Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust (24 page)

1. Gertrude Hirshler and Shimon Zucker, eds.,
   The Unconquerable Spirit: Vignettes of the Religious Spirit the Nazis Could Not Destroy
   . Trans. by Gertrude Hirshler. New York: Mensora Publications, 1981; cf. Y. Gott
   farstein, ‘Kiddush ha Shem in the Holocaust Period’. In
   Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust
   ; Peter Haas,
   Responsa: Literary History of a Rabbinic Genre
   . Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996.
   
2. See Yaffa Eliach,
   Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust.
   New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, Chapter 3. The emotional and psychological demands placed on rabbis were enormous. See Saul Esh, ‘The Dignity of the Destroyed; Towards a Definition of the Period of the Holocaust’.
   Jewish Magazine
   , vol. XI, no. 2, Spring 1962.
   
3. Underground literature, with rare exceptions, never targets rabbinical inaction. Similarly in diaries like David Rudashevski’s or Morris Berg’s
   Warsaw Ghetto Diary
   (New York: L.B. Fischer Co., 1945) there is an absence of critical comments on rabbis. Cf. Zelig Kalmanovitch,
   A Diary of the Nazi Ghetto in Vilna
   . YIVO.
   Annual of Jewish Social Studies
   . Vol. III. New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1953.
   
4. Joseph Rudavsky,
   To Live with Hope: To Die with Dignity
   . Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987, p. 157.
   
5. Cf. Shimon Huberband,
   Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust
   . Trans. by David E. Fishman. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1987. This is an extraordinary, contemporaneous account of brutalization and endeavor by Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation. Yet, with all its seriousness and tragedy, Huberband includes a section on ‘Wartime Folklore,’ what we would call jokes. An example of this kind of gallows humor is the following: ‘A teacher asks his pupil, “Tell me Moishe, what would you like to be if you were Hitler’s son?” “An orphan,” the pupil answers’ (p. 113).
   
6. Cf. Robert Kirschner, trans.,
   Rabbinic Responsa of the Holocaust Era
   . New York: Schocken Books, 1985; David Kraemer,
   Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature
   . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
   
7. See Pesach Schindler,
   Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust in the Light of Hasidic Thought
   . Hoboken, N.J., 1990.
   Kiddush haShem
   ‘was the opportu
   nity to counter the Satanic and the impure with the elements that were the most difficult to destroy – the spiritual and divine in human exis
   tence’ (p. 117).
   
8. But spiritual resistance did have tremendous efficacy in the following sense: spiritual resistance meant having the choice to go ‘to one’s death degraded and dejected as opposed to confronting [death] with an inner peace, nobility, upright stance, without lament and cringing to the enemy.’ Meir Dvorzeski, quoted in Schindler,
   Hasidic Responses
   , p. 61.
   
9. See Menashe Unger,
   Sefer Kedoshim: Rebeim of Kiddush Hashem
   [the Book of Martyrs: Hasidic Rabbis as Martyrs During the Holocaust]. New York: Shul Singer, 1967; see also
   Rehilat Haharedim Collection
   . Files on the activities of the Habad movement (Lubaviticher Hasidim) during the Nazi Occupation of France. In YIVO archives. New York.
   
10. Cf. Max Kaddushim,
    The Rabbinic Mind
    . New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1952.
    
11. Cf. Jacob Robinson and Philip Friedman,
    Guide to Jewish History under Nazi Impact: Joint Documentary Projects,
    Bibliographical Series, No. 1. New York: YadVashem and YIVO, 1960.
    
12. Primo Levi,
    The Drowned and the Saved.
    Trans. by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Random House, 1989.
    
    1. Shalom Cholawski,
       Soldiers from the Ghetto.
       San Diego: A.S. Barnes & Co., Inc., 1980, p. 120. See also Hermann Wygoda, ed.,
       In the Shadow of the Swastika.
       Foreword by Michael Berenbaum. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998; (video),
       Resistance.
       Produced and directed by
       
    2. C.J.
       Pressma. New York: Cinema Guild, 1982.
       
13. Cf. Joseph Gar,
    Bibliography of Articles on the Catastrophe and Heroism in Yiddish Periodicals.
    Joint Documentary Projects, No. 9. New York: Yadvashem and YIVO, 1966;
    Bibliography of Articles on the Catastrophe and Heroism in North American Yiddish Periodicals
    . Joint Documentary Projects, No. 10. New York: YadVashem and YIVO, 1969.
    
14. Isaac C. Avigdor,
    From Prison to Pulpit: Sermons and Stories.
    Hartford, CT: Hanav Publishers, 1975, p. 215; cf. Menahem Brayer, ‘The Hasidic Rebbes of Romania, Hungary and their Relationship to Eretz Yisrael’. In
    Hasidut Verzion
    [Hasidism and Zion]. Ed. by Simon Federbush. New York: Moriah, 1963.
    
15. For an insightful analysis of Hasidic practices and ethics see Martin Buber,
    The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism
    . New York: Harper and Row, 1960; Gershon G. Scholem,
    Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
    . New York: Schocken Books, 1954; Zalman Schuchter-Shalomi,
    Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings and Tales of the Hasidic Masters
    . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003; Tzvi Rabinowicz, ed.,
    The Encyclopedia of Hasidism
    . Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996.
    
