A. Plan of Investigation The investigation explores why the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the most important ghetto resistance during the Holocaust. In order to analyze why the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was significant, research has to be done to study the elements of the Warsaw ghetto that made it successful. The main sources for this investigation are Ghetto Fights: Warsaw 1941-43 by Marek Edelman because it is a study to examine the political and ideological background of the Warsaw Rising and Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust by David Engel because it covers uprisings in other ghettos than in Warsaw. B. Summary of Evidence Approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. When Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933 there were 566,000 Jewish people living in Germany. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was created on March 22, 1933. Other concentration camps to be created during this time include Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. The first people to be arrested were Communists, labor leaders, and Communists. From 1933-1938 Jews gradually have their rights stripped away beginning with not being able to own land to not being considered citizens according to the Nuremberg Race Laws. Attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues began on November 9th, 1938 when over the course of two days over 7,000 Jewish businesses and 250 synagogues were destroyed by Germans. Also, Jews were arrested and killed while these tragedies occurred. This series of events is known as Kristallnacht. It marks the beginning of the extreme discrimination and eventually genocide of the Jewish population. Ghettos were enclosed city areas in which the Germans concentrated the Jewish population.... ... middle of paper ... ... David, Yitzchak Mais, and Eva Fogelman. Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust. New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2007. Print. Gutman, Israel. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982. Print. Kondracki, Tadeusz. "The Warsaw Uprising." Http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/. N.p., 1 Oct. 2001. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: New Discovery, 1992. Print. Mark, Bernard. Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Schocken, 1975. Print. Ney-Krwawicz, Marek. "The Polish Underground State and Home Army." Http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/. N.p., 1 Oct. 2001. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. Ochayon, Sheryl. "Armed Resistance in the Ghettos: The Dilemma of Revolt." Armed Resistance in the Ghettos: The Dilemma of Revolt. The International School for Holocaust Studies, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
The atrocities of war can take an “ordinary man” and turn him into a ruthless killer under the right circumstances. This is exactly what Browning argues happened to the “ordinary Germans” of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the mass murders and deportations during the Final Solution in Poland. Browning argues that a superiority complex was instilled in the German soldiers because of the mass publications of Nazi propaganda and the ideological education provided to German soldiers, both of which were rooted in hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism. Browning provides proof of Nazi propaganda and first-hand witness accounts of commanders disobeying orders and excusing reservists from duties to convince the reader that many of the men contributing to the mass
The Holocaust was an extraordinary event that affected the lives of millions of people, including Elie Wiesel, and led to the death of many innocent lives. It all began when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s dictator in 1933. Hitler praised the German population and seemed to ban all other competing races, specifically the Jewish population in Germany. This hatred toward the Jews led to extreme discrimination. Hitler’s main goal was to lead the Jewish race out of the country through the establishment of harsh laws against them (Barrett). After having little effect, Hitler decided to force the Jews into political imprisonment which led to the creation of the first concentration camps in 1933. However,
The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.
The biggest, most coordinated act of armed resistance took place in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1943 . Planned by a group called the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Z.O.B), which was polish for Jewish fighting organisation, the ZOB refused to board railroad cars which they knew would take them to
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
The Warsaw Ghetto was a Jewish-populated ghetto in the largest city of Poland, Warsaw. A ghetto can be defined as a part of a city in which large quantities of members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure. Ghettos were commonly attributed to a location where there was a large Jewish population. In fact, the word Ghetto originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, Italy, in 16th century.The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest Ghetto, as a part of the Holocaust, and as an early stage of it, played a very significant role. Today, in our museum exhibit, we have several artifacts, including primary evidence relating to the Warsaw ghetto. We will be discussing how and why it was created, the lifestyle
The Nazi Party, controlled by Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. In 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi government began to take over. Hitler became a very influential speaker and attracted new members to his party by blaming Jews for Germany’s problems and developed a concept of a “master race.” The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jewish people were a threat to the German racial community and also targeted other groups because of their “perceived racial inferiority” such as Gypsies, disabled persons, Polish people and Russians as well as many others. In 1938, Jewish people were banned from public places in Germany and many were sent to concentration camps where they were either murdered or forced to work.
"Ghettos under the Nazis - My Jewish Learning." Ghettos under the Nazis - My Jewish Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
One of the largest Jewish revolts dated in the Holocaust, was that of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the year of 1943, residents of the ghetto had finally had enough of the overbearing Nazi soldiers and decided to launch a counterattack. An estimated group of 1,000 strong fought back with all they had, decimating around 300 hundred soldiers and critically injuring another 1,000 (“Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide”). A...
...rope.. It was the first time during the war that resistance fighters in an area under German control had staged an uprising. It would end in the complete destruction of the ghetto.”(The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19 - May 16, 1943))
In 1933, the Nazi party began their reign in Germany, under the malevolent dictator Adolf Hitler; his role as “prime minister” of the county lead to the temporary suspension of civil rights for communists and Jews. The first concentration camp, known as “Dachau” was erected, which contained over two hundred communists, and all books that included ideas and concepts contrary to Nazi belief were burned. Jewish newspapers were not allowed to be sold in the streets, and as Hitler’s power became more and more apparent, he gained the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader of Germany.” His charismatic ways charmed many people into believing that his ideas were conceptually sound, and within only a few years, the Jewish people were stripped of their liberties, including their right to vote. In 1938, on Kristallnacht the Nazi regime terrorized Jews throughout both Germany and Austria; over 30,000 Jews were arrested, having their licenses revoked, car registrations taken away, and securities and jewels stolen as well. Upon the acclimation of World War II in 1939, when France and Britain declared war on Germany, Hitler ordered that all Jews must wear a yellow Star of David, in 1940, he began the deportation of all German Jews to the country of Poland (Morretta).
The poem “The action in the ghetto of Rohatyn, March 1942” by Alexander Kimel is an amazing literary work which makes the reader understand the time period of the Holocaust providing vivid details. Kimel lived in an “unclean” area called the ghetto, where people were kept away from German civilians. The poet describes and questions himself using repetition and rhetorical questions. He uses literary devices such as repetition, comparisons, similes and metaphors to illustrate the traumatizing atmosphere he was living in March 1942.
This book left me with a deeper sense of the horrors experienced by the Polish people, especially the Jews and the gypsies, at the hands of the Germans, while illustrating the combination of hope and incredible resilience that kept them going.