The Jews fought against the Nazis and resisted wherever they could

Six million people – shot, gassed, burned. The Holocaust, a genocide, is unparalleled in its systematic planning and execution: killing as a machine – merciless, blunt, inhumane. Could it have been prevented? And if so, by whom? Could the Allies have destroyed the infrastructure of killing – the camps, the trains, and railway lines? This is still debated today.

The survivors of the Holocaust were eventually liberated by the Soviets, Americans, British, and French. But this happened in the course of the general reconquest of German-occupied Europe and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Germany. Even before that, there was resistance—including from the victims themselves. The most famous uprising was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Less well known are the revolts in the Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps.

Stephan Lehnstaedt's contribution to providing the first overview of the various forms of Jewish resistance is all the greater. In his book, the professor of Holocaust studies at Touro University Berlin defines resistance in terms of the consequences of actions: "Resistance seeks to diminish the power of the oppressor."

Of course, the impact of resistance cannot always be clearly determined. But that's not necessary, Lehnstaedt notes. Whether it involves armed struggle or efforts to rescue and escape, their mere existence was of inestimable importance for the morale of the persecuted.

Lehnstaedt thus paints a picture of the horrific Holocaust that seeks to correct a myth: This genocide of unfathomable proportions all too easily gave rise to notions of an overwhelming, inescapable totality of genocide, he notes. The focus on the perpetrators and their methods of violence further reinforced the impression of paralyzed victims who were merely objects in the hands of the murderers. This, he argues, is the myth of alleged Jewish passivity that dates back to biblical times.

Lehnstaedt quotes the often misunderstood passage from the Book of Isaiah in Martin Luther's translation, which in reality speaks of heroic strength of faith—of a martyr who, despite all his torments, neither blasphemed nor renounced God: "When he was martyred, he suffered willingly and did not open his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter; and like a sheep that is silent before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth."

Lehnstaedt therefore considers it all the more important to correct the perception of Jewish behavior in the face of annihilation. To demonstrate that the victims of the Holocaust did not endure their fate passively and helplessly, he points to countless accounts that document the resistance of the persecuted. They testify, not least, to the unwavering will and ability of the survivors to assert their own existence, even under the violence of the German extermination machine. Furthermore, Lehnstaedt describes numerous examples that are probably little known or even unknown.

Lehnstaedt himself cites one exception: the 2008 film adaptation of the story of the Bielski brothers' Jewish partisans in "Defiance," starring James Bond actor Daniel Craig. He takes this opportunity to point out selective memory. Hardly anyone knows the story of Oswald Rufeisen, which took place barely 30 kilometers away from the Bielskis.

Rufeisen was a Polish Jew who, after the German invasion of his homeland in 1939, fled first to Vilna, now Vilnius, and then to Mir in present-day Belarus in 1941. There, he posed as a so-called ethnic German and hired himself out as a translator at the local German police station. When the ghetto, with its approximately 300 prisoners, was supposed to be liquidated in August 1942, Rufeisen warned the people. What's more, he led the Germans down a false trail in their search for alleged resistance fighters. This enabled the ghetto's inmates to escape in the first place.

The effects this resistance had on the murderers are likely equally unknown: They were certainly impressed, as Lehnstaedt also illustrates with examples, such as after two attacks by Jewish underground fighters in occupied Krakow on December 22, 1942. Heinz Doering of the government of the German General Government wrote to his family: "It goes without saying that many Jews are also among the gangs. There are also a lot of dashing dogs among the Jews! It is from them, in particular, that one hears amazing stories of extreme audacity."

Lehnstaedt recognizes a similar pattern of behavior to that already evident in SS Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop's report on the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He vilified the female members of the Hechalutz youth movement as particularly despicable. The actions of these Jewish women contradicted the notion of passive victims so fondly cultivated by the perpetrators. At the same time, however, in their eyes, they confirmed the propaganda lie that all underground activity was ultimately orchestrated by "the Jews." And they evidently considered Jewish resistance illegitimate – like any rebellion against their rule.

Lehnstaedt's contextualization of the Jewish struggle against the Holocaust within the general resistance during the Nazi reign of terror in Europe is also illuminating. Here, he distances himself from the American historian and Holocaust researcher Raul Hilberg and his 1961 standard work on "The Destruction of the European Jews." Hilberg, he argues, solidified the view of an essentially nonexistent Jewish resistance, something to which Hannah Arendt, in turn, referred. Both emphasized the totality of the genocide, from which there was no escape.

Lehnstaedt argues that considering resistance exclusively in terms of its success ignores the asymmetry of power relations between oppressed and oppressor. With their arsenal of weapons, the Nazis exercised comprehensive state control and, with their murderous ideology, unleashed a previously unknown level of destruction.

Lehnstaedt illustrates the extent of this imbalance by comparing the active national underground movements with the troop strength of the occupiers in every German-occupied country. Self-liberation or overcoming the Germans was nowhere achieved. Even spatially and temporally limited revolts by significantly better-armed insurgents were crushed, according to Lehnstaedt's sobering conclusion.

This makes the remark by Elie Wiesel, which he recalls more than sixty years ago, all the more justified: "The question is not why all the Jews didn't fight, but how so many of them did. Tormented, beaten, starved – where did they find the mental and physical strength to resist?" Stephan Lehnstaedt now provides an answer to this question with his groundbreaking comprehensive account of the Jewish struggle against the Holocaust.

Stephan Lehnstaedt: The Forgotten Resistance. Jews in the Fight Against the Holocaust. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2025. 383 pp., CHF 39.90.