WASHINGTON POST
By David Kopel
May 2, 2014

….One thing that increased the number of Jewish survivors during the Final Solution was armed Jewish resistance, as I detailed in my article Armed Resistance to the Holocaust.  (19 Journal on Firearms & Public Policy 144 (2007).) (This annual journal is published by the Second Amendment Foundation; its 23 volumes are available on the web, as well as via HeinOnline. I was editor in chief of the Journal in 1994-2011.)

The best-known Jewish armed resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There were also revolts in other Eastern European ghettos, usually lasting a few days, rather than the months-long battle in Warsaw. The Sobibor extermination camp was permanently shut (thus saving an enormous number of lives) because of a prisoner revolt led by Soviet POWs who captured guns from the guards. The Treblinka extermination camp was also at least temporarily disabled because of an armed revolt. Only a small percentage of Jewish fighters survived any of these revolts, but by killing Nazis and depleting Nazi resources, the fighters saved lives elsewhere. All of them died with honor. The Warsaw revolt in particular was crucial in changing Western minds so that Jews were not seen merely as passive victims, but as part of the Allied fighting forces, and thus entitled to a share in the post-war settlement. There is a direct line from the Warsaw Uprising to the establishment of the State of Israel.

…..In the 20th and 21st centuries–including in Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, the USSR, Sudan, and Nazi-occupied Europe–genocide has been preceded by assiduous efforts to first disarm the intended victims. The heroic story of armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust helps explain why genocidaires are realistic when they worry so much about armed victims. At Holocaust remembrance ceremonies, speakers often contrast the world’s sincere pledge of “Never Again” with the fact of how much genocide has taken place since 1945. Remembering the inspiring history of the Jewish resistance to Holocaust can remind the world of one successful approach to reducing the number of victims of genocide.

TO READ ARTICLE