Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – An Authoritative Holocaust Account by a Survivor, Based on Diaries and Letters from 1943

by Israel Gutman

On April 19, 1943, thousands of Nazi troops were given the order to remove all Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, a few square blocks sheltering the remnants of the half million or more Jewish citizens of Poland's capital, to the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. They were to kill those who resisted. A few hundred of the trapped Jews, mostly teenagers, armed only with pistols, Molotov cocktails, and a few light machine guns, vowed to fight back.

Resistance is the full story of the uprising and the events leading to it, told by a survivor of the battle who is now a world-renowned Israeli scholar of the Holocaust.

Warsaw in the 1920s and 1930s was the home of Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish community. It included the rich, the poor, and the middle class; casual assimilationists and ardent Zionists; representatives of the full spectrum of political and religious factions. Then came the German onslaught of ruthless violence against the Jews - isolation and starvation amid desperation and disease - then deportations. As the ghetto walls rose, hundreds of thousands were rounded up and sent to Treblinka. But resistance began to take shape, and when the final attack order came, the ghetto fighters stood ready.

One of the few survivors of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Holocaust scholar I. Gutman draws on diaries, personal letters, and underground press reports in this compelling, authoritative account of a landmark event in Jewish history. Here, too, is a portrait of the vibrant culture that shaped the young fighters, whose inspired defiance would have far-reaching implications for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Supported by moving and dramatic excerpts from diaries, letters, and other documents of the period, Resistance is destined to take its place as the classic account of a most important turning point in Jewish and world history.

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland, World War II, War, European History

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 1994

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite parts of this overview of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto were the journal entries from those people who participated. These were harrowing and gave a vivid sense of what these courageous people were going through. Otherwise I found this book a little too detached as if the author in tackling such an emotional subject made a conscious decision to write the account with as much detachment as possible. In this sense it’s history recounted in a conservative conventional fashion. I couldn’t help thinking of Laurent Binet’s brilliant HHhH – a book in which the author gives reign to his personal emotions while writing about the Holocaust and acknowledges the lacunae in his account – a tactic which made his book so gripping. Sometimes it’s not enough to deliver up as many facts as possible; we need our indignation to be expressed in a text

Here we learn there was a fair amount of political bickering among the various Jewish factions, that the Polish underground provided very little support, that vast sections of the Jewish population were against fighting because they were able to delude themselves that things would get better, a fundamental need of the human spirit. Only when the truth could no longer be ignored was a large consensus in favour of fighting back reached.

I often found myself wanting more detail. I wanted to know how they planned and built the underground network of tunnels and bunkers, I wanted to know how they got their weapons and from whom, I wanted to know more about their tactics for fighting the Nazis. The uprising itself is dealt with in only one chapter, albeit a long one. What this book did do is inspire me to buy a couple of accounts of the uprising by people who experienced it first-hand.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to gather my thoughts but a review is coming.

[BoBandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've got mixed feelings about this book. One cannot but help to find the story of the Warsaw resistance inspiring, but this book, while thoroughly researched, could have used a professional ghost writer. The prose is clumsy, and, except in the end where events progress in a rapid fashion (the rebellion itself), facts are inventoried, stacked one on top of the other--i.e., it doesn't flow. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from reading this book, and respect the effort put in by the author to attempt a balanced and well-documented account of this important piece of history.

[Claudia Moscovici · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to imagine a more hellish environment than the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto created by the Nazis in the fall of 1940 and completely destroyed, along with 300,000 of its 400,000 inhabitants, by the summer of 1942. The Ghetto is extraordinary in many respects. The largest Jewish ghetto of Nazi occupied territories, it was one of the largest sites of the torture, predation and mass murder of Jews, 254,000 of whom were eventually sent to the Treblinka death camp. It is also the site of the greatest Jewish resistance against the Nazis. As Israel Gutman, author of Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising states, “The Uprising represents defiance and great sacrifice in a world characterized by destruction and death” (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994, xi).


