Jewish fighting organization
The Jewish Combat Organization ( polish Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa shortly ŻOB , Yiddish Jidische Kamf Organisatie - ייִדישע קאַמף אָרגאַניזאַציע) was a Jewish resistance organization that fought in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War in the Warsaw Ghetto against its liquidation and the associated mass murder as part of the Holocaust of the residents.
The uprising organized by the ŻOB in 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto was able to delay the dissolution of the ghetto and the murder of the remaining inhabitants from January 18 to May 16, 1943. In 1942 the Warsaw ghetto had 400,000 inhabitants.
A resistance group of the same name had also existed in Krakow since November 1942 .
Origins in the Jewish youth organizations
The reason for the establishment of the ŻOB was an order issued by the Germans on July 22, 1942 regarding the future fate of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. All Jews in Warsaw, regardless of age and gender, would be "relocated to the East". This marked the beginning of a massive deportation of the Jews that lasted until September 12, 1942. A total of around 300,000 Jews were deported, many of them to Treblinka . The deportations reduced Warsaw's once thriving Jewish community to 55,000 to 60,000 inhabitants.
The Jewish youth organizations, which played a decisive role in founding the ŻOB, had foreseen the Nazis' intention to exterminate the Warsaw Jews. They switched from cultural and educational activities to self-defense and finally to armed struggle.
In contrast to the older generation, the youth groups took the reports seriously and had no illusions about the real intentions of the National Socialists. A document published by the socialist - Zionist youth group HaSchomer HaTzair three months before the start of the deportations states: “We know that Hitler's system of mass murder, slaughter and robbery leads straight to a dead end and the extermination of the Jews. "
At a meeting of Warsaw Jewish leaders in March 1942, representatives of HaSchomer HaTzair and other youth groups suggested the establishment of a Jewish self-defense organization. The proposal was rejected by the General Jewish Workers' Union , Bund, for short, which believed that a fighting organization would fail without the help of Polish resistance groups, which refused to support such an organization. Others rejected the idea of armed resistance on the grounds that there was no evidence of imminent deportation and that armed resistance would provoke Germans to retaliate against the entire Jewish community.
Foundation of the ŻOB
The representatives of the political groups in the underground held a secret meeting on July 23, 1942, but failed to reach a consensus. On July 28th, the representatives of Hashomer Hazair, Dror and Akiva met independently of the political parties and founded the ŻOB. Jitzhak Zuckerman , one of the leaders of the OB, later described the circumstances under which the ŻOB was founded: “At this meeting we [the youth groups] decided to create the 'Jewish Fighting Organization'. Just us, all alone, without the parties. "
The OOB sent messengers to the Polish part of Warsaw to procure weapons and forge links with Polish resistance groups such as the Polish Home Army who could support the Jewish armed struggle. Apart from a few exceptions, the procurement of weapons was largely unsuccessful, also because the Polish organizations did not want to waste their already very meager stocks on Jews who were not trained in the military. General Rowecki , Commander in Chief of the Home Army, reported that "Jews from all sorts of groups turn to us and ask for weapons as if our depots were full".
The OOB began to spread propaganda calling on Jews to take up arms. A letter from the OOB, dated four months after the first deportation, demanded that “not a single Jew” should go to the deportation train. The letter concluded with the decision: "Now our watchword must be: Let everyone be ready to die like a man!"
Despite a great lack of armament, the OOB managed to shoot and seriously injure the commander of the ghetto police . The Jews who lived in the Warsaw ghetto viewed the ghetto police, which consisted of Jews but were under German supervision, with contempt and disgust. The OB saw them as collaborators and proclaimed that they would execute anyone who collaborated with the Nazis.
When the National Socialists managed to capture several important functionaries of the ŻOB, the organization threatened to sink into chaos. Stabilization began when other Zionist youth groups such as Gordonia and Noar Zioni joined the ŻOB. The decisive event for strengthening the ŻOB was the accession of the Bundists , the communist Polska Partia Robotnicza and some “adult” Zionist parties. The new supreme leader was Mordechaj Anielewicz , formerly head of the Hashomer Hazair.
The ŻOB set about separating people from the ghetto who had cooperated with the National Socialists during the deportations. Among them was Alfred Nossig , a Zionist and a respected man in the community who had become an informant for the National Socialists. These executions had the side effect of intimidating anyone who had thought of cooperating with the Germans.
Resistance of the ŻOB against the second wave of deportations
On January 18, 1943, the Germans began carrying out a second wave of deportations. Among the first Jews to be rounded up were a number of OOB fighters who had deliberately mixed with the prisoners. Under the guidance of Anielewicz waiting for the prearranged signal, then came out of the formation and shot with hand and handguns on the Germans. The column dispersed and reports of the ŻOB's action quickly spread throughout the ghetto. During this deportation the Germans could "only" round up about 5,000 to 6,000 Jews.
