Jewish Resistance against the Nazis ed. by Patrick Henry (review)

Some seventy-five years after the events of the Holocaust, we are still learning more about this tragic period. Patrick Henry’s edited volume on Jewish resistance against the Nazis is a rich and powerful contribution to Holocaust scholarship. Written to help counter the prevailing myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust—a myth that Henry describes as “simply unconscionable” (p. xx)—this impressive collection of essays by prominent researchers provides detailed examinations of a wide array of Jewish resistance activities. In treating the cases with sound scholarly attention, the volume also acknowledges the persistence of the belief that Jews meekly accepted their fate and went to their deaths “like sheep.”

The volume is admirable in its breadth. Henry indicates in the acknowledgments that he invited each contributor to write a piece on Jewish resistance in a particular location. The result is a collection covering Jewish resistance in both the eastern and western regions of Nazi-occupied Europe and in a wide variety of settings—cities, ghettos, forests, and camps. Yet the richness of the volume’s contents goes beyond geographical diversity. Importantly, while the volume covers some well-known terrain (e.g., the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), it includes accounts of resistance in every sense of the word. Indeed, Henry notes that it was a goal of the volume to explore both violent and non-violent resistance (p. xx). He delivers on this promise: the chapters cover armed resistance, such as ghetto uprisings and participation in national resistance movements (for example, the French resistance), as well as non-violent resistance in the form of rescue (including the rescue of Jewish children), escape, going into hiding, and simply surviving. Despite its 600-plus page length, the volume does not seem unwieldy at all. While the structure of the volume, with its self-contained essays and inclusive index, means that it could easily serve as a reference book, it is also a good read straight through (which is how I read it).

Following the introductory essay, the volume is organized into four sections: “Myths and Facts”; “Western Europe and the Yishuv”; “Children as Resisters and Music as Resistance”; and “Central and Eastern Europe.”

The three essays in the section on “Myths and Facts” examine the curious persistence of the myth of Jewish passivity. Richard Middleton-Kaplan’s chapter unpacks the myth by exploring the origins and meanings of the oft-used depiction of European Jews as having gone “like sheep to the slaughter”; he shows that both recent media portrayals and earlier, influential writings (e.g., the work of Hannah Arendt) have perpetuated the myth in the public eye, despite historical evidence that refutes it. Berel Lang’s chapter further debunks the myth, showing that Jews did not resist any less frequently than other groups targeted during World War II (Soviet POWs, for instance). Finally, Nechama Tec’s chapter notes that the prevailing view that Jews were passive victims assumes that Jews had some opportunity to fight back and chose not to seize it. However, such opportunities simply did not arise. Part of the reason for the persistence of the passivity myth is that it rests on an application of a narrow view of resistance—one that equates resistance with armed struggle and physical combat. To correct this, Tec provides a broad and useful definition of resistance, borrowed from Roger S. Gottlieb’s 1983 article, “The Concept of Resistance.” Her definition of resistance as acts that are “motivated by the intention to thwart, limit, or end the exercise of power of the oppressor over the oppressed” (p. 44) allows for greater appreciation of Jewish resistance activities, including what she calls “unarmed humane resistance,” or efforts at self-help that “contributed to the perpetuation of Jewish life while challenging the validity of Nazi policies of annihilation” (p. 66).

The remainder of the volume puts Tec’s definition to good use, with substantive chapters exploring a wide range of resistance...