Keywords
Jewish, Resistance, Holocaust, Nazi, Vilna, Warsaw, Ghetto
Abstract
On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, marking the start of WWII. In the following months, the Nazis established an inconceivable array of ghettos meant to concentrate the Jewish population and facilitate their deportation to killing centers across continental Europe. Of the over 1,000 ghettos set up throughout Nazi-occupied territory, this paper focuses on two, Vilna and Warsaw. Despite the hellish conditions imposed on the Jews in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos—conditions rivaled only by the killing centers that awaited most of their inhabitants—an important phenomenon took form: the Jews of the ghettos resisted. How, it must be contended, could Jewish victims of ghettoization have resisted Nazi cruelty in the context of such dehumanizing conditions? This paper explores the history of Jewish life and resistance in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos, with particular emphasis on the factors that allowed or disallowed resistance to occur. By carefully constructing their stories of resistance, it aims to answer why the Jews of Warsaw were able and willing to fight back in a violent uprising, while the Jews in Vilna were not.
Recommended Citation
Evison, Theodore A. (2025) "The Anatomy of Resistance: Jewish Life, Struggle, and Revolt in the Vilna and Warsaw Ghettos," Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal: 6 (1), 36-59. https://works.swarthmore.edu/suhj/vol6/iss1/2
Included in
European History Commons, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons, Jewish Studies Commons
