heat Heat [Music] Students are often interested in stories of resistance and connect with people who made a choice to fight back against the Nazis These stories can provide hope in the midst of learning about a very dark time in history But it's also important to show students that large-scale acts of resistance were rare Providing historical context which is one of the museum's guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust help students understand the realities dangers and limitations of resistance Stories of resistance can be easily romanticized That is why with this topic it is especially important to remember the guideline that reminds us to avoid romanticizing history Stories of resistance are the exception not the rule Despite the inaction of most Europeans and the collaboration of many others in the persecution and murder of Jews some individuals from all social and religious backgrounds aided Jewish people Individuals acted alone and within organized networks Aid range from expressing solidarity warning Jews of danger and providing false papers and hiding places to a mass rescue effort in Denmark One example of non-Jewish resistance is the White Rose a group founded by German college students The members of the White Rose including Hans and Sophie Schaw wrote and distributed leaflets condemning the Nazi regime and its crimes This type of resistance was rare in Germany Most Germans supported or tolerated the Nazi German regime and its persecution of Jews Your students can learn more about the White Rose in the museum's podcast 12 Years that Shook the World If you read a book or watch a film about the White Rose the museum has a Holocaust literature guide and a Holocaust film guide that can help place the story in a greater historical context These two teacher tools pair with any book or film you can use in your classroom and provide the critical scaffolding that helps you place the resistance story in the proper framing Jews were the Nazis primary targets The Nazis and their allies and collaborators systematically persecuted and murdered millions of Jewish people Jews resisted Nazi oppression in a variety of ways both collectively and as individuals Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German occupied Europe Jewish civilians engaged in armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union Jewish prisoners also staged revolts in the Soibbor Trebinka and Awitz Beer Canal killing centers This is vital information to share when your students ask "Why didn't Jews fight back?" To include the voices of Jewish survivors who participated in resistance movements in your study of the Holocaust you can go to the museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia and search for Jewish resistance limiting your results to oral history There you'll find short video clips of Holocaust survivors providing testimony about resistance activities they participated in or witnessed The museum also has a survivor testimony list organized by topic that can help you find possible survivor stories for your classroom Let's listen to Holocaust survivor Aaron Dur who resisted the Nazis as part of a partisan unit Partisan units were armed groups formed to fight against the occupying Nazi German forces and their allies So the area became already uh quite a few partisans were in the whole area and we cut down the telephone lines We cut down the bridges we cut down the the whatever we could do is blow up the railroads and in many instances we blew up trains Now if I took part in it I took part in him directly and indirectly but um some I wasn't I wasn't a hero but I was part of the I was part of the of the underground I was active as anybody could be Again it's essential to put these stories of Jewish resistance into historical context A person's ability to resist depended on their own circumstances where they were living what information they had access to and the harshness of local Nazi policies Everyone made choices as to what they thought would be best for them and for their families Aaron for instance was a healthy physically fit unmarried 90-year-old when the Germans occupied his hometown in Poland Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with various forms of unarmed resistance They made conscious attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people These efforts included creating Jewish cultural institutions continuing to observe religious holidays and rituals providing clandestine education publishing underground newspapers and collecting and hiding documentation as in the case of the On Shabbat archive in Warsaw This was the secret archive of the Warsaw Ghetto where more than 400,000 Jewish people were imprisoned in horrifying conditions Onek Shabbat is a Hebrew phrase meaning joy of the Sabbath The term was applied to the underground archive because its organizers held their regular clandestine meetings on the Sabbath Begun as an individual chronicle by Emanuel Ringlebloom the archive grew into an organized underground operation with several dozen contributors after the sealing of the ghetto in November 1940 The workers of the archive faced constant danger They collected an enormous range of material including items about daily life in the ghetto and about specific Jewish communities inside and outside the ghetto The archive became one of the most important historical records of the Holocaust The holdings of the archives are buried in three parts in metal boxes and milk cans After the war two of the three caches of documents were recovered They told the story of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto the overwhelming majority of whom did not survive the Holocaust You can use the Holocaust encyclopedia to help students understand the context of the ONG Shabbat archive There's also a 17-minute episode on the archive from the museum's 12 Years That Shook the World podcast Let's listen to a clip Then in November 1940 the Nazis seal off the ghetto with walls over 10 ft high topped with barbed wire severing the connection between Jews and the outside world The Jews trapped inside the ghetto are subject to violence starvation and infectious disease Emanuel Ringleblum acts urgently In defiance of Nazi oppression he sets out to collect firstirhand accounts of the persecution of Jews hoping the stories will serve as evidence to the world and the Nazis can be stopped He organizes a few dozen people to create a secret archive You can also use the museum's foundational timeline activity to enrich your students understanding of resistance The timeline provides historical context and an