ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
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ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR |
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 MAIN - SITE MAGAZINE-SITE HLC. INFERNO Inferno Children Survivors Forgotten Memor. The Last Sermon The Jumper Lovers & Enemies Shlojme Balagule The Fall of Sevast.
MEMOIRS -SURV.Autobiogr. Notes The Shtejtl World Collapses The Russians. Shtejtl survives First Kaddish. Out of the Grave Yom Kippur Action The Baby Bunker Building Bunker Collapses I Almost Killed ... Ghetto Escape In Hiding The Liberation.
POETRYPoetry Prayers Survivor Creed Archivist Poetry
HLC. EDUCATI0NFinal Solution What Happened? The Killings Why Jews? Organizers Collaborators War against Jews Anti-Semitism Victims of Antisem The Worst Camp Nazi Methods Hitler - Syphilitic Hitler the Man Hitler & Jews Perpetrators Himmler Heydrich Goebbels The Victims Hlc. Syndrome The Rescuers Jewish Resistance Church Silence Nazi Revolution Jews Abandoned Other Genocides Schindler. Courageous Christians Remebr. Day
POST-HLC . ISSUESHlc. Legacy Revisionism Jews & Germans Jews & Poles Other Victims Research Topics
MISCELLANEOUSHlc. Sites Links Our Mail & Press Bibliography
HLC. PLAYSThe Verdict
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HOLOCAUST RESISTANCEby Alexander KimelI Beg To Differ: What Would Have Been The Use Of Resistance -- Even If Such Open, Armed Rebellion Had Occured? Even If The Resisters Had Won, Where Would They Have Gone? Alan J. wrote: Why Is Short Sighted. ..... Ok, You Are Standing On The Ramp At Birkenau. Your Family Is There, Parents, Children, Spouse... How Many Would Resist In This Situation? The Ss Went To Elaborate Methods To Hide The Truth. Why Tell Them On The Ramp They Were Going To Work? Why Have Numbered Pegs For Their Clothes In The Undressing Room Prior To The Gas? Why Shower Heads? Why Call It Relocation? I Have No Way Of Knowing What I Would Do In This Situation. No Way. I Know What I Would Like To Do. But Any Blame Of The Victims Is Useless... It Won't Bring Them Back. It Won't Really Dispel Our Grief And Despair. I agree with Charlotte O. that individual resistance was futile. I also agree with Alan J. that in the Dead Camps, or at the ramps, resistance was unthinkable. Nevertheless, those are only two aspects of the problem, which is generally misunderstood. My reasoning is as follows: 1. In all the phases of the Final Solution there was extensive, almost universal resistance, mostly of the passive nature. To prevent starvation the Jews conducted massive smuggling operations. To avoid resettlements, the Jews built extensive, quite sophisticated, bunkers (hideouts). After being caught many young people jumped the dead trains, being shot by the Ukrainian guards. Jews hid under assumed Aryan identities, or ran away to the forests. This passive resistance, as a rule existed in all Ghettos. 2. WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING. In the Warsaw Ghetto about 700,000 Jews perished. At the time of the Ghetto Uprising their number dwindled down to about 60,000. An armed uprising of about 500,000 Jews would have created a big havoc, forced the Germans to slow down the killing and saved lives. Haim Kaplan in his "Scrolls of Agony" voiced similar ideas. I believe that at the beginning phase the idea of resistance was discussed in Warsaw. 3. While individual resistance was futile, organized resistance was effective and saved lives. In the Vilno area, extensive Jewish partisan units survived, and helped in protecting many Jews from denunciation of the Belarus peasants. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising saved lives in an indirect way. In 1943, when the news of Uprising reached our Ghetto, we were euphoric. The myth of the German invincibility was broken. It restored our dignity, gave us hope and induced us to follow the footsteps of the Warsaw fighters. 3. The youth in the Ghettos dreamed about fighting. I believe that although there were many factors that inhibited our responses, the most important factors were isolation and historical conditioning to accepting martyrdom. I discussed all those historical, psychological factors in my site - THE VICTIMS
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