16. Avigdor,
    From Prison to Pulpit
    , p. 100. A Hasidic Jew in a small Polish ghetto describes German atrocities: ‘What can they do to me. They can take my body – but not my soul! Over my soul they have no dominion! Their dominion is only in this world. Here they are the mighty ones. All right. But in the world to come their strength is no more.’ Irving J. Rosenbaum,
    The Holocaust and Halakhah
    . Jerusalem: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1976, pp. 35–6.
    
    1. Nehemia Polen,
       The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto
       . Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994, p. 100. For a fascinating analysis of the connections between the rabbinic sermon and the imagination see Lewis M. Barth, ‘Literary Imagination and the Rabbinic Sermon’. Barth argues that the rabbinical sermon moves to establish a hope based on the restoration of a ‘social order’ that will be testament to God’s will, since God’s intent is to restore ‘judges and leaders embodying qualities of ancient heroes’
       
    2. (p.
       31). Whether this was the ‘hope’ of Rabbi Shapira, we don’t know; but there is evidence in his sermons that he believed this might happen. From
       Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies: Studies in the Talmud, Halacha and Midrash
       . Held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 7–14, 1977. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981.
       
17. Ibid., pp. 102–3. Some testimony suggests that even in Auschwitz, the signs and symbols of spiritual identity took on an extraordinary significance. ‘The burning candle kindled in our hearts new hope for the future and strengthened our trust in the “rock of our salvation”.’ From the writing of Rabbi Sinai Adler, quoted in Rosenbaum,
    The Holocaust and Halakhah
    , p. 118.
    
18. Ibid., p. 103.
    
19. Ibid., p. 119.
    
20. Ibid., p. 120.
    
21. Ibid., p. 130.
    
22. Ibid., pp. 131–2. The rabbis continually faced serious questions; for example, ‘Aaron Rapoport a Hasid of the Ostrowzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yechezkel Halstik, confronts his rebbe hiding under miserable con
    ditions and asks. “Is this the Torah and this its reward? What is hap
    pening here?” The rebbe answers that man may be able to probe the soul of his fellow man but not the ways of God. “I was very bitter and refused to ask any more questions”’ (cited Schindler,
    Hasidic Responses
    , p. 24).
    
23. Ibid., p. 132.
    
24. One of the most extraordinary diaries is that of Chaim A. Kaplan, a detailed account of both physical and psychological disintegration. Chaim A. Kaplan,
    Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan
    . Trans. by Abraham I. Katsch. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Or cf. the following from Hillel Seidman’s
    Warsaw Ghetto Diary
    . ‘People in the ghetto whose normal moral resistance had been low descended to an even lower level [in the ghetto].’ Yet there were ‘those of
    

high moral integrity [who] rose to even greater heights’ (cited in Schindler,
Hasidic Responses
, p. 120).

27
.
Cf. Gotz Aly, Peter Chroust and Christian Pross,
Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene
. Trans. Belinda Cooper. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994; Christopher R. Browning,
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992; Daniel Jonah Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Execu
tioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
. New York: Knopf, 1996; Benno Muller Hill,
Marvelous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies and Others, Germany 1933–1945
. Trans. by George R. Fraser. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

1. Moses Maimonides,
   Treatise on Resurrection.
   Trans. by Fred Kosner. New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1982, p. 25.
   
2. Ibid., pp. 25–7.
   
3. Ibid., p. 22.
   
4. Shimon Huberband,
   Kiddush haShem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust.
   Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1987, p. 123.
   
5. For an account of daily acts of ritual protest, see ibid., pp. 175–239.
   
6. Ibid., p. 199.
   
7. Ibid., p. 201.
   
8. Ibid., pp. 240–1. Conditions inside the ghetto had deteriorated to such an extent that for many death and poverty became as ordinary as the cobblestones on the street. Huberband captures something of this com
   monplace property of death in the following observation: ‘Near a display window of a large concern of various pastries, wines, liquors, grapes and other delicacies, there lay the dead body of a Jew, some thirty-odd years old. The dead body was totally naked. It was a truly ironic scene; near a display window of such delicacies lay the dead body of a Jew who had died of starvation. Nonetheless, this did not prevent the dressed-up ladies from walking across the dead body to enter the store and then leave [the store] with packages of goodies which, if only a fraction of the contents of those packages had been given to the hungry, this Jew would not have died of starvation’ (p. 240).
   
9. Ibid., pp. 241–2.
   
10. Ibid., pp. 264–5.
    
11. Irving J. Rosenbaum,
    Holocaust and Halakhah.
    Jerusalem: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1976, pp. 35–6.
    
