The Holocaust: The Role Of Resistance Movements In Nazi Germany

The holocaust was known as a “systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its supporters. The Nazis who came into power in Germany in January 1933 believed that German’s were ‘racially inferior. '” (Introduction to the Holocaust, USHMM). During the peak of the Nazi regime, which was in the midst of the world war, the government implemented concentration camps as a method to “detain political and ideological opponents.” (Introduction to the Holocaust, USHMM). Progressively in the years leading to the end of the war, the Schutzstaffel (Hitler 's private bodyguards) and the Gestapo (secret police of Nazi Germany) imprisoned Jews, Roma, and others victims of inferior ethnic and

In addition, due to the conscientious organization and military strength of Nazi Germany and its supporters, as well as the hostility put off by other segments of the civilian population, few Jew’s were able to resist Nazi attempts at extermination.

Furthermore, between 1941 and 1943, the commencement of resistance movements started to develop in “approximately 100 ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe (about one-fourth of all ghettos), especially in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine” (Introduction to the Holocaust, USHMM). The essential goals of these tedious uprisings were to escape these death camps and to join ‘partisan units’ in the fight against the Nazis. “Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union” (Jewish Resistance, USHMM). The constant fear of Nazi terror caused resistance in the ghettos very difficult and dangerous to follow through with.

However, Jewish people in concentration camps and ghettos faced the most adverse conditions. They experienced contagious diseases, overcrowding, starvation, and torture. Jewish prisoners who were reluctant to avoid being executed were successful in launching uprisings within the camps. Some of the most infamous uprisings were Treblinka, Auschwitz and Sobibor. In that, approximately “1,000 Jewish prisoners participated in the revolts; Jews seized what weapons they could find—picks, axes, and some firearms stolen from the camp armoury—and set fire to the camp. About 200 managed to escape. The Germans recaptured and killed about half of them” (Jewish Uprising in Ghettos and Camps, USHMM). However, other camp rebellions were a failure. For example the uprising in the Auschwitz Crematorium, in which prisoners fought back against the guards when they found out that they were to be executed. The Schutzstaffel harshly ceased the rebellion and as a result, killed hundreds by gunpoint. Undeterred by “being vastly outgunned and outnumbered” (Jewish Uprising in Ghetto’s and Camps, USHMM), the prisoners of the forsaken camps and ghettos were inclined to resist the anti-Semitic policies enforced by Nazi Germany. “The spirit of these efforts transcends their failure to halt the genocidal policies of the Nazis” (Jewish Uprising in Ghettos and Camps,