The destruction came piecemeal, creating unbelievable psychological torture for the Jewish population of Warsaw. On October 16, 1940 the process began. The Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews, constituting about a third of the population of Warsaw, into a tiny area, less than three percent of the city’s living space. People were forced to leave their homes, most of their property, their neighbors and friends and their jobs. Governor-General Hans Frank ordered the building of the wall by mid-November, closing off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world. The SS shot on the spot anyone seen trying to escape from the Ghetto.


Adam Czerniakow, an engineer by profession, was named the head of the Judenrat (the Jewish Council). He had to contend with lack of sufficient food and shelter, disease and starvation, sending Jewish men to forced labor under horrific conditions, and eventually with the deportation of most of the Jews in the Ghetto, including babies and children, to death camps. On July 1942, he couldn’t take the pressure and the guilt any longer. He committed suicide, leaving behind a note to his wife in which he stated that he could not collaborate with the Nazis in the murder of Jewish children.


Following his death, even the orphaned children he tried so hard to protect were sent to death camps. In an incredibly moving passage, Gutman describes the dignity with which they left to die, led by the Director of the orphanage, Dr.Janusz Korczak:

“They marched through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz where they joined thousands of people waiting without shade, water, or shelter in the hot August sun. The children did not cry out. They walked quietly in forty-eight rows of four. One eyewitness recalled, ‘This was no march to the train cars but rather the mute protest against the murderous regime… a process the like of which no human eye had witnessed’” (Resistance, 139-140).

For those left behind in the Ghetto following the mass deportation, the moment for resistance had arrived. As long as they had a modicum of hope left, the Jews didn’t revolt against the Nazi oppressors. They had the welfare of spouses, parents and children to think of, whom they believed they could save by cooperating with the Nazis. Most clung to the false hopes fostered by the Nazis through a campaign of misinformation. Furthermore, the conditions in the Ghetto weren’t conducive to resistance. Isolated from any source of income or help, starved, overworked and continually preyed upon by the Nazis, for two years the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for their survival. Even before the mass deportation began, the conditions were so bad that about 100,000 Jews died, mostly from illness and starvation. Only once the deportation to Treblinka took away most of the Jewish population, along with the last shred of hope, did the remaining Jews—mostly young men and women—decide to take action. They fought hopelessly and heroically, against all odds of ever emerging alive out of the uneven battle with the Nazis.


Based on previous experience, the Germans didn’t expect to encounter any resistance. On January 18, 1943, they entered the Ghetto after a four-month respite, to resume deportations and send most of the remaining Jews to Treblinka. This time, however, the few thousand Jews left in the Ghetto knew they had nothing to hope for and therefore nothing to lose. Abba Kovner, a partisan fighter and well-known poet, rallied the youth with these inspiring, unforgettable words:

“We will not be led like sheep to slaughter. True, we are weak and helpless, but the only response to the murderer is revolt! Brothers! It is better to die fighting like free men than to live at the mercy of the murderers. Arise! Arise with your last breath!” (Resistance, 102)

The Jewish fighters, organized by ZOB (Jewish Combat Organization) and ZZW(Jewish Military Union), fought back with all their might. They used the few guns they had at their disposal, homemade bombs–any weapons at their disposal–to ward off the Nazis. In the first attack, a few SS soldiers were killed and more were wounded. The Nazis momentarily withdrew, only to return a few days later, on the eve of Passover (April 19, 1943), with even larger forces and more ammunition, weapons and tanks. Their instructions from Himmler were crystal clear: the total destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Nazis proceeded to hunt down the Jews and burn the Ghetto to the ground. The Jewish resistance fighters, led byMordecai Anielewicz, Yitzhak Zuckerman and Marek Edelman, fought bravely. They built a network of safe areas and tunnels underground and even on the roofs, with ladders. They returned the fire of the attackers, even though the Nazis were far more numerous and better armed. As the Nazis scorched the Ghetto, the bunkers, “which had been planned and equipped to provide refuge for months, became burning cages without air, water, or food” (Resistance, 236). Israel Gutman’s moving historical account of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising offers an answer to the much-raised question—why didn’t the Jews fight their oppressors?—and offers an unforgettable portrayal of heroism in hell.

