Curriculum Links

Otto and Elise Hampel were a working-class couple who created a simple method of protest while living in Berlin during the early years of World War II. They composed postcards denouncing Hitler's government and left them in public places around the city. They were eventually caught, tried, and beheaded in Berlin's Plötzensee Prison in April 1943. Shortly after the end of the war, their Gestapo file was given to German novelist Hans Fallada, and their story inspired his 1947 novel translated into English and published in 2009 as "Every Man Dies Alone."

etween February 27 and March 6, 1943, a group of up to 200 non-Jewish Germans demonstrated outside the local Jewish community building at Rosenstraße 2-4, in Berlin. There, German police had incarcerated around 2,000 Jews—mostly Jewish males married to non-Jewish partners and the male children of these so-called mixed marriages. The non-Jewish family members of those incarcerated in the Rosenstraße believed that the Germans would deport their loved ones to killing centers. They based their belief on recent experiences of deportation operations and the fact that the German police rounded up and deported over 10,000 Jews from Berlin to Auschwitz. Their non-violent demonstration in the freezing cold outside the Rosenstraße community center aimed to prevent this deportation.

Fritz Gluckstein discusses multiple close calls with the Nazis in Berlin, his detainment at a Gestapo holding site at Rosenstrasse 2-4, and the subsequent public demonstration that brought about his release.

This exercise contains examples of people who disagreed with or even resisted the Nazi regime. By doing these exercises, you will be able to develop your understanding of empathy and the importance of making decisions and acting upon them, necessary qualities in protecting and upholding democratic values and human rights.

If you are unfamiliar with the story of the White Rose, get a feel for their heroism by simply reading what they wrote. Links to all 7 leaflets.

In the early summer of 1942, a group of Munich University students sought to evade co-optation by National Socialism and to preserve their intellectual independence. Their numbers included Hans and Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, and Willi Graf. They were influenced by their professor, Kurt Huber, with whom they discussed fundamental issues of the new political order. In the summer of 1942, the first White Rose leaflets called for resistance against the criminal dictatorship.

In 1942, amidst inexplicable evil and destruction, a small group of University of Munich students and one professor found themselves morally incapable of remaining complicit. Through the publication and distribution of six anti-Nazi leaflets, the members of the White Rose implored their countrymen to rise against the government by asking them to consider the “dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes- crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure- reach the light of day.”

George J. Wittenstein, a surviving member of the White Rose, a Hitler resistance organization, discusses how history is created and defined depending on the author. He also recounts his experiences during WWII.

In 1942 Hans Scholl, a medical student at the University of Munich, his sister Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, and Alexander Schmorell founded the “White Rose” movement, one of the few German groups that spoke out against Nazi genocidal policies.

Read the United Partisan Organization’s call for the Jews of Vilna to take armed resistance against the Nazis.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum founded a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events taking place in German-occupied Poland while the ghetto existed. This archive came to be known as the “Oneg Shabbat” (literally “Joy of the Sabbath,” also known as the Ringelblum Archive).

The Oneg Shabbat Archives is the most significant collection of sources in the world documenting the Holocaust - sources that were created, gathered, and written by the victims themselves, in real time, at the moment when they were experiencing the horrors. The Archives is comprised of diaries and notes, memoirs, photographs, clandestine newspapers, monographs, letters and more - all of which are of inestimable value in the study of the living conditions, the creativity, the struggle and the murder of Polish Jewry.

Emanuel Ringelblum and the milk can archives of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A six-day lesson plan for middle school created by Sol A. Factor, Cleveland Heights High School.

Using a graphic novel format, explore the life of Emanuel Ringelblum.

With the beginning of the Great Deportation of Warsaw Jewry to the Treblinka extermination camp, members of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive sought shelter for the Archive and decided that it was to be buried, despite the risks involved. Their hope was that it would one day be retrieved and serve as a testament to the murder of Polish Jewry. The archival collections included original research, testimonies and documents, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and artworks. Among those entrusted with the task of burying the Archive were two educators, Israel Lichtenstein and his wife, painter Gele Sekstein. Shortly before burying the Archives, they added their own wills, describing their lives and lamenting the fate of Europe’s Jews.

Official report prepared by General Jürgen Stroop for the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, recounting the German suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto in the spring of 1943.

Jewish resistance to the Holocaust did not just involve fighting. Oneg Shabbat was a project organised by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum which attempted to record Jewish life in occupied Warsaw by collecting items such as diaries, newspapers, poems and even sweet wrappers. When deportations to Treblinka began in the summer of 1942, a section of the Oneg Shabbat archive was buried in metal boxes in the ghetto; two later caches were buried in 1943. One of the three men who buried the archives was David Graber, who was 19. He added this last letter.

Szmul Zygielbojm was a Jewish socialist politician who was a member of the Polish government-in-exile, which was based in London. He had played a leading role in trying to make western governments and the public opinion aware of the Holocaust when detailed reports emerged from Poland in 1942. However, he grew frustrated with what he saw as the indifference of the Allies. On 12 May 1943, during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he committed suicide in London, leaving this note.

Learn about the largest act of resistance by Jews against the Nazis, mounted by prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Seven interviewees describe their roles in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Transcript available. English.

Benjamin Meed describes the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the 1943 ghetto uprising [Interview: 1990].

Estelle Laughlin discusses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when German forces, intending to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, were stunned by an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family hid in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.

Describes clandestine cultural activities in the Warsaw Ghetto.

His parents and older sister perished in the ghetto, and his younger sister was a member of Janusz Korczak's orphanage. As a member of the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw Ghetto, Israel Gutman was wounded in the uprising. From Warsaw he was taken to Majdanek, and from there to Auschwitz. In May 1945 he was sent on the death march to Mauthausen. In total, he spent two years in the camps. After the war he helped in the rehabilitation of survivors, was active in the Bericha movