The Wedding Feast (~19.49) - Moriel Ministries

Hebrew Lesson
The water of life is the Word from God
HEBREW LESSON . . .
FAQ: Why Didn’t the Jews Resist?
Resist not Evil
In the realm of human nature, the most natural response
when one is threatened or attacked, or even put in danger,
is what scientists refer to as “fight or flight”: either to defend
oneself against the danger, or to flee from it. One of
the most frequently pondered questions about the Shoah,
is why did the Jews not fight back more against the Nazis to
prevent their people from Genocide and the gas chambers.
It seems only natural, that a people who existed all over Europe,
close to 12 million at the beginning of World War II,
with 3.5 million in Poland alone, should pick up arms against
a tyrant seeking to destroy them and take control of Europe.
Some have counted the Jews as “lambs to the slaughter” and
expressed wonder at the idea that millions walked what is
perceived as blindly to their death. After all some reason,
in mass executions, did the Jews in line to be killed not realize
that the others were being killed, and were not more of
them than even the battalions? The nature of resistance in
wartime though is not well understood by many, and the
nature of resistance in genocide is even less understood.
One thing is clear in considering the choice to resist or
not, that morality and wisdom in wartime in general becomes
very complex, with threatening consequences. It is
this complexity of choice that will be considered here.
A Darkening Horizon
The choice for the Jewish People and others to resist or
not resist the Nazis began as soon as the Nazis started to
come to power. In 1923, the Nazis had growing support
but they were still a very small minority Party, and would
gain only about 3% of the vote. Still, even at this point with
the perception of the Nazis as a fringe group and the disdain
for brutal tactics and censorships by the ‘brownshirts’,
many German Jews were outspoken, but there was only occasional
resistance, because neither the Jews nor Domestic
Germans felt that the National Socialists would come to hold
the monolithic power which would come about in 10 years.
Anti-Jewish demonstrations and rhetoric were decried by
some and supported by others, not unlike such occurrences
today in Europe and the United States.
Anti-semitism in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany,
though was not limited to the Nazis: many old prejudices held
strong, and the Jews, who had remained a people through
dispersion for centuries, had learned the value of passive
co-existence to the extent possible, combined up until this
time period with a segregation lasting far beyond the Jewish
Enlightenment which gave rise to possibilities of Modern
20th century assimilation of the Jews into Western cultures.
The Morality of Resistance vs
Non-resistance
To discuss the morality of whether to resist or not resist
in war time is to move out of the normal range of ethics: in
war in general, a person is in constant danger, but so are
others; in war quick life and death decisions must often be
made without time to consider outcome or moral implications.
Jewish resistance was compounded in these choices
in which there were not right or wrong decisions but wrong
or less wrong decisions. An example of this would be, Jews
who had a small cache of arms in the ghettos, who at best
could have killed a small group of Nazis out of thousands.
Should they resist? If they picked up weapons and fired, the
result would most likely be the rapid random killing of themselves
and innocent bystanders, or even a razing or bombing
of the ghetto. If they did not resist they would most certainly
been enslaved, deported, robbed and murdered. Resistance
in many cases became more of a statement than a realistic
defense. Medical staff in the ghetto or Jewish hospitals faced
the same kinds of choices: in one case during the time of deportation,
staff at a children’s hospital were asked to ready
their patients because the Nazis would arrive shortly. Knowing
the Nazi’s penchant for killing the weak and ill, some
staff members gave their patients large doses of morphine or
other narcotics: they knew the patient would probably die.
Resistance and Consequences
A premiere example of the dilemma of Jewish Resistance
during the Shoah lies in the events surrounding and leading
to the ‘Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’. Unlike regular warfare,
where assaults are met by resistance with calculated risk, the
Ghetto provides a unique look at a classic moral dilemma.
Long before the uprising, ZOB knew about the consequences
of the deportations. The youth, more willing to rebel initially
tried to work within the bounds afforded them – they
warned the Judenrat. The youth and the Judenrat however
were greatly constrained by moral and political boundaries.
If the Judenrat lived up to their conscience, then their defiance
of the Nazi liaisons would have brought instant imprisonment
and death. For the younger dissidents, though,
the dilemma constantly and throughout the war, was that of
minor resistance endeavors succeeding, vs the great and real
possibility that the action would bring about retribution and
death not only to them but to many people. The fear was
well-grounded: by the time of the Uprising, there had been
constant reprisals and even legislation enacted which made
Jewish resistance an extremely difficult potential.
NOTES: http://www.shoaheducation.com/faqjewsresist.html
© 1997,2003Elizabeth K. Best, PhD; Shoah Education Project (Web)
December 2009 • Moriel Quarterly 23