Claudia Moscovici
Literature Salon

[Robin Tell-Drake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is necessarily a dark thing to read, but it's stuck with me like little else I've ever read. Its primary take-home lesson is not at all limited to its own era, but a simple observation about humans.

Gutman meticulously chronicles the progressing fortunes of the Jews in the Ghetto, stage by stage, and the actions of the Nazis have a clear and obviously deliberate pattern. Over and over, they cull half the population of the ghetto, shipping them off to the camps, while the remaining half keep their heads down, hoping not to be taken yet. And each time, they dangle some kind of false hope in front of the Jews: work for certain companies and you'll be spared, work directly for the Nazis as a police officer or administrator and you'll be spared, whatever it was. The promise was always casually jettisoned later, but people clung to the illusion of hope even as their numbers dwindled.

Only in the last days, when there were so few of them left that the Nazis made no particular attempt to hide that they were all going to be killed, and when they were so unthinkably overmatched that even had there been some hope in a violent uprising at the start, it was a fool's errand now, did a resistance finally form. Even then, it lashed out first at the turncoat Jewish police, laying not a finger on the Nazis themselves.

But then they did start to really fight. And armed with little but molotov cocktails, they drove the Germans out of the ghetto. Twice. The Nazis had to come in with fire and artillery, in the end--as if they were stamping out an actual military force. All this in a city that had surrendered before the story started.

Who could read it and not long to see what could have happened, if only the whole population had reacted this way at the outset, when they still had their health and some sixteen times as many able bodies?

The pattern seems to flicker beneath a hundred other issues--the erosion of civil rights and electoral sanctity in the US through the last decade, the continuous siphoning of wealth toward the wealthy, right on up to global warming. People don't fight if they can believe they have a chance of remaining comfortable without fighting. The sooner you convince them that they are flatly, unconditionally fucked no matter what, the better it seems their odds would be of actually beating their problems.

It's enough to make an optimist want to go undercover as a cynic.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto, which began on April 19, 1943 and raged for 42 days, will go down in history as the first great revolutionary act of working-class mass resistance to the Nazi enslavers and hangmen of Occupied Europe.

“Amid the dark alleyways and crumbling walls of their rat-infested, disease-ridden Ghetto prison, 40,000 men, women and children, the proletarian remnants of the Jewish population of Warsaw, Poland, went to their death battling arms in hand against the massed, trained legions of Hitler.
“With weapons sufficient for only 3,000 fighters, the starved and ragged Jewish workers, who were organized and led by the labor and socialist underground movement, for six weeks held out with revolvers, rifles, a few machine guns, home-made bombs, knives, clubs and stones against thousands of trained soldiers using heavy artillery, tanks, flame throwers and aerial bombs.
“The battle ended only after the Nazis dynamited and put to the torch every hovel and tenement in the entire area, and when every Jewish fighter lay dead under the ashes and rubble that marked the site where 400,000 Jews once lived.

“Only within recent weeks have some of the details of the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto been revealed outside of the labor and socialist press. But from the still-scanty information now available, three salient facts stand out. The Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto were overwhelmingly workers, armed, organized and led by the labor and socialist underground. They were inspired not merely by Jewish and Polish nationalist sentiment, but by class solidarity and socialist convictions, hoping that their struggle, conducted under the red flag, would help to arouse the workers everywhere in Poland and Europe to revolutionary class struggle. And theirs was not a ‘spontaneous revolt, out of desperation,’ as bourgeois press commentators would have it appear, but a well-prepared, skillfully planned, organized mass action.”—Art Preis, later author of Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55; a short part of “Warsaw Ghetto Anti-Nazi Uprising of Labor” in the ‘Militant’ May 6, 1944, on the first anniversary. It is well worth reading in its entirety, which you can do online.


