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 took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II.

[1] The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.

Due to military strength of Nazi Germany and its allies, as well as the administrative system of ghettoization and the hostility of various sections of the civilian population, few Jews were able to effectively resist the Final Solution militarily.

But Gilbert emphasizes that many Jews resisted passively; by enduring suffering and even death with dignity, they refused to satisfy German attackers' desire to see them despair.

Nechama Tec argues that any of the complex and varying acts of defiance against the restrictive and demoralizing conditions forced upon the Jews of Europe should be considered spiritual resistance.

[3] Richard Middleton-Kaplan identifies documented acts of spiritual resistance in concentration camps, such as inmates saying prayers for Shabbat and fallen loved ones and making efforts to care for themselves and others.

[4] This view is supported by Yehuda Bauer, who wrote that resistance to the Nazis comprised not only physical opposition, but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and humanity despite the humiliating and inhumane conditions.

[3] Further historical research and arguments have used "Amidah" to characterize religious observation, the of Jewish resistance to the destruction of one's culture, one's individualism, and one's will to live.

[citation needed] Middleton-Kaplan calls upon the traditional connotation of "sheep to the slaughter" in both Judaism in Christianity to argue the positive notion in Jewish scripture of facing a looming, existential threat with faith and bravery, succumbing to one's fate without fear.

[4] In The Myth of Jewish Passivity, Middleton-Kaplan mentions Jewish resistance leader Abba Kovner, famed for his role in the Vilna ghetto uprising, quoted as early as 1941 using the "sheep to the slaughter" phrase as a call to action, arguing Kovner employed the phrase's original connotation as a call to action towards an unmoving or absent God.

As a result, from roughly May 1940 to October 1941, the Jews of the ghetto published their own underground newspapers, offering hopeful news about the war and prospects for the future.

After fierce fighting, vastly superior German forces pacified the Warsaw Ghetto and either murdered or deported all of the remaining inhabitants to the Nazi killing centers.

Belgian resistance to the treatment of Jews crystallised between August–September 1942, following the passing of legislation regarding wearing yellow badges and the start of the deportations.

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

Operating throughout France, it smuggled hundreds of Jews to Spain and Switzerland, launched attacks against occupying German forces, and targeted Nazi informants and Gestapo agents.

Much of the non-left wing and non-Jewish opposition to Hitler in Germany (i.e., conservative and religious forces), although often opposed to the Nazi plans for extermination of German and European Jewry, in many instances itself harbored anti-Jewish sentiments.

[27] A celebrated case involved the arrest and execution of Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish architectural student originally from Stuttgart, in connection with a plot to bomb 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 Der Stürmer newspaper, on behalf of Strasser and the Black Front.

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

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

One of these brawls led to the death of a WA-member, H. Koot, and subsequently the Germans ordered the first Dutch razzia (police raid) of Jews as a reprisal.

The Jewish director of the assembly center in the "Hollandsche Schouwburg", a former theatre, Walter Süskind, was instrumental in smuggling children out of his centre.

[30] Within the underground communist party, a militant group was formed: de Nederlandse Volksmilitie (NVM, Dutch Peoples Militia).

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

Dormits was caught after stealing a handbag off a woman in order to obtain an identification card for his Jewish girlfriend, who also participated in the resistance.

From a cash ticket of a shop the police found the hiding place of Dormits and discovered bombs, arson material, illegal papers, reports about resistance actions and a list of participants.

[35][36] The Special Interrogation Group was a British Army commando unit comprising German-speaking Jewish volunteers from Palestine.

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 which supplied it.

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