Despite enormous obstacles, many Jews throughout German-occupied Europe attempted armed resistance against the Germans. Individual Jews or groups of Jews engaged in planned or spontaneous opposition to the Germans and their allies. Jewish partisans were especially active in the east, where they fought the Germans from bases established behind the front lines in forests and ghettos. Because antisemitism was widespread there, they found little support among the surrounding population. Even so, as many as 20,000 Jews fought the Germans in the forests of eastern Europe.
Lisa was one of three children born to a religious Jewish family. Following the German occupation of her hometown in 1939, Lisa and her family moved first to Augustow and then to Slonim (in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland). German troops captured Slonim in June 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union. In Slonim, the Germans established a ghetto which existed from 1941 to 1942. Lisa eventually escaped from Slonim, and went first to Grodno and then to Vilna, where she joined the resistance movement. She joined a partisan group, fighting the Germans from bases in the Naroch Forest. Soviet forces liberated the area in 1944. As part of the Brihah ("flight," "escape") movement of 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors from eastern Europe, Lisa and her husband Aron sought to leave Europe. Unable to enter Palestine, they eventually settled in the United States.
The Germans established a ghetto in Dokszyce in late 1941. Rachel hid during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942, and she and her mother escaped to another ghetto. When the second ghetto was about to be liquidated, they escaped again. Rachel and her mother joined a band of partisans in the forest. She helped her mother to cook, and also cleaned weapons. Rachel and her mother tried to leave Europe when the war ended. They eventually arrived in the United States, in 1947.
Group portrait of a Jewish French underground group named "Compagnie Reiman." This photograph was taken after the liberation of France. Paris, France, 1945.
After the Germans annexed Austria in 1938, Leo attempted to flee. He eventually reached Belgium. In 1940 he was deported to the St.-Cyprien camp in France but escaped. In 1942 Leo was smuggled into Switzerland but was arrested and sent back to France, this time to the Rivesaltes and Drancy camps. He and a friend escaped from a train deporting them to Auschwitz in Poland. Leo joined the French underground in 1943. He arrived in the United States in 1947.
Chaja was the eldest of four children born to a middle-class Jewish family in the northeastern Polish town of Iwie. Her father earned his living as a blacksmith. Chaja first went to a private Jewish school that taught both religious and secular subjects; in the fourth grade she transferred to a public school, and also attended Hebrew school in the afternoon.
1933-39: Chaja belonged to one of the Zionist youth organizations in Iwie. They heard lectures, often on Palestine [Yishuv], and had many sporting activities. In 1937 she graduated from high school and began learning to be a dressmaker. After the Soviets seized their region of Poland in 1939, Chaja entered the nursing school in Slonim. Before the Soviet takeover, she couldn't have afforded such an education, but higher education became subsidized by the state.
1940-42: After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Chaja returned to Iwie. In 1942 a partisan group that included her friend Ruben helped her escape from Iwie's ghetto. Chaja began working in a partisan hospital in the woods--a camouflaged cavern in the earth. They "appropriated" medical supplies from captured German stores, and performed surgeries by grease lamps. Instruments were sterilized by boiling. They used liquor as an anesthetic and salt to clean wounds. When they couldn't find a surgical saw for amputations we used a carpenter's saw.
Chaja and Ruben were married in 1942 while with the partisans. They were liberated in July 1944, and immigrated to the United States in 1949.
Olga was born to a large Jewish family living in the Bessarabia province when it was still part of the Russian Empire. In 1918 the province was annexed by Romania. When Olga was 12 years old, she was arrested for the first time for having participated in a strike at the mattress factory where she worked. Despite her youth, she was put in prison and beaten.
1933-39: Olga was an active and vocal member of the local workers' organization. She had been arrested and imprisoned so often that she simply considered it an occupational hazard. In 1938 she travelled to France where she worked with French leftists, helping to ferry arms to the Spanish Republicans in their fight against fascism. Just before the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, she gave birth to a little girl, Dolores.
1940-44: France fell to the German army in 1940. Olga found a French family to keep her daughter safe, and joined the armed resistance group, Franc-Tireurs et Partisans, to fight the Germans. She assembled bombs and helped transport explosives used to derail German troop and supply trains. On November 6, 1943, she was arrested during a Gestapo roundup. She was tortured but revealed no information. Even after she was condemned to death, they continued to interrogate and torture her.
Olga was transferred to a prison in Stuttgart where she was re-tried and again condemned to death. On May 10, 1944, her 32nd birthday, Olga was beheaded.
Franco was born to a Jewish family living in the northern Italian city of Bologna. Even though a fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, came to power in Italy in 1922, Bologna's Jews continued to live in safety. Like many Italian Jews, Franco's family was well integrated in Italian society. Franco attended public elementary school.