“The high percentage of Jews in the proletarian movement is only a reflection of the tragic situation of Judaism in our time. The intellectual faculties of the Jews, fruit of the historic past of Judaism, are thus an important support for the proletarian movement.

“In this latter fact lies a final—and not the least important—reason for modern anti-Semitism. The ruling classes persecute with special sadism the Jewish intellectuals and workers, who have supplied a host of fighters to the revolutionary movement. To isolate the Jews completely from the sources of culture and science has become a vital necessity for the decaying system that persecutes them. The ridiculous legend of ‘Jewish-Marxism’ is nothing but a caricature of the bonds that actually exist between socialism and the Jewish masses.”--Abram Leon in The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, completed shortly before his death in Auschwitz.

“The behavior of the Judenrat [Jewish administration] in Warsaw during the Holocaust has always been a matter of considerable controversy” says Israel Gutman. The character of the Judenrat is not an academic question; it is a class question; it collaborated with the Nazis, falsely believing that it could win concessions from them. Leon Trotsky wrote in 1938 in “Appeal to American Jews menaced by fascism and anti-Semitism,” that “even without war the next development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the Jews.” (see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch). He wasn’t making a “prediction,” he didn’t have any advance knowledge; he was using Marxism to objectively chart the likely course of events. The Jewish Police were so hated, it seems few try to defend them. Gutman says, “There was a marked percentage of lawyers among them.” The first assault was the shooting which wounded the Jewish Police commander in the ghetto. Most Jews had already been deported with no resistance before the uprising began, led by socialist youth groups with a few weapons from the Polish resistance, calling themselves the Jewish Fighting Organization.

Without understanding the class question, it is difficult to understand the uprising. Gutman writes “Divisions were so deep that the Revisionist Zionists established their own fighting unit, with only marginal contacts with the major resistance organization.” The Revisionist Zionists (see The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir) had been associated with Italian Fascism and weren’t trusted by the working class. Their far-right politics are still visible in Israeli politics today, although it would be stupid to call them (or their ally Trump) “fascist.” The Stalinized Communist Party fought alongside them; this was the popular front period (coalition governments with bourgeois parties and workers parties), which paved the way for defeat in Spain, France, and elsewhere. It was the period when they dissolved the Communist International, which had long since ceased to be anything but an arm of foreign policy of the bureaucracy. In the US, they declared the Communist Party dissolved and functioned as the “Communist Political Association.” Of course, most of the rank-and-file members still considered themselves revolutionaries, which led to many contradictions.

Before the Russian Revolution, The Jewish Bund in Russia and Eastern Europe based itself on the theory of national-cultural autonomy, later advocated by Otto Bauer, although Bauer, who was Jewish, rejected this approach for the Jews. To understand the Russian Revolution of 1917, the best book is Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution.

In recent years social class is rarely talked about, trying to present almost everyone in the US as “middle class.” Many (actual) middle class liberals, who claim to be against all bigotry proudly proclaim their hatred of “the white working class,” unaware that the all-white job trusts don’t exist anymore, that Blacks, Caucasians, Latinos, and others more and more work in the same plants and shops. Housing is still segregated (FDR and other liberals had a lot to do with that), but the term “white working class” has practically no meaning anymore. Then there’s pretense that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the 30 year retreat of the working class represent the end of everything Marx stood for, and some people who never read Marx can make a good living writing books that denounce Marx for things he never said. But the class divide is deeper than ever, as is becoming more and more obvious in the coronavirus crisis, despite all the propaganda that “we’re all in this together.” The working class, forced to work with inadequate protection or forced not to work, is beginning to resist, which has nothing to do with the liberal “resistance” against Trump.

