Jewish partisans

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 large number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, made up of existing criminal Jewish organized crime syndicates, Jewish led Communist networks, and the large resistance which grew up in the Jewish ghettos or concentration camps. The largest number of these resistors were found in the Soviet Partisans which operated regiment to division sized elements. Other Jewish partisan groups were small elements of under-cover spies, intelligence networks, or escapees who blended into their surroundings and slowly coelesced with other anti-Nazi groups. Lastly, there existed groups such as the Bielski partisans, which consisted of entire communities existing in the wilderness or in the open as disguised villages, and these numbered in the hundreds even the thousands and included women and children. Most Jewish Partisans were located in Eastern Europe, especially the largest Partisan groups, but smaller elements, especially the clandestine intelligence types also existed in occupied France and Belgium, where they worked with the local resistance. Lastly, many individual Jewish fighters also took part in the other partisan movements in other occupied countries. In all, the Soviet Jewish partisans numbered between 200,000 and 300,000, not including women and children or those large scale groups which arose in the ghettos, while in the West they numbered tens of thousands at most.

Operations

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

In Eastern Europe, most Soviet partisans were members of the organized Soviet partisans. Eastern European Jews were highly prevalent in the Communist organs of the Soviet Union and in the Communist underground throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. Consequently, Soviet Jews were decisively placed in assuming both the target of Nazis anti-communist campaigns and in turn the resistance against the Nazis. However, as it became increasingly necessary to use Russian nationalism as a means to counter both Nazi militarism and anti-Communist propaganda, Jewish communist leaders were increasingly marginalized. Thus, throughout the war, they faced discrimination and even antisemitism from the Soviets. Indeed, some Jewish partisan leaders were executed, and over time, many of the Jewish partisan groups were absorbed into the command structure of the much larger Soviet partisan movement.

Supplies

Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the Chkalov Brigade. [1]

The large and deep communist networks which Jews had established in the pre-WWII years, included large supplies of arms, ammunition, and other contraband. However, these cache's were only sufficient enough to support paramilitary political terrorism and were quickly depleted following Axis occupation. Consequently, Jewish partisans had to overcome great odds in acquiring weapons, food, shelter and evading capture in the large scale Counter-insurgency operations launched by the Nazi Germans. Knowledge of terrain including previously made redoubts such as the large tunnel networks developed by Jewish criminal and political groups in the cities or in camps in the forests provided Jewish Partisans immediate escape in the early occupation. Typically, Jewish Partisans lived in underground dugouts called zemlyankas (Template:Lang-ru) and camps in the forests.

However, as the occupation net slowly ground down the resistance and especially with the capture and containment of large communities of ethnic groups considered hostile to the Nazis like Jews into Concentration camps, Jewish Partisans were hard pressed to survive. Furthermore, Nazi COINreprisals were brutal, as they employed the Laws of war towards unlawful combatants to the furthest measure. Collective punishment against their supporters and the ghettos from which partisans had escaped, resulted in the executions of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children prior to the Final solution. Indeed, the typical German restraint except in punishment which was the feature of Axis occupation in the West, was usually abandoned in the East were "anti-partisan actions" was systematically used as a guise for the extermination of Jews. As most Jewish rural communities in Eastern Europe had been put into the ghettos or concentration camps by 1942, Jewish partisans slowly lost the civilian support so crucial to partisan warfare. In the Soviet Union, the majority of Jewish communities inside the Jewish Pale under Nazi occupation were quickly abandoned as the inhabitants fled invading Axis armies. Those that remained and survived the Axis round-up were mostly destroyed in the subsequent COIN campaign or in the cross-fire of the titanic conventional war between the Soviets and Axis. However, there remained local non-Jewish villagers, but due to widespread Anti-communism, antisemitism, and above all fear of reprisal, the Jewish partisans were often on their own.

The partisans operated under constant threat of starvation. Although most Partisans were communist and thus secularized in their religious manners, the large numbers of observant Jews who escaped Nazi round-ups to join the Partisans faced hard choices. In order to survive, religious Jews had to put aside traditional dietary restrictions. While some Partisan groups including some very large ones in Nazi occupied Soviet Union had large scale clandestine community support and even controlled entire regions, most Jewish partisan groups did not have such luxeries. While friendly peasants provided food, in most cases food was stolen from shops, farms or raided from caches meant for German soldiers. As the war progressed, and German interior control collapsed, Partisan groups began conglomorating into larger formations and soon entire regions were fully under control of the Partisans. Here, the Soviet government occasionally airdropped ammunition, counterfeit money and food supplies to partisan groups known to be friendly.

However, for those Jews who were not prior revolutionaries or paramilitary operatives and outside of the pre-war communist networks, but who nonetheless managed to flee the ghettos and camps, survival was a bitter struggle. Lacking any formal networks to gravitate too until by chance or intelligence, such Jewish partisans 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

Accurate history and numbers on the Jewish Partisans in lacking. Numbers included hundreds of thousands in the Soviet Partisans, while additional numbers of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would have to be added for the Partisans in the ghettos of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Finally, it is estimated approximately twenty to thirty thousand operated in Western Europe. As to the numbers of Jewish civilians who survived by supporting these, whether in the No-go areas of Nazi occupied USSR or in the smaller sized groups elsewhere, none have been developed so far. However, there is certainty concerning well known Jewish partisan groups. Some of the best-known Jewish partisan groups were the Bielski partisans who operated a large "family camp" in Lithuania and Belorussia (numbering over 1,200 by the summer of 1944), and the United Partisan Organization which attempted to start an uprising in the Vilnius Ghetto in Lithuania and later engaged in sabotage and guerilla operations. Thirty-two Jews from the Mandate for Palestine were trained by the British and parachuted behind enemy lines to engage in resistance activities.

Notable partisans

• Fred Friedman
• Yitzhak Arad
• Bielski partisans
• Masha Bruskina
• Eugenio Calò
• Abba Kovner
• Dov Lopatyn
• Moše Pijade
• Haviva Reik
• Dr. Roman T. Solecki
• Hannah Szenes
• Shalom Yoran
• Simcha Zorin
• Icchak Manski
• Moshe Manski

See also

• 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
• Koniuchy massacre
• Defiance (2008 film) - Film based on the Bielski Partisans
• Parczew partisans
• Zog Nit Keynmol - the "Partisan Hymn"

Notes and references

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 Partisans 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 youtube.com