Central Europe Germany Italy Spain (Spanish Civil War) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma China Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States Jewish resistance under Nazi rule encompassed various forms of organized underground activities undertaken by Jews against German occupation regimes in Europe during World War II.

[1] The term is particularly associated with the Holocaust and includes a wide range of responses, from social defiance to both passive and armed resistance by Jews themselves.

Nechama Tec contends that any act of defiance against the restrictive and dehumanizing conditions imposed on Jews in Europe should be considered spiritual resistance.

[3] Similarly, Richard Middleton-Kaplan identifies spiritual resistance within concentration camps, including inmates saying prayers for Shabbat, mourning the dead, and making efforts to care for themselves and others.

[4] This perspective aligns with Yehuda Bauer, who argues that resistance to the Nazis encompassed not only physical opposition but also any action that upheld Jewish dignity and humanity in the face of persecution.

Bauer introduced the concept of "amidah" (Hebrew for "standing up against"), which defines any effort to resist the destruction of Jewish life as an act of defiance.

[5] Historians such as Patrick Henry argue that the "sheep to the slaughter" narrative persists partly because forms of Jewish resistance beyond armed revolt are often overlooked.

In Eastern Europe, Jews primarily engaged in unarmed resistance, such as smuggling food, forging documents, or leading escape efforts to forests, as seen in the Sobibór and Treblinka death camps.

[7] Between April and May 1943, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto launched an armed uprising against the Nazis after it became clear that the remaining inhabitants were being deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Despite fierce resistance, the vastly superior German forces eventually suppressed the uprising, killing 13,000 Jews and deporting 56,885 to concentration and extermination camps.

Resistance to the persecution of Jews in Belgium intensified between August and September 1942, following the introduction of legislation mandating the wearing of yellow badges and the commencement of deportations.

[14] When deportations began, Jewish partisans destroyed records of Jews compiled by the AJB (Association des Juifs en Belgique).

[15] The first organization specifically dedicated to hiding Jews, the Comité de Défense des Juifs (CDJ-JVD), was established in the summer of 1942.

Other groups and individual resistance members were responsible for securing hiding places, providing food, and forging identity documents.

"[21] In early 1943, the Front de l'Indépendance sent Victor Martin, an economist at the Catholic University of Louvain, to gather intelligence on the fate of deported Belgian Jews.

Operating throughout France, the Armée Juive smuggled hundreds of Jews to Spain and Switzerland, carried out attacks against German occupation forces, and targeted Nazi informants and Gestapo agents.

While much of the non-left-wing and non-Jewish opposition to Hitler in Germany (e.g., conservative and religious forces) opposed Nazi plans for the extermination of European Jewry, these groups often still harbored anti-Jewish sentiments themselves.

[27] One notable case involved the arrest and execution of Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish architectural student from Stuttgart, in connection with a plot to bomb the Nazi Party headquarters in Nuremberg.

After being captured by the Gestapo in December 1936, Hirsch confessed to planning to murder Julius Streicher, a leading Nazi official and editor of the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, on behalf of Strasser and the Black Front.

Largely composed of young Jewish men and women, the group disseminated anti-Nazi leaflets and organized semi-public demonstrations.

Together with his partner, Kohn, he had an ammonia gas cylinder installed in the parlor to defend against attacks from the militant arm of the fascist NSB, the so-called "Weerafdeling" (WA).

[citation needed] Benny Bluhm, a boxer, organized Jewish fighting groups composed of members from his boxing school to resist attacks.

One of these brawls led to the death of a WA member, H. Koot, which prompted the Germans to order the first Dutch razzia (police raid) of Jews as a reprisal.

[30] Within the underground Communist Party, a militant group called the Nederlandse Volksmilitie (NVM, Dutch People's Militia) was formed.

The leader, Sally (Samuel) Dormits, had military experience from guerrilla warfare in Brazil and participation in the Spanish Civil War.

A shop's cash ticket led the police to discover Dormits's hiding place, where they found bombs, arson materials, illegal documents, reports on resistance actions, and a list of participants.

Some of the most successful Nokmim may have been veterans of the Jewish Brigade, who had access to military intelligence, transportation, and the ability to freely travel across Europe.

In one instance, they are believed to have confronted Aleksander Laak, who was responsible for the deaths of 8,500 Jews at Jägala concentration camp, at his suburban home in Winnipeg.

In 1946, the Nokmim carried out a mass poisoning attack against former SS members imprisoned at Stalag 13, lacing their bread rations with arsenic at the bakery that supplied it.

Responses among the Nokmim ranged from viewing this mass assassination attempt as a failure to claiming that the Allies covered up the fact that there had been deaths.