For years, people went on endlessly about how Nazism was a product of “the German national character” when in reality, Germany was the heart of the proletarian movement, and after the Russian Revolution the most likely country to have a socialist revolution. Germany had a revolution in 1918 that overthrew the Kaiser, but the Social Democrats prevented it from going further, and arranged the murder of the German Communist Party’s most important leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (see The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919; Preparing the Founding Congress, as well as The German Revolution, 1917-1923).

Luxemburg was a Polish Jew and a leader in exile of the Marxist movement in Poland. Members of her group played prominent roles in the Communist Parties of both Germany and Russia. The main political problem with her group in Poland was that it didn’t call for Polish independence, wrongly thinking that the socialist revolution would sweep aside such questions. This was really at the root of all her disagreements with Lenin.

After Lenin’s death, within a few years, there was the emergence of Stalinism, a Thermidorian counterrevolution in the Soviet Union (see The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?). One of the first things Stalin did was reverse Lenin’s policies on the national question, returning to the Russification policies of Czarism, with disastrous results for all the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, including Jews, even Russian-speaking ones. There was always a degree of anti-Semitism in Stalinist Russia, despite the fact that a large percent of the bureaucracy was Jewish (see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch).

Stalin was responsible (although he never took responsibility) for the absurd policy of the German Communist Party calling the Social Democrats “social fascists.” But today, even with the careful introductory material written in 1971, I find that most people are unequipped to understand Trotsky’s writings on Germany, collected in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Instead, I recommend a book in part based on his writings, but a research work rather than a book of polemics, Fascism and Big Business. Then maybe you’ll be ready. The stupid tactics of the German Stalinists made it easy for the Nazis to come to power without a fight. The Social Democrats counted on capitalist liberals saving them, but the majority of the capitalist class was with Hitler. This was true of the capitalists in many countries—Britain, France, to a lesser degree in the US. But they were for their own fascism, not German fascism, although in countries under occupation, they adapted to it.

While Gutman’s book provides valuable material on Jewish life in Warsaw, background information on the chronology of events preceding the Ghetto Uprising, one needs to have a historical view of the era as well. And he has a clear focus on middle class charities, rather than the working-class organizations. Yes, the Jewish working class had an artisan-like quality because capitalism was less developed in Poland. But that’s precisely why so many Jews were in Poland—because the economic roles they had played in the feudal structure lasted longer.

He gives an accurate picture of the huge disparities of wealth within the ghetto, and the fact that most smuggling in of food was done for huge profit by Poles on the outside and wealthy Jews on the inside; not as solidarity, or even charity. Do all Jews really have common interests? Jewish capitalists are no better, but also no worse than any other capitalists.

Anti-Semitism, which the Zionists claimed would vanish with the establishment of Israel, is making a big come-back on both the “left” and the “right” because of the crisis of capitalism, not because of the grave injustice done to the Palestinians-- which for years was largely ignored in the U.S. Anti-Semitism has always been considered by Marxists to be the “socialism of fools,” and it still serves that purpose, as Abram Leon’s book explains in detail. It lets the main capitalists off the hook by attacking “Jewish capital.” Most capitalists aren’t Jews, and most Jews aren’t capitalists, but many people still believe the conspiracy theories associated with this.

I wasn’t in favor of a Jewish State in Palestine, but there’s a fine line between saying that Israel, with 6 million Jews has “no right to exist” and saying that the Jews have “no right to exist.” There is a Palestinian national struggle, but also a class struggle in Israel, as there is everywhere in the world. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which holds all Israelis (if not all Jews!) responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians, is as anti-working-class as it is anti-Semitic. But those who try to ban their activities are equally reactionary; we must debate those we disagree with, not ban them. I don’t give political support to the US imperialist government, army, and cops, but I don’t say the US has “no right to exist”; I call for a workers and farmers government.

Fidel Castro in a 2010 interview with the ‘Atlantic’ magazine reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, said The Jews “are blamed and slandered for everything,”

“Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms,” Castro said. “There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.”

