Centre forHolocaust Education

Resistance

How can the story of resistance be told?

Aims

To start thinking about the meaning of ‘resistance.’

To consider how context and circumstance may or may

not have influenced the capacity to resist.

In narrating a story of resistance, to be able to counter

the myth that Jews ‘did not fight back.’

In groups either:

Construct a definition of ‘resistance’

or

Note words or phrases you would associate with the

term ‘resistance’

What does ‘resistance’ look like?

What does ‘resistance’ look like?

‘Resistance’

disobeying instructions

destroying something

aggressivejustice

fighting

confrontation

brave

killing someone

violence

desperation refusing to comply

being defiant

masculine?

being heroic

What does ‘resistance’ look like?

Detail from model of Auschwitz at IWM

Cover from book written on the Warsaw Getto

Uprising written in Hebrew (1947)

Passive victims, active fighters, or something else?

Contexts

Context: People

Can you guess what

nationality are these

people?

Are they religious? How

can you tell?

What is the relationship

between them, do you

think?

What may have stopped

theses people from

‘fighting back’? What

obstacles or barriers did

they face to take up arms?

Context: Knowledge, understanding,

conception

‘In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a

sign saying “Hackenholt Foundation”, above which there

was a Star of David. The building was brightly and

pleasantly painted…

I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had

any idea of what would happen to them.’

SS Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm Pfannenstiel

Context:

What were people resisting against?

‘This is a page of glory in our history, which has never

been written and is never to be written.’

Heinrich Himmler

October 1943

Context: What did it mean to 'resist'?

Dear Finder

Search everywhere, in every inch of soil. Tens of

documents are buried under it – mine and those of

other persons – which will throw light on

everything that was happening here.

Great amounts of teeth are also buried here. It

was we, the Sonderkommando, who have strewn

them all over the ground, as many as we could, so

that the world should find material traces of the

millions of murdered people.

We ourselves have lost hope of being able to live

to see the moment of liberation…

Telling the story of resistance

What do these case studies do?

What do they reveal to us?

How do you tell the story of resistance?

What is the story that you want

to tell?

Which case studies help you

tell this story?

Choose up to five case studies

What knowledge will your

visitor go away with?

Father helping his son take off his shoes before

entering the gas chambers at Treblinka (2002)

Samuel Willenberg, Survivor of the Treblinka Death

Camp

Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Warsaw, Poland

(1948). Sculpted by Nathan Rappaport, who fled to

the Soviet Union when the Nazis invaded, and

returned at the end of the war.

How are these memories of resistance similar or

different, and why? What are they saying about

how we might think about ‘resistance’?

What does 'resistance' mean?

‘To have survived one day under those conditions

and retain one’s values was a great act of

resistance.’

Esther Brunstein, Holocaust survivor