Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror
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14. For a broader discussion of Jewish women and resistance, see Tec, Resilience and Courage, 256–339.
15. I would like to thank Zvi Shefet for sending me a tape in Hebrew of Judith Graf’s testimony, Yad Vashem No. 2978, group 220.
16. These ideas were emphasized by Zvi Shefet during my interview with him in Tel Aviv in 1995.
17. Becoming a mistress of a commander has not necessarily protected women from suffering. In Soviet partisan units, the birth of newborn babies led to their “mysterious” disappearances. One such case is touchingly described by Berk, Destined to Live 163–164; another case was a baby girl born to the Chief of Staff Prognagin and his mistress Irka. They took away the child from her and she was never able to find it. This mother is currently a professor in the United States. I heard about this case from Mina Volkowisky, who met her with the newborn baby in her arms in the forest when she was visiting Sikorski’s Brigade.
18. General Sikorski employed Michael Pertzof as his translator and interpreter. I interviewed Michael Pertzof in Israel in 1995. Pertzof concurs that Sikorski was always drunk. Once he was called by this general in the middle of the night. As usual the general was drunk. The German soldier who was there was on the verge of death. He uttered no words. Michael explained: “The General demanded that I should first talk to the German and then shoot him. It was terrible. He was dead.… yet I had to shoot him … but after that I could not eat, I could not sleep so, if I were to write about something like this? Would anybody believe me?”
19. Tadeusz Pankiewicz wrote a memoir, The Pharmacy in the Cracow Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987).
20. On February 10, 1983, Yad Vashem had recognized Tadeusz Pankiewicz as the Righteous among the Nations. See Tadeusz Pankiewicz, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Poland (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), 2:579.
21. About expressions of hopes, struggles, and cooperative efforts in the Krakow ghetto and beyond, see Every Day Lasts a Year, ed. Christopher R. Browning, Richard S. Hollander, and Nechama Tec (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
22. Julian Alexandrowicz, Kartki z Dziennika doktora Twardego (pages from Dr. Hard) (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001), 29.
23. Ibid., 29–30.
24. Ibid., 40.
25. Ibid., 47.
26. Ibid., 61.
27. Ibid., 62.
28. Davies, Rising ’44.
29. Alexandrowicz, Kartki z Dziennika doktora Twardego, 78.
30. Ibid., 74.
31. Hersh Smolar, personal interview, Tel Aviv, 1989. Both these allegations are discussed in Tec, Defiance, 155.
32. Smolar, Minsk Ghetto. This book indeed proved very valuable.
33. Nechama Tec, Hersh Smolar, personal interview, Tel Aviv, 1989.
34. Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, Oxford University Press, 1993.
35. Tec, Defiance, 115.
36. Personal interview, 1990.
37. Nechama Tec, Hersh Smolar, personal interview, Tel Aviv, 1990.
38. Ibid.
39. Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 123–124. For further evidence of these issues, see Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, The Secret Army (London: Victor Gollacz, 1951).
40. Personal interview, Smolar, 1990.
41. Ingel Scholl, The White Rose: Munich 1942-1943 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1970), 4.
42. Personal interview, Smolar, 1990.
43. Tec, Defiance, 111.
44. Rachel Margolis, Wspomnienia Wilenskie (Memories of Vilna) (Warsaw: Zydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute), 2005).
45. Ibid., 138–139.
46. Ibid., 140–143.
47. Sefer Hapartisanim Hajehudim (The Jewish Partisan Book) (Merchavia: Sifriath Poalim, Hashomer Hatzair, 1958), 1:337, 346.
48. Leonard Tushuet, “The Little Doctor, A Resistance Hero,” in They Fought Back, ed. Suhl, 257.
49. Samuel Bornstein, “Dr. Yehezkel Atlas, Partisan Commander,” in Anthology of Holocaust Literature, ed. Jacob Glatstein et al. (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 300.
50. Gilbert, The Holocaust, 385.
51. Ibid., 259.
52. Personal interview, Smolar, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1989.
53. Ibid.
Chapter Four
1. Personal interview, Bela Chazan Yaari, 1995.
2. Israel Gutman, “Auschwitz: an Overview,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. I. Gutman and M. Berenbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 16–19.
3. Hermann Langbein, “The Auschwitz Underground,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Gutman and Berenbaum, 485.
4. Hermann Langbein, Against All Hope (New York: Paragon House, 1994), 392. For a theoretical discussion of these issues, see Tec, Defiance, 204–209.
5. Ibid., 392.
6. Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945 (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1989), 29.