Cuba’s revolutionary government has strongly opposed Tel Aviv’s assaults and discrimination against Palestinians. But Castro responded, “Yes, without a doubt,” when Goldberg asked if he thought Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

A Cuban athlete was asked by a BDS supporter why he played against Israel. His response was “we play against the United States, why would we refuse to play Israel?”

Along with the realization of the ever-widening class gap, and the anger at the bosses who made people work with totally inadequate protective gear--if any, the role of Cuba’s medical internationalism in the world is getting more press, despite the government lies that they’re “slave labor.” For more on this see Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.

I subsequently read a better book on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, by a leader of it, Marek Edelman, a member of the Polish “Bund” (Jewish Workers Association), The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw 1941 - 43.

[Josh Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an audio book, despite what GoodReads matched it to. (Apparently no one else reads this...). But an excellent non-fiction work by a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. After seeing the movie "Uprising" I was curious as to the truth of the details. In the course of reading this book, I've found that it was largely accurate.

[Zachary Zupke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must admit, not knowing enough about the various factions at play within Judaism itself, Gutman lost me at times addressing 5 or 6 of them at once and who belonged where, and why they did or did not choose to cooperate. On the whole it was a very enlightening read, but I must say I am not inclined to research further the differences between Zionists, Bundists and Communists right now.

[Sandra D · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was a bit dry and included way more detail than I really needed, but I stuck with it (skimmed a little, too) and ended up with a fairly well-rounded picture of Jewish life in Warsaw before and during WWII.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written at the request of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, this has to be the definitive description of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943. It lays the groundwork by describing Warsaw before the war, the development of the Jewish ghetto, and the Nazi orders that moved all Polish Jews to the ghetto, thereby overcrowding it to an unbelievable extent. The Jews were then stripped of rights to travel, to make money, to find clothing, so that the ghetto became full of starving people, with the exception of a small number who had some resources that they managed to keep. Many Jews were employed in non-Jewish enterprises, not least in the making of weapons for the war, and this employment gave them hopes of survival.

When the purging began it was with promises that the people would simply be sent to work camps. Many thought they could survive it. There were rumors that they were death camps but it was difficult to confirm with limited access to news. Much of the ghetto was emptied out by the time the resistance gained ground.

There were several attempts by ghetto residents to connect with resistance movements outside, including the Communist party, which was thought to be a source of weapons and assistance against the Nazis. In the end, however, it was the young people of the ghetto who developed the plans and found weapons, and even organized the development of a series of underground bunkers to hold hundreds of people. It was young people who were willing to die in the effort to resist the Nazis, a David-and-Goliath situation that was doomed to fail.

This account is important because of the details, and because of the restraint Gutman shows in illuminating the lack of assistance by other countries and even by nearby Polish citizens. Yes, there were small underground groups that helped, but in general those opposed to the Nazi treatment of the Jews simply wrung their hands. When the ghetto was on fire and Nazis were shooting every Jew they could find there were street fairs outside the ghetto walls, and people were going about their business and enjoying themselves.

Many ask why the Jews were such "sheep" for so long. This book goes a long way to answer that question. What choice did they have, especially when there was a chance they could escape death? They had little choice, yet they did resist. While the rest of the world stood by.

I can't help but think of how the rest of the world continues to stand by when atrocities are committed. Syria? Rwanda? Bosnia? Rohingya? Darfur? Our hands are still dirty.

[Riley Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

How can you give a negative review on a book about the Holocaust and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? This last few chapters of this book are amazing and a very moving read. The first 80% addresses the lead up, the antisemitism and slow decay of minority status in Poland between the world wars. Even before Hitler invaded Polish life was becoming more limited for the Jews. This set up portion was important to understand but also very detailed and hard to get engaged in. While many will find the different youth political groups and movements compelling I preferred the personal stories of the actual uprising.

