Page 43 - Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations

The horror and scale of the atrocities that took place during WWII often mask another aspect of this history: the heroic resistance that so many showed in the face of unimaginable cruelty.
During the students’ encounter with the Holocaust in Europe, they hear the stories of resistance and meet with some of those who risked their lives to save Jews, and, when possible, with WWII veterans who liberated the camps where the Nazis imprisoned the survivors.
Why must this other side be told? So that the entire picture of the Holocaust is shown. So that the study of the Holocaust does not cause us to give up completely on humanity. So that these courageous people who resisted can serve as role models in our own lives.
Spiritual resistance throughout the war was shown by millions of the Nazis’ victims who displayed remarkable courage in adhering to their faith and values. From Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to join Hitler’s war, and cou- rageous church leaders, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke out against Nazi policies at the cost of their own lives, to Hitler’s Jewish victims, who maintained their faith and dignity even during the most difficult of times – all refused to let their spirits be crushed in the face of overwhelming brutality. Young girls and women, like Jewish Anne Frank in the Netherlands and Christian Krystyna Wituska in Poland, wrote words in hiding and in prison that reflected an unbroken spirit and a moral conviction and love for humanity that has outlived the hate-filled Nazi proclamations. The Polish Jewish doctor Janusz Korczak refused to abandon his 200 young orphans even after numerous offers of help from Polish friends outside the Warsaw Ghetto. Instead, when the Nazi deportation order arrived, he led a march through the streets of Warsaw with his orphans – clutching their favorite toys and their handmade flags – to the waiting train that took them to Treblinka, where they met their fate with 870,000 other Jews. “The very stones of the street,” wrote Yiddish novelist Yehoshua Perle, “wept at the sight of the procession.”
Physical resistance came from both partisans and liberators. In fact, there were large numbers of armed uprisings against the Nazis throughout Europe. Most had little chance of success, given the overwhelming military might and brutality of the Nazi enemy.
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