The deportations lasted four days and met further resistance from the ŻOB. When the Germans left the ghetto on January 22nd, the remaining Jews viewed this as a victory. Israel Gutman , a member of the OOB who later became one of the most important authors on the Warsaw Jews, wrote: “The Jews were not aware that the Germans had not intended to liquidate the ghetto with the January deportation. However, ”continued Gutman,“ the January deportation had a decisive influence on the final months of the ghetto. ”
The last deportation and the uprising
The last deportation began on the eve of the Passover festival , on April 19, 1943. The streets of the ghetto were mostly empty. Most of the 30,000 remaining Jews hid in carefully prepared bunkers , some of which had electricity and running water, but no escape route.
When the Germans marched into the ghetto, they encountered fierce resistance from fighters who attacked empty apartments from open windows. The defenders of the ghetto used guerrilla tactics and not only had the advantage of surprise but also of being able to look down on their opponents. This advantage was lost when the Germans began to systematically burn down the houses of the ghetto, forcing the fighters to leave their positions and seek shelter in the underground bunkers. The fires over these consumed a large part of the oxygen in the underground part and turned the bunkers into deadly suffocation traps.
On May 16, SS Brigadier Leader and Major General of the Police Jürgen Stroop declared the " major operation " in the Warsaw ghetto to be over with the words "There is no longer any Jewish residential area in Warsaw". Finally, he had the Great Synagogue blown up. The ghetto was completely destroyed. A total of 56,065 people died in the Warsaw ghetto.
epilogue
Even after the ghetto was destroyed, small groups of Jews could still be found in underground bunkers on both sides of the ghetto wall. In fact, around 20,000 Jews managed to flee to the Polish part of the city in the last few months of the ghetto's existence. Some of the refugees, such as youth group leader Jitzhak Zuckerman and Bundist Marek Edelman , took part in the 1944 Warsaw uprising against the occupiers.
While many of the members and leaders of the youth groups perished in the Warsaw Ghetto, the movements themselves are still scattered around the world to this day. The left groups like HaSchomer HaTzair and Habonim Dror can be found in countries like South Africa , Great Britain , the Netherlands , Argentina , Chile , Italy , the United States , Israel , Mexico and Australia . The more right-wing Betar group also has a large following, particularly in Western Europe and the United States.
The Jewish Fighting Organization in Krakow
After the SS deported 6,000 people from the Krakow ghetto to the Belzec extermination camp on October 28, 1942 , Akiba , Dror , Hashomer Hatzair and other activists based on the Warsaw model united in November to form the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB). In the period from September to December alone, they carried out at least ten attacks and sabotage.
When the ŻOB launched a large-scale coordinated action on December 22, 1942, it already had around 300 members. With the support of the battle-tested ŻOB members Yitzchak Zuckerman and Eve Fulman, who came from Warsaw, as well as the Gwardia Ludowa (Communist People's Guard), several Wehrmacht and SS garages were set on fire, motor boats of the gendarmerie destroyed and German officers in an officers' mess, a cinema and successfully attacked three cafes. According to German sources, about 20 people were killed and wounded that evening, and according to Polish sources, 11 people were killed and 13 injured. The perpetrators were caught in hiding in the city that same night. Dozens of members of the organization were arrested by the Gestapo after the action , and underground activities in the Krakow ghetto fell silent. Ten of the detainees were executed in the Gestapo prison.
Gusta Dawidson-Drenger escaped on April 29, 1943 during her deportation to the extermination camp together with three fellow combatants; numerous other women were shot trying to escape. Gusta Dawidson-Drenger and her husband Simon Drenger then continued to work underground. During a trip to Warsaw on November 8, 1943, both were arrested and probably killed shortly afterwards. The last of the Jewish partisans fled Cracow into the Budapest underground in the summer of 1944.
See also
literature
- Reuben Ainsztein wrote a standard work on the Jewish combat organization in general : Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe , London 1974; German: Jewish resistance in German-occupied Eastern Europe during the Second World War , Oldenburg 1993.
- The section about Krakow is based on the chapter “Don't be afraid, I won't cry” (pp. 260–268) in Ingrid Strobl : “Never say you go the last way!” Fischer TB 1989.
- Pam Jenoff's novel The Commandant and the Girl also deals with the subject.
- Ziviah Lubetkin : The last days of the Warsaw Ghetto (sic). In: Allied Information Service (ed.): New selection . 3. Vol. 1, 1948, pp. 1-13; again as a separate TB: VVN- Verlag, Berlin 1949, illustrated, afterword Friedrich Wolf .
Individual evidence
- ↑ See daily report of May 16, 1943 (PDF file, page 186) to SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in the Stroop report .
- ↑ Lubetkin was a leader in the uprising. Different spellings of the first name: Zivia (English), Tziviah, Cywia (Polish), Hebrew צביה לובטקין, Battle name: Celina