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.

Lamberto dell’Antella’s confession and the execution of five leading Florentines in August 1497 marked a watershed in Piero’s years of exile. Before that, Piero’s friends met in Florence to discuss plans to bring him back to Florence, with Lamberto as a go-between carrying messages to and fro. In the early years of his exile, Piero had described himself in letters to the government and to his cousins as a good citizen who only wanted to be treated fairly and allowed to return home. But after 1497 everyone was afraid of contagion and we have to rely on the reports of ambassadors, merchants and spies to discover his movements. They show how high the stakes were in a conflict that pitted the leading families of Florence against each other.