12. Ibid., p. 36.
    
13. Ibid., p. 116. In Kovno and Warsaw, some contemporary observers argue that the suicide rate was quite low (cf. Chaim Kaplan,
    The Warsaw Diary of Chaim Kaplan,
    p. 131). In Lodz, however, it was quite high. Cf. for a frightening account of the daily rise of suicides, see Lucjan Dobroszycki
    

and Danuta Dablowska, eds.
The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto
. Trans. Richard Lourie. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. It is impossible to gauge exact numbers, but a reasonable conclusion would be that while suicide rates varied from ghetto to ghetto, it was still the case that suicides rose dramatically during the Holocaust, and that rabbis fre
quently found themselves in the position of passing moral judgments on acts of suicide. The law could both justify and condemn suicide. See Rosenbaum,
Holocaust and Halakhah
, pp. 161n, 162n.

1. Janusz Korczak,
   The Ghetto Years: 1939–1941.
   Trans. by Jerzy Bachrack and B. Krzywicka [Vedder]. New York: Holocaust Library, 1980, p. 208.
   
2. Ibid., pp. 208, 64.
   
3. Nehemia Polen,
   The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto.
   Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994, p. 19.
   
4. Ibid., p. 25.
   
5. Ibid., p. 26.
   
6. Ibid., pp. 30, 31.
   
7. Ibid., p. 35.
   
8. Ibid., pp. 37–8.
   
9. Ibid., p. 39. But this passage does not imply rabbinical quiescence. Shapira was active in his efforts to bring both spiritual and physical assistance to the suffering. This was the case with the vast majority of the rabbis. See Pesach Schindler,
   Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust in the Light of Hasidic Thought.
   Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1990, p. 76.
   
10. Ibid., p. 40.
    
11. Ibid., p. 45.
    
12. Ibid., p. 65.
    
13. Robert Kirschner,
    Rabbinic Responsa of the Holocaust Era.
    Trans. by Robert Kirschner. New York: Schocken Books, 1985, p. 69.
    
14. Huberband,
    Kiddush haShem
    , p. 123. For Polish participation and its intensity in the roundup and persecution of Jews, see Gross,
    Neighbors
    , an account of the slaughter of Jews in a small Polish village.
    
15. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira,
    A Student’s Obligation: Advice from the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto
    . Trans. by Michael Odenheimer. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1991, p. 68.
    
16. Kirschner,
    Rabbinic Responsa
    , pp. 113ff.
    
17. H. Krall,
    Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
    Trans. by J. Stansinska and C. Weschler. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986, p. 47.
    
18. Cf. Daniel J. Goldhagen,
    Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
    New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, p. 311.
    
19. Ibid., p. 316.
    
20. The resistance had no patience with this argument: Vernon: ‘You know, the Germans could kill souls …You needed to figure out a way to protect yourself, and it wasn’t easy!’ For a fascinating account of the
    

strategy of protection, see Yitzhak Arad,
The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mt. Zion
. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979.

1. A. Adelson and R. Lapides, eds.,
   Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege.
   New York: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 161. Nutritional need for laboring persons generally lies in excess of 3,000 calories a day; the average daily caloric intake for ghetto inhabitants, however, consisted of 700–900 calories a day. In Lodz, for example, workers and the few children and elderly that remained after 1943 faced the everyday possi
   bility of death from minor illnesses due to insufficient rations shared in families. But even with the Nazi policy of killing through work, the Jewish population of Lodz managed to produce munitions, telecommu
   nications equipment, uniforms, boots, lingeries, temporary housing and carpets. Hans Biebow, the commandant of the Lodz ghetto, became a millionaire through his appropriation of ghetto profits. He was exe
   cuted shortly after liberation. Lodz survived the longest of the ghettos established in Eastern Europe to concentrate Jews. The ghetto lay in a section of Poland that had, after the 1939 invasion, been annexed by Germany to the greater Reich. And some disagreement over its fate occurred in higher German administrative units. Albert Speer and Heinrich Himmler, for example, disagreed over the ghetto workshops’ economic benefits. Speer found it useful for the production of muni
   tions. Eventually, Himmler’s genocidal argument overruled Speer’s strictly economic focus; and in 1944 Jews remaining in Lodz perished in Auschwitz. Of the almost 200,000 initially held in the sealed ghetto, 80,000 were alive before deportation to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Between the establishment of the ghetto in 1940 and its destruc
   tion in 1944, 60,000 died from starvation, cold, disease, hanging or suicide.
   
2. Primo Levi,
   The Drowned and the Saved.
   Trans. by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Random House, 1989, pp. 179–80.
   
3. Polen,
   The Holy Fire
   , p. 72.
   
4. Lawrence L. Langer,
   Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays
   . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 49.
   
5. Adelson and Lapides,
   Lodz Ghetto
   , pp. 420–1.
   
6. Polen,
   The Holy Fire
   , p. 81.
   
7. Huberband,
   Kiddush haShem
   , p. 334.
   
8. Adelson and Lapides,
   Lodz Ghetto
   , p. 349.
   
9. Ibid., p. 355.
   
10. Polen,
    The Holy Fire
    , p. 83.
    
11. Ibid.
    
12. Ibid.
    
13. Ibid., p. 84.
    
14. Ibid., p. 86.
    
15. Ibid., p. 88.
    
16. Ibid., p. 89.
    
17. Ibid., pp. 89–90.
    
18. Ibid., pp. 90–1.