Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

attacks by individuals on policemen have

also been demonstrated. 246 Shalom Cholawsky and Shmuel Spector have reconstructed individual acts of resistance for White Russia and Volhynia. Spector has

assembled figures for twenty-seven towns in Volhynia for which, in the period

between May and September 1942, the mass flight of several hundred or several

thousand people is documented in each place, particularly in the towns of

Dubrovitsa, Rokitno, Tuchin, and Luck as well as in the camps of Poleska and

Kostopol. In Tuchin the resistance group set up by the head of the Jewish council

set fire to the ghetto and carried out an armed resistance for several days; there

were similar revolts in several other places. 247 Spector estimates that mass escapes were successful in another twenty places, and gives the overall figure for people

who sought to escape being murdered through flight or by building hiding-places

(so-called ‘bunkers’) as 47,500, or a quarter of the total Jewish population of

Volhynia at the start of 1942. In spite of this considerable degree of resistance

and flight, the forests gave the fleeing Jews little protection; by far the majority

of escapees died as a consequence of the completely inadequate living conditions,

or were tracked down and killed by the occupiers or by indigenous forces.

Cholawsky’s findings for western Belarus, a territory that had belonged to

Poland until 1939 and was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 until 1941,

are as follows: in Neswiecz (Nesvizh) on 21 July 1942 a Jewish resistance group

responded with organized armed resistance to an attempt by German occupying

forces to carry out a selection; the ghetto was set on fire and some fighters

managed to escape into the forests. 248 The following day another resistance group in Kletsk managed to resist a German ‘action’ along similar lines. 249 In Lakhva, at the beginning of September, a similar act of resistance against the

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planned liquidation of the ghetto was followed by a successful mass break-out. 250

Cholawsky also assembled information on over a dozen Belarus towns which

show that underground groups there were attempting in a similar way to respond

to the German ‘actions’ with organized resistance and mass break-outs, which

were in many cases successful, and in other cases failed for various reasons. 251

Finally, in a series of other Belarus towns groups of ghetto-dwellers managed to

escape to the forests. 252

A resistance group had also formed in the town of Slonim, Polish until 1939,

then occupied by the Soviets, and incorporated since August 1941 into the German

General District of Belarus. In June 1942 it opened fire on the marching SS and

police and killed five Germans. Other Jewish resistance fighters from the territory

of Slonim, who had joined the partisans to form an autonomous fighting group,

took part in an attack on the occupying troops in Kosovo near Slonim, which

prevented the planned liquidation of the ghetto there. 253

The resistance group which had formed in Baranowicze, also in western

Belarus, was on the other hand taken by surprise by the German ‘action’ at the

end of September/beginning of October 1942, and was unable to launch the

planned revolt; several dozen resistance fighters managed to escape into the

forests. 254

In Minsk, on former Soviet territory, a resistance group was already forming in

August 1941, which concentrated on getting the greatest possible number of

ghetto-dwellers suitable for partisan warfare into the forests. Over the years up

to 10,000 people were taken out of the ghetto in small groups; about 5,000

survived. This was only made possible by the close collaboration with the resist-

ance movement in the city of Minsk as well as with Soviet partisan units operating

in the area of Minsk, and because of general support by the indigenous popula-

tion, in which anti-Semitism was not very widespread. 255

The number of Jews who escaped into the forests throughout the whole

territory of Belarus is estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000 people, or

between 6 and 10 per cent of the whole Jewish population that had remained

in place. 256

The resistance actions were unable to prevent the mass murders, but they did

contribute to the fact that thousands of Jewish people survived, albeit mostly in

terrible conditions, and they did serve a significant symbolic purpose: a consid-

erable proportion of the Jewish population resisted their murderers or avoided

mass murder through flight. The fact that at least some of the victims were capable

of reacting actively to the German policy of extermination was not only of great

significance for the self-perception of the victims, but also had consequences for

the perpetrators: they had to acknowledge that they could not massacre defence-

less people without encountering resistance and putting themselves in danger.

Dozens of German policemen and their indigenous helpers lost their lives as a

result of acts of resistance, and tracking down escaped Jews absorbed considerable

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

resources of the occupying forces. In reality, then, it became apparent that the

omnipotent delusion of the calculable total extermination of an entire population

group could not be carried out without consequences. It became spasmodically

apparent that the reaction of the victims was able to set limits on the actions of the

perpetrators.

So the pattern of ‘major actions’ running according to plan and almost entirely

smoothly, which characterized the liquidations of the Polish ghettos in 1942,

would not be repeated in the occupied Soviet territories. Just as resistance on a

large scale was only possible here because of the experiences of the first wave of

murders that happened in 1941, in Poland the experiences of 1942 resulted during

the following year in the final ‘liquidations’ of the ghettos also encountering

massive resistance in some cases. Thus, the crucial precondition for the emergence

of an armed resistance movement was always the particular concrete experience of

the German policy of extermination.

Interim Summary: The Escalation of the Extermination

Policy in Spring/Summer 1942

In describing events in Eastern Europe we have already cast our eye over the whole

of 1942, as the wave of murders that began in the spring, was intensified through-

out the rest of the year, and finally encompassed almost the whole of German-

occupied Polish and Soviet territory, had to be seen in context. In this context we

should like to return once more to the first months of 1942 and analyse the way in

which this wave of killing was set in motion and