7. Pilecki felt that the very existence of ZWZ and AK (Home Army) would lift the spirits of the Polish prisoners; Jozef Garlinski, Fighting Auschwitz (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 54 and 60.
8. Henryk Swiebocki, The Resistance Movement, Vol. 2, Auschwitz, 1940-1945, ed. Waclaw Dlugoborski and Franciszek Piper (Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000), 104.
9. For descriptions of the varied Polish underground groups, see Garlinski, Fighting Auschwitz, 60–105 and Swiebocki, The Resistance Movement, 65–106.
10. Hermann Langbein, Die Starkeren (The strong ones) (Frankfurt: Bund Verlag, 1982), 214–215.
11. Ibid., 122. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 174–175.
12. Swiebocki, The Resistance Movement, 129–133.
13. Ibid., 130–131.
14. Ibid., 133–134.
15. Garlinski, Fighting Auschwitz, 223–230.
16. Ibid., 231.
17. Ibid., 348–349.
18. Yehuda Laufer, “A Yeshiva Bocher Turned Resistance Fighter,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, trans. and ed. Lore Shelley (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, Inc., 1996), 177–183.
19. Israel Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” in ibid., 144–160.
20. “Preface,” in ibid., p. xiv.
21. Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” 153–154.
22. Laufer, “A Yeshiva Bocher Turned Resistance Fighter,” 182.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 181.
25. Noah Zabludowicz, “A Comrade of the Hashomer Hatzair Talks about Roza Robota,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, trans. and ed. Shelley, 293–294.
26. Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1979), 152–153.
27. Garlinski, Fighting Auschwitz, 288–290.
28. Ibid., 311, 337.
29. Zabludowicz, “A Comrade of the Hashomer Hatzair,” 295.
30. Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, 153–155.
31. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945, 725.
32. Ibid., 726.
33. Raya Kagan, “The Investigation as Seen by an Inmate of the Political Section,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, trans. and ed. Shelley, 286–290; Swiebocki, The Resistance Movement, 120–121 and 249.
34. Zabludowicz, “A Comrade of the Hashomer Hatzair,” 294–295.
35. Langbein, “The Auschwitz Underground,” 500–501.
36. Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz, Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1933 1945 (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1982), 236.
37. Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” 156.
38. Langbein, “The Auschwitz Underground,” 500–501.
39. Raya Kagan as an employee of the political section had access to the reaction of the Berlin authorities (“The Investigation as Seen by an Inmate of the Political Section,” 286–290).
40. Ibid., 288.
41. Ada Halperin, nee Neufeld, “I was Hoarse the Day I Auditioned to Sing for the Birkenau
Orchestra,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, trans. and ed. Shelley, 77–80.
42. Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” 157–158.
43. Zabludowicz, “A Comrade of the Hashomer Hatzair,” 295.
44. Herta Fuchs, nee Ligeti, “Camp Love with a Capital L,” in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, trans. and ed. Shelley, 71–76.
45. Kagan, “The Investigation as Seen by an Inmate of the Political Section,” 288–289.
46. Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” 158.
47. Personal interview with Helen Spitzer-Tichauer, known as Zippi, 1994.
48. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945, 775.
49. The literature includes a great variety of these executions. I tried to include the least obtrusive one.
50. Summaries of Kielar’s last stages of his slave-like existence under the German occupation are described in the last forty pages of his memoirs; Wieslaw Kielar, Anus Mundi (New York: New York Times Book Co., Inc., 1972), 260–300.
51. Gutman, “A Warschauer of the Ciechanow Group,” 156.
52. Ibid., 156–157. Right after the end of the war, a moving testimony was offered by the woman, Birkenau prisoner Mania Kampel, about the uprising in the Sonderkommando in Betti Ajzensztajn, Ruch Podziemny W Ghettach I Obozach (Underground movements in ghettos and camps) (Warszawa: Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna w Polsce, 1946), 197–200.
53. See Alexander Donat, ed., The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979) and Zabecki Franciszek, Wspomnienia Dawne I Nowe (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1977).
54. Richard Glazar, personal interview, Switzerland, Basel, 1995. See also Glazar’s A Trap with a Green Fence (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 36. The quotes in the text come from this interview and Gitta Sereny, Into the Darkness from Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (New York: McGraw Hill Co., 1974).
55. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 189.
