Jewish Resistance

The Final Solution was a planned, methodical process of mass murder by the German state. It employed both military and police forces against an unarmed civilian population.

The Jews were confined to ghettos where conditions were harsh and many subsequently starved. Underground groups were formed, initially engaging in resisting the Nazis by operating illegal schools, printing presses and other clandestine activities. Only as they became aware of the Nazi plans for extermination, which was already in progress, did these groups start to organize armed resistance. Despite numerous difficulties, uprisings against the German authorities broke out in several ghettos. The most famous of which was the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Jewish resistance also existed in settings other than the ghettos. In some of the extermination camps, uprisings were organized and carried out; Jews fought the Germans as partisans in the forests, sometimes together with local resistance groups and sometimes in separate units; Jewish soldiers took part in the fighting in all the Allied armies that fought the Nazis.

This section contains information about Jewish resistance activities against the Nazi regime, whether in the ghettos, the camps, the forests, or the allied armies.

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