work, although what I do is physically more taxing, and the surroundings are less agreeable . . . and even though I am now undernourished, I feel healthy and invigorated. I feel fulfilled. My feeling of self-fulfillment must be strengthening my immune system.”40

  Independent of Slapak’s research, by 1942 Ringelblum had arrived at similar conclusions: that the men, “exhausted by strenuous labor,” let women take control of some of the House Committees. “For our expanding welfare operations, we need new people. It is fortunate that we can rely on these new sources of strength.”41 Ringelblum paid special tribute to two activists whose work on House Committees expanded into other community needs—Eliahu Kahn, who established the first House Committee that aimed at easing the suffering of the needy and at the promotion of educational and cultural activities in the ghetto; and a “Mrs. Mokrska” from Lodz.

  Mrs. Mokrska had a gift for finding women who were ready to sacrifice. Many of her coworkers became patrons of boarding schools, of refugee centers, and of public kitchens. The tireless and resourceful Mrs. Mokrska seemed to be everywhere. During the height of the ghetto deportations in 1942, she had located a workshop which accepted laborers free of charge. At that point, people were convinced that employment would shield them from deportations. In reality, work was either a temporary respite or none at all. In the end, Mrs. Mokrska h
erself fell victim to deportation.42

  Not surprisingly the oppressed, starved ghetto inmates welcomed the expanding welfare activities of the committees and organizations. From the perspective of the German occupiers, on the other hand, their efforts undermined the Third Reich’s objectives. Given its determination to pursue their anti-Jewish policies, Germany was eagerly trying to demolish these interfering forces. In fact, by itself, the creation of ghettos was an effective system of oppression which had come close to accomplishing the annihilation of the Jewish people. By May 1942, Emanuel Ringelblum pointed to an overall demoralization taking place in the Warsaw ghetto due to the sharp contrasts he observed: a growing number of beggars were on the verge of death while visible were overdressed, elegant young women.

  Ringelblum found the contrasts deplorable but turned his focus to issues involving the effectiveness of ghetto welfare organizations. He listened to those who had considered the value of the soup kitchens. They recognized that those who had depended only on the soup and bread which came from these kitchens had died more rapidly than others, with starvation as the major cause of their deaths. For Ringelblum these findings raised morally painful questions. Should more food be allotted to a select few who would live longer? Should one offer better quality of food to fewer people? If so, who should these people be? Who has the right to act upon these kinds of alternatives?

  The Germans who had the power to decide how much food should be allotted to the ghetto inmates were, of course, indifferent to the morality of these decisions. Predictably, the German Heinz Auerswald, who had insisted on expanding his influence over the ghetto, had no problem acting upon some of these “dilemmas.” In fact, he was eager to shrink the amount of food allotted to the ghetto inmates. He looked upon the new ghetto arrivals as merely wilted leaves. Auerswald had insisted that food should be allotted only to working people. He introduced the rule that a Jewish ghetto inmate could purchase soup only three times a week. He also insisted that the price for the soup should be raised by about 20 percent per portion.43