overview of Holocaust history allowing your students to see where any individual story fits into the wider geography and chronology of the Holocaust You could have students do a gallery walk of the timeline and identify the events that might have influenced the person or group who was resisting the Nazis You could also guide students to look or listen for examples of resistance in any work you may be studying What happened where and when Who was involved And who was the resistance directed against Did the resistors find helpers or did other people look away or even turn them over to the Nazis The museum also has a lesson about resistance during the Holocaust Students watch short videos about objects related to resistance in the museum's collection Then they answer questions about the type of resistance depicted and what might have influenced people's choices The worksheet for this lesson could also be used with oral testimony with the profile cards or even with the work of literature you're reading The online exhibition Somewhere Neighbors can also support students understanding of rescue and resistance It features lesson plans on exploring the website which shows that amid war and upheaval a range of motivations fear greed opportunity shaped people's choices Using photographs testimonies and case studies Somewhere Neighbors shows how ordinary people all over Europe respond to the Holocaust as it was happening It emphasizes that people make choices based on a variety of motives and for their own personal reasons to collaborate with the Nazis to aid Jews or to do nothing It also shows that people's responses might change over time Someone who collaborated with the Nazis in one situation might oppose them in another Understanding resistance in historical context identifying types of resistance considering human motivation and learning about those who did resist can help avoid overemphasizing or romanticizing resistance This approach provides an accurate understanding of the role of resistance during the Holocaust It helps students understand the complexity behind the question why didn't they fight back It encourages them to ask instead how was resistance possible [Music] The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of 6 million European Jews by Nazi Germany its allies and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945 The Nazis and their helpers targeted all Jews just because they were Jewish from the oldest grandparent to the youngest baby They imprisoned millions of Jews in ghettos and camps They forced Jews throughout much of Europe to wear badges or armbands marking them as Jews They drove Jewish people out of their homes and stole their belongings They deprived them of food shelter and medical care They murdered many in massacres And they killed 2.7 million in killing centers specifically built to murder Jewish [Music] people During the Holocaust Jewish people had to make difficult choices about how to respond to Nazi violence and mass murder Sometimes people ask why didn't Jews resist the Nazis The answer is that they did Despite the extreme danger and faced with nearly unimaginable cruelty many Jews chose to disobey and resist the Nazis Throughout Germany and German occupied Europe Jews refused to do what the Nazis told them to do Some refused to hand over precious valuables hiding or destroying them instead When they could some Jews critiqued cursed or challenged the Nazis Some fled or went into hiding In some instances Jews took even more direct measures Sometimes Jews resisted Nazi violence with force Jewish civilians engaged in armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union Jewish prisoners also staged revolts in the Soibore Trebinka and Awitz Burkinau killing centers Sometimes Jews in ghettos and camps created secret resistance groups These groups gathered information weapons and resources Some made plans to fight the Nazis and their collaborators We promised ourself it didn't matter if we'll survive or not but just do something A person's ability to engage in armed resistance depended on their own circumstances where they were living what information they had access to and the harshness of local Nazi policies Some Jewish people resisted by trying to sabotage the Nazis and stop their ability to wage war or commit crimes Many Jews who had to perform forced labor for the Nazis deliberately worked slowly or secretly tried to ruin whatever they had been ordered to build especially weapons and ammunition We did everything possible to sabotage everything possible at the risk of our lives But we figured if I have done something to hold back their progress I'm killed but will do good for others This happened on a daily basis constantly Others tried to destroy railroad tracks German military vehicles and even the equipment that Nazis used for mass killing Some Jewish people also tried to warn other Jews and the world about what the Nazis were doing to persecute and murder Jews They hoped that if people knew about mass murder then more people would try to hide or escape They also hoped that world leaders would take action to rescue Jews But at that time it was particularly urgent because I knew that all was prepared for the murder of 1 million Jews from Hungary and because it was close to Slovakia I thought that it would be possible to give the warning Many Jews tried to find ways to continue their lives under very difficult conditions during the Holocaust They kept diaries took photographs and wrote letters documenting what was happening to them and their communities I was very very upset and very depressed And I had a little diary and there writing a diary and that helped me That helped me a lot I had a little pencil You cannot read it almost not anymore because it was just written with a pencil Many insisted on maintaining their Jewish identity even though it could be dangerous They disobeyed the Nazis by practicing their religion in secret They continued to teach their children Jewish history religion and the Hebrew language In the very beginning my mother and several other women organized a clandestine school for children who were below the age of work And it was a wonderful thing because we had something to look forward to While imprisoned in ghettos and camps many Jews tried to document the existence and experiences of their communities Through many brave actions large and small Jewish people saved lives and left a lasting record of Jewish experiences during the Holocaust Instead of asking why Jews didn't resist the Nazis a better question is how was resistance during the Holocaust possible [Music]