Jewish partisans

For Jewish rebels in ancient Judea, see [[:Maccabees and Zealots]].

Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

A number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, some made up of a few escapees from the Jewish ghettos or concentration camps, while others, such as Bielski partisans, numbered in the hundreds and included women and children. They were most numerous in Eastern Europe, but groups also existed in occupied France and Belgium, where they worked with the local resistance. Many individual Jewish fighters took part in the other partisan movements in other occupied countries. In all, the Jewish partisans numbered between 20,000 and 30,000.

Operations

The partisans engaged in guerrilla warfare and sabotage against the Nazi occupation, instigated teens and freed prisoners. In Lithuania alone, they killed approximately 3,000 German soldiers. They sometimes had contacts within the ghettos, camps, Judenrats, and with other resistance groups, with whom they shared military intelligence.

In Eastern Europe, many Jews joined the ranks of the Soviet partisans: throughout the war, they faced antisemitism and discrimination from the Soviets and some Jewish partisans were killed, but over time, many of the Jewish partisan groups were absorbed into the command structure of the much larger Soviet partisan movement. Soviet partisans arrived in western Ukraine in 1943, and consisted of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, and were smaller in size than that of units in Belarus, which was more suitable for partisan warfare. Released Soviet archive data suggest that Jews accounted for 5.2% of partisans in Ukraine.

Supplies

Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the Chkalov Brigade.

The Jewish partisans had to overcome great odds in acquiring weapons, food, shelter and evading capture. They typically lived in underground dugouts called zemlyankas (Template:Lang-ru) and camps in the forests. Nazi reprisals were brutal, as they employed collective punishment against their supporters and the ghettos from which partisans had escaped, and often used "anti-partisan actions" as a guise for the extermination of Jews. In some areas, partisans were supported by local villagers, but due to widespread antisemitism and fear of reprisal, the Jewish partisans were often on their own.

The partisans operated under constant threat of starvation. In order to survive, Jews had to put aside traditional dietary restrictions. While friendly peasants provided food, in some cases food was stolen from shops, farms or raided from caches meant for German soldiers. As the war progressed, the Soviet government occasionally airdropped ammunition, counterfeit money and food supplies to partisan groups known to be friendly.

Those who managed to flee the ghettos and camps had nothing more than the clothes on their backs, and their possessions often were reduced to rags through constant wear. Clothes and shoes were a scarce commodity. German uniforms were highly prized trophies: they were warm and served as disguises for future missions.

Those who were wounded or maimed or fell ill often did not survive due to the lack of medical help or supplies. Most partisan groups had no physician and treated the wounded themselves, turning to village doctors only as a last resort.

The forests also concealed family camps where Jewish escapees from camps or ghettos, many of whom were too young or too old to fight, hoped to wait out the war. While some partisan groups required combat readiness and weapons as a condition for joining, many noncombatants found shelter with Jewish fighting groups and their allies. These individuals and families contributed to the welfare of the group by working as craftsmen, cooks, seamstresses and field medics.

Notable partisan groups

Bielski partisans

Members of the Jewish partisan militia, the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, active in the Vilnius Ghetto

Jewish partisan groups of note include the Bielski partisans who operated a large "family camp" in Belorussia (numbering over 1,200 by the summer of 1944), the Parczew partisans of southeast Poland, and the United Partisan Organization which attempted to start an uprising in the Vilnius Ghetto in Lithuania and later engaged in sabotage and guerrilla operations. Thirty-two Jews from the Mandate for Palestine were trained by the British and parachuted behind enemy lines to engage in resistance activities. In the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, two groups of partisans, the right-wing Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) and the left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) led the uprising separately.

Notable partisans

• Mordechai Anielewicz
• Dawid Apfelbaum
• Yitzhak Arad
• Bielski partisans
• Frank Blaichman
• Thomas Blatt
• Alexander Bogen
• Masha Bruskina
• Eugenio Calò
• Icchak Cukierman
• Selma Engel-Wijnberg
• Leon Feldhendler
• Dov Freiberg
• Paweł Frenkiel
• Moshe Gildenman ("Dyadya Misha")
• Hirsh Glick
• Munyo Gruber
• Irene Gut Opdyke
• Abba Kovner
• Vladka Meed
• Parczew partisans
• Alexander Pechersky
• Haviva Reik
• Joseph Serchuk
• Hannah Szenes
• Yitzhak Wittenberg
• Shalom Yoran
• Simcha Zorin

See also

• Jewish resistance under Nazi rule
• Jewish Brigade - a unit of 5,000 volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine that fought in the British Army during World War II
• Special Interrogation Group
• Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine
• Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB - Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa)
• Jewish Military Union (ZZW - Żydowski Związek Wojskowy)
• United Partisan Organization (FPO - Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye)
• Bielski partisans
• Parczew partisans
• Koniuchy massacre
• Zog Nit Keynmol - the "Partisan Hymn"
• Ghetto Fighters' House (museum)
• Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
• Defiance (2008 film) - Film based on the Bielski Partisans
• Auschwitz bombing debate
• Lack of outside support during the Warsaw Uprising
• Western betrayal
• Appeasement

Further reading

• Yitzhak Arad. "Family Camps in the Forests", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, vol. 2, pp. 467–469. Illustrations, map.
• Israel Gutman, Shalom Cholawski, Dov Levin, Shmuel Spector. "Partisans", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, pp. 1108–1122. Illustrations, map.
• Lester Eckmann and Chaim Lazar. The Jewish Resistance: The History of Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1945. (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1977)
• Jack Kagan and Dov Cohen. Surviving the Holocaust With the Russian Jewish Partisans. (Mitchell Vallentine & Company, 1998) ISBN 0-85303-336-6
• Hersh Smolar. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. (USHMM, 1989) ISBN 0-89604-068-2
• Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans (2001). Documentary film directed by Seth Kramer. (IMDB record).

External links

• Spots of Light: Women in the Holocaust | Partisans and the Underground on the Yad Vashem website
• The Underground Movements in Vilna from Yad Vashem
• Jewish Armed Resistance and Rebellions on the Yad Vashem website
• Herman Wygoda partisan
• Interviews from the Underground:Eyewitness accounts of Russia's Jewish resistance during World War II documentary film and website. (www.jewishpartisans.net)
• Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (jewishpartisans.org)
• Jewish Partisans in the Holocaust (fatherryan.org)
• Jewish partisans directory (searchable, partisans.org.il)
• Report by Generalkommissar Kube on the Extermination of Jews and the Fight Against the Partisans in Byelorussia Minsk, July 31, 1942
• Operations Diary of a Jewish Partisan Unit in Rudniki Forest, 1943–1944
• Life of Jewish Partisans and Jewish Family Camps in the Forest, From a Diary by a Jewish Partisan, 1942–1943
• With The Partisans by Zdenka Novak
• Profile of a Jewish Partisan (aish)
• Acts of Resistance and the Organization of the Revolt in Treblinka nizkor.org
• Partisans Song on YouTube