1933-39: When Franco was 7, Mussolini enforced "racial" laws against the Jews: Franco was expelled from school, and went instead to a Jewish school hastily organized in makeshift quarters in one of Bologna's synagogues. Franco could not understand why he had to leave his friends just because he was Jewish. His father died in 1939, and he moved with his mother and older brother, Lelio, to Turin, where he began religious school.
1940-44: Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943. Two months later, German forces occupied Italy, and gained control of the north, the part where Franco's family and most of Italy's Jews lived. The Italians had been protecting the Jews, but now Germany controlled Italy. The Cesana family went into hiding in the mountains. To evade the Germans, they moved from hut to hut. Lelio joined the Justice and Liberty partisan group. Though only 12, Franco joined as well, proud that so many Jews were fighting in the Italian resistance.
Franco was shot by Germans while on a scouting mission in the mountains. His body was returned to his mother on his 13th birthday. He was Italy's youngest partisan.
Some Jews who managed to escape from ghettos and camps formed their own fighting units. These fighters, or partisans, were concentrated in densely wooded areas. A large group of partisans in occupied Soviet territory hid in a forest near the Lithuanian capital of Vilna. They were able to derail hundreds of trains and kill over 3,000 German soldiers.
Life as a partisan in the forest was difficult. People had to move from place to place to avoid discovery, raid farmers' food supplies to eat, and try to survive the winter in flimsy shelters built from logs and branches. In some places, partisans received assistance from local villagers, but more often they could not count on help, partly because of widespread antisemitism, partly because of people's fears of being severely punished for helping. The partisans lived in constant danger of local informers revealing their whereabouts to the Germans.
Many Jews participated in the partisan units formed in France and Italy to help regular Allied forces defeat German forces. They forged documents and identity cards, printed anti-Nazi leaflets, and assassinated collaborators.
Twenty-three-year-old Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian Jew who emigrated to Palestine in 1939, was one of the thirty-two Palestinian parachutists the British dropped behind German lines to organize resistance and rescue efforts. Before crossing the border in Hungary on June 7, 1944, to warn Hungarian Jews about the extermination camps, Szenes, a poet, handed a poem to one of her companions. It ended with these lines: "Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame." Szenes was captured the next day and executed as a traitor to Hungary.
Key Dates
July 20, 1941 Ghetto ordered in Minsk, sparks resistance On July 20, 1941, the Germans order the establishment of a ghetto in Minsk. Within days of the ghetto's establishment, thousands of Jews are killed. Jews in the ghetto form an underground resistance network in August 1941. Members of the underground set up a printing press and newspaper to distribute information to the ghetto population. The underground also contacts partisan units outside the ghetto to find hiding places for Jews in the ghetto. In March 1942, the Germans carry out an action in the Minsk ghetto in which thousands are killed. Shortly thereafter, members of the underground begin leaving the ghetto for the forests where they form partisan units and fight the Germans. The partisans in the forests work to rescue Jews from the ghetto and bring them to the forests, where they establish partisan bases. Approximately 10,000 Jews flee the Minsk ghetto for the forests by 1944. Many lose their lives in the attempt.
January 1942 Jewish Army in France The Jewish Army (Armee Juive; AJ), is established by Zionist youth groups in Toulouse, France. The AJ operates throughout France, but is particularly active in the southern regions. Members are recruited from both Jewish and non-Jewish youth and resistance groups and are trained in military and sabotage activities. AJ members smuggle money out of Switzerland to France to distribute to Jewish relief agencies. This money helps thousands of Jews in hiding. The AJ assassinates some of those who cooperate with the Germans and smuggles about 500 Jews and non-Jews across the border into neutral Spain. In 1943 and 1944, the AJ establishes close ties with Allied forces—including General Charles de Gaulle's Free French of the Interior (FFI) forces. In 1944, during the liberation of France, the AJ participates in uprisings in Paris, Lyon, and Toulouse against the German occupation.
January 21, 1942 United Partisan Organization in Vilna After reports of mass killings of Jews at Ponary, outside Vilna, members of Zionist youth movements establish the United Partisan Organization (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO) in the Vilna ghetto. The organization prepares to resist the Germans in the event that the ghetto is threatened with destruction and establishes contact with other ghettos to acquire weapons and encourage resistance. In early September 1943, the Germans deporting Jews from the ghetto and are confronted with resistance by FPO members. The FPO decides to abandon the ghetto and flee to the nearby forests to fight the Germans from the outside. The last group of resistance fighters escapes the final destruction of the ghetto on September 23, 1943. They leave the ghetto through the sewers and join partisans in the Rudninkai and Naroch forests.
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