Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-vpjdr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-22T18:59:53.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Jews in Armed Resistance Movements and Partisan Units

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

Marion Kaplan
Affiliation:
New York University
Natalia Aleksiun
Affiliation:
University of Florida
Get access

Summary

This chapter focuses on Poland and France to discuss examples of the emergence of Jewish armed resistance. It stresses different forms of resistance over time and the shift it took when Jewish activists became aware of mass murder. In the east, the creation of ghettos and the mass shootings and deportations of Jews to extermination camps led the Jewish underground and many individual Jews to engage in armed resistance. In the west, armed resistance emerged in response to mass roundups. Jewish resistance in both eastern and western contexts relied, in part, on longstanding personal networks within Jewish organizations and communities, which transcended linguistic, political, and intra-communal divides.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Select Bibliography

Aleksiun, A., ‘Remembering individual acts of defiance in the Holocaust’, in Persak, K. (ed.), Żydzi w walce z Niemcami 1939–1945/Jews against Nazi Germany 1939–1945 (Warsaw, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2023), pp. 213–27.Google Scholar
Brauman, J., Loinger, G., and Wattenberg, F. (eds.), Organisation juive de combat: Résistance/sauvetage. France 1940–1945 (Paris, Éditions Autrement, 2002).Google Scholar
Dreifuss, H., ‘The leadership of the Jewish Combat Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: A reassessment’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 31:1 (2017), 2460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gildea, R., Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (London, Faber and Faber, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kochanski, H., Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939–45 (London, Allen Lane, 2022).Google Scholar
Krakowski, S., The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944 (New York and London, Holmes & Meier, 1984).Google Scholar
Lazare, L., Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France (New York, Columbia University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Marrus, M. and Paxton, R. O., Vichy France and the Jews, 2nd ed. (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Moore, B., Survivors: Jewish Self-Help and Rescue in Nazi-Occupied Western Europe (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Poznanski, R., ‘Reflections on Jewish resistance and Jewish resistants in France,’ Jewish Social Studies 2:1 (1995), 124–58.Google Scholar
Tec, N., Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tec, N., Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Weitzman, L. J., ‘Women of courage: The “kashariyot” (couriers) in the Jewish resistance during the Holocaust’, in Diefendorf, J. M. (ed.), Lessons and Legacies, Vol. VI: New Currents in Holocaust Research (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2004), pp. 112–52.Google Scholar
Wieviorka, O., The French Resistance, trans. Todd, J. M. (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Zimmerman, J. D., The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×