Why Didn't More Jews Fight Back?

Jewish Partisans from WW2

(This was originally posted as a comment on Also A Chussid. Please visit there for the entire discussion. It’s a very good one. This post is more involved than my comment there.)

WHY DID SO MANY NOT FIGHT BACK?

War is never a safe bet. To be sure, fighting back didn’t guarantee survival and offering no resistance did not always mean certain death. There are no rules when it comes to the fates of war. We are trying to make sense of something that has never made sense, that being the hatred of Jews, or the wars that mankind insists upon waging in spite of knowing its horrible consequences. How mankind is able to envision life without war as being worse than the alternative is beyond me.

My grandparents escaped from Europe before anyone ever heard of Nazism or Shitler. They ran from poverty and from the random violence and persecution that existed for centuries in Eastern Europe. Anti-Semitism in Europe was not a new phenomenon. My bubbe o’h lost her parents and eight brothers in a single night during a pogrom in Odessa, where her father was a prominent fish merchant. They always knew what the goyim were waiting to do to them, given the chance. There was no rule of law or will on the part of the government to control these pogroms. It did not matter whether you lived under communism or under monarchy. As a Jew, life was pretty much the same. You never forgot your 'place'.

In Western Europe, despite financial success and modernization, there was still a pervasive, institutional anti-Semitism. What did Jews do? Jews were thankful for it! They looked to (or sometimes down at) Eastern European brethren and were thankful that at least there were no riots, no shuls being burned, and no Cossacks running wild through the cities. The worst thing that could happen to a Freud or an Einstein, pre-Hitler, would be that they would not be allowed to teach in certain schools, or would be passed up for promotions because of their heritage, and as clever people, we Jews always found a way to work around those conditions.

The Jew in Germany did not see it coming. The German Jew was hopeful. He had neighbors and friends who were enlightened. He loved his country, and perhaps even fought for it in the 1^st World War. He felt himself German enough and he hoped that his loyalty would at least tear away from him the stigma of ‘Juden’. The German Jew wanted a better life. That’s all. His hope made him a little too naive, and his moderate success made him reluctant to leave it behind. For the rest of Western Europe's Jews, the acquittal and reinstatement of Dreyfus brought much hope for that positive change by exposing the extent of anti-Semitism and seeking judicial and social remedy. (Thank you Mr. Zola!)

The question remains as to why the Eastern European Jews, in light of their experience, didn’t sense what was happening. There are a few good explanations, and all are true. Firstly, when war starts in Europe in 1939, no one was shocked by it. Europeans were always at war with somebody somewhere and each other. Jews, unfortunately, have always been in the middle, and able to not only to survive, but even make a profit from remaining neutral. So we Jews, as my uncle Yosef o’h, used to say, prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. Their mistake with Shitler, was severely underestimating what his ‘worst’ would be.

Now, why would they make that mistake? I had always wondered about it until it was explained to me by Mrs. G, one of the few survivors from the massacre of Stolin and the surrounding shtetlach. As she explained, during the 1^st World War there were Russians, Poles, Ukrainian militias, Cossacks, and various independent mercenary groups or bandits that raided towns, farms, and villages regularly. Even among the military ranks, there was little if any discipline, so rapes, murders, and drunken riots were commonplace. The Jews would either hide, or bargain for their safety when they could. It was anarchy. On Monday, the Polish were in charge and on Tuesday the Russians took over. Wednesday brought the Ukrainians. Different flags. Same assholes.

When the Germans invaded Poland and Russia, it was a breath of fresh air for the Jews of Stolin. The Germans were not the unwashed, undisciplined, and uncultured brutes that the Jews of the shtetl were used to. As much as the Western Allies portrayed the German soldier as evil, the German infantry was actually professional and well behaved in comparison to their Russian and Polish counterparts. Discipline was always enforced. German soldiers displayed a sense of honor. There were also many Jews in that German army. In effect, there was more peace and order under the Germans of World War One than under any government that preceded or followed them! The people of Stolin, in 194o, thought these might be the same Germans they encountered two decades before. They were wrong.

Add to this the time and place. Communication was still in its infancy, and news in most towns didn’t happen until it walked down the main thoroughfare. When news came, it was either too late to worry, or wasn’t believed at all. So much news ended up being nothing more than rumor. The listener would wait until someone else could corroborate the story or that the story, much like Mohamed’s mountain, would come to him. Of course, depending on the story, it could be too late to react. This was the experience of my ex-shverr (father-in-law) who escaped from lager and began to travel through Poland and the Ukraine, warning Jews of what the Nazis had planned for them. In his words, “I couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t believe me.” He had seen his father hung upside-down, and beaten with steel bars by the local fascists while the SS stood around and laughed. He assumed that his mother and sister also perished that same day. Yet, 50 miles to the east, the unsuspecting Jews would not believe his story.

Add to these first two explanations this third and final factor. Shitler kept things secret. The war fought in the open was merely a cover for his real plan. Even the goyim had no idea what was going on until it was too late. Fact is, the Nazis had a brilliant propaganda machine, and enough complicit assistance from the locals to keep it secret for long enough that Jews wouldn’t have time to prepare for flight or a counter attack, if that was ever possible. The combination of speed and secrecy worked well for the Nazis.

There is no one reason we can point to and say, “This is why!” We have to live or die with all of the possible explanations. There are likely to be a 1000 more reasons why it happened as it did. Like AAC, I will fight. There is no reason NOT to. If they have come with weapons and malice, then no cajoling, no negotiation, and no amount of pleading will divert their intents from upon you. In the meantime, we fight by bringing awareness to violence, racism, and genocide so that it is never, ever kept secret.

NEVER AGAIN!