56. Ibid., 190.
57. Ibid., 191.
58. See Gutman and Krakowski, Unequal Victims, 106. These authors mention that “serious armed resistance organizations were set up in the five major ghettos: in Warsaw, Wilno, Bialystok, Cracow and Czestochowa; as well as in forty five other ghettos.” While this book mentions many ghettos in which resistance took place, other sources increase the number of ghettos and concentration camps in which organized Jewish resistance happened.
59. Glazar, Trap with a Green Fence, 100–101.
60. Ibid., 147.
61. Ibid., 148.
62. Richard Glazar, personal interview, and Glazar, Trap with a Green Fence.
63. Thomas Toivi Blatt, Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999). See also Thomas Toivi Blatt, Sobibor, the Forgotten Revolt (Bern: H.E.P. Verlag, 1998); Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp (London: Berg Publishers, 2007); and Richard Rashke, Escape from Sobibor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982).
64. Ibid., 235.
65. Ibid., 236.
66. Ibid., 235–242. Frenzel failed to throw any additional light on this initial statement, claiming to be fair in the performance of his concentration camp duties.
67. The name Pieczorski appears with different spelling in various sources.
68. Ajzensztajn, Ruch Podziemny W Ghettach I Obozach (Meterialy I Dokumenty), 187.
69. Adam Rutkowski, “Resistance at the Death Camp of Sobibor,” Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Commision 65-66 (1968): 42.
Chapter Five
1. Ringelblum, Kronika, 337–378.
2. Thea Epstein, personal interview, Tel Aviv, 1995.
3. Claire Sokolowski, personal interview, Paris, 1995.
4. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
5. Adam Ronikier, Pamietnik, 1939-1945, Memoirs (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001), 40.
6. Among those who talked to me about exposure to these warnings was Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State; Albin Kazimierz, Warrant of Arrest (Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2003), who had the same experence as practically all the other Polish officers who spoke to me about their homecomings.
7. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, 67; Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 52–69.
8. For illustration of these circumstances, see the following few examples: Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw; Roland, Courage under Siege; Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak.
9. Karski, Story of a Secret State, 281.
10. Leah Silverstein gave me a Polish copy of this essay; it was also translated into Hebrew in its entirety, published in Yalkut Moreshet 50 (1991). This is my free translation from the Polish.
11. Leah Silverstein, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive or Leah Silverstein, personal interview, see previous note.
12. The story about obtaining a gun is based on the book by Leah Silverstein, written in Polish under her name, Leokadia Silverstein, Tak Wlasnie Bylo (This is how it was) (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 2002). Based on the chapter by the title of “Parabellum,” 83–104.
13. Personal interview, Washington, D.C., 1996.
14. Hela Schupper-Rufeisen, Pozegnanie Milej 18 (Goodbye to Mila 18) (Krakow, 1996), 109–113.
15. Ibid., 113.
16. Kazik (Simha Rotem) describes and attempts with some successes and some failures to bring out members of ZOB through the sewers. See Appendix: Kazik, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 155–169.
17. Abraham Shulman, The Case of Hotel Polski (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), 42.
18. Ibid., 43.
19. Ibid., 158.
20. I interviewed Hela Schupper-Refeisen in Israel 1989.
21. Yizhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), 456.
22. Chaika Grossman, The Underground Army: Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987).
Chapter Six
1. Kershaw, Hitler:1936 1946 Nemesis, 245.
2. Ibid., 241.
3. Ibid., 247.
4. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2, 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 452. For a more detailed description of the Katyn massacre, see J. K. Zawodny, Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Massacre (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1962), 235.
5. Karski, Story of a Secret State, 329.
6. E. Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994), 64.
7. Ibid., 129.
8. Ibid., 234.
9. Ibid., 134.
10. Ibid., 131.
11. David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government in Exile and The Jews, 1939 1942 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 203.
12. Gutman and Krakowski, Unequal Victims, 154–155.
13. Ibid., 160.
14. Nechama Tec, personal communication, Israel Gutman, 2009.
15. Ibid., 9–10.
16. Ibid., 326.
17. Ibid., 128–130.
18. Ibid., 127.
19. Ibid., 333.
20. Ibid., 333.
21. Ibid., 334.
22. Jan Karski, personal communication, 1999.
23. Ibid., 7–8.
24. Ibid., 8.
25. Ibid., 283.
26. Ibid., 266.
27. Ibid., 334.
28. Ibid., 9.
29. Jan Karski, personal communication, 1999.
30. Jan Karski, personal communication, 1999.
31. Ibid., 9.
32. Ibid., 334.
33. Tec, A Glimmer of Light.
Conclusion
1. Tec, Resilience and Courage, 203–204.
2. Ibid., 79–80.