In summary when the war started immediately the Germans built a wall around the Ghetto and kept the Jews concentrated with little freedom of movement and intentionally tried to work and starve them to death. Thanks too a healthy underground system many survived for years during the ghetto. Condition were crammed with nearly a million people living within a square mile. In 1942 almost 90% of the over 400k people living in the ghetto were deported and killed in Treblinka. The remaining were to be removed in January of 1943 but they started fighting back with smuggled weapons and caused the Germans to pause deportations until April.

This allowed a solid underground of somewhere around 30k people to build bunkers under their forced homes and prepare to fight to the death. Lead by amazing heroes like Mordecai Anielewicz who fought to the death in his Bunker at Mila 18. The Germans took weeks to burn the ghetto and clear out the Jews. One of the chief lessons from this book to me is that the holocaust happened because of the evil of the Nazi’s, not the passivity of the Jews. Also WW2 shows the best and the worst of people. Grateful for the the Jewish example of the best.

[Ginger Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing new here.

I expected the entire book to be about the ghetto uprising, it wasn't. The actual uprising is told in one chapter. The author, a noted historian and survivor of the Holocaust, spends far too much time leading the reader up to the point of the uprising and quickly rushing past it. I give Professor Gutman a great deal of credit for even mentioning Marek Eldeman. Most books about the uprising never give him any credit. I don't believe the country of Israel cared much for Dr Eldeman's views or of his refusal to move to Israel after the war. A book strong on details that related little to the title. Still a very good book but nothing new. I have to confess that the awful habit of survivors to place as much blame on Poland as they do Germany is getting very tiresome. This book is not as guilty of that as so many others.

[Rick Flagstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evil unveiled

A very well researched account of the fall of the Warsaw ghetto. Finally the Jews realize that they are going to die whether they rebel or not. Hard to understand how so many could sit back and accept their destiny without trying to get some revenge. The battle for the ghetto is the beginning of the Jewish resistance.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story about the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who resisted the concentration camps. I did not realize that there were groups who actively and very creatively resisted the Germans. It was fascinating to read sections from journals of people who experienced it.

[Jane Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

World War I I Story

This is a good history of the Warsaw uprising.The Germans do!y believed that the Jews would aleays remain.passive.The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto proved them wrong. TThey were doomed and they knew it bu t they fought.

[Elio Lerner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reading

This is well written book. It focus on the political tension between the various factions of jews in Warsaw. It describes the uprising in simple form and tries to explain its motivations.

[Sandy Korom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important history

[Jill Poulsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written so well that your hearts breaks for the people who had to experience it. It doesn't take long to get through it.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. Very detailed & humbling. I at times was a bit confused with descriptions of the different youth movements and groups. I'm glad I read this.

[Holden Caufield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most important book I have ever read on Jews in World War II. For the first time in my education, Jews were not presented as victims waiting to be saved. After reading "Resistance," I realized (what seems should be obvious) that many Jews refused to submit to their oppressors. They participated in clandestine and open acts of protest and war! This book made me aware that most holocaust history at best makes us sympathize with Jews, yet simultaneously debilitates us. "Resistance," on the other hand, presents Jews as strong people capable of inspiritation and leaves you feeling empowered.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although he was a participant in and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, scholar Gutman created a scholarly, well researched account of this important event in Jewish history. Resistance includes background on Polish Jewry, photos from the ghetto, and documents such as journals written by ghetto inhabitants, articles by the Polish resistance, and the Stroop report.

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbelievable amount of information and detail in such a small volume. Gutman seems to have complied information from thousands of sources and boiled it down to exactly what one wants and needs to know.

[Murtaza Khomusi · Rating 3 out of 5]

loved the approach to tne subject, but had some stylistic issues a glossary wouldbe helpful, additional more pictoral maps. definitely for a high-level audience that has previous knowledge of the subject, matter.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Amazing.

[Anna Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for anyone who needs to explain the horrors of socialism to the current nay-sayers. Anyone who is telling themselves that this can't happen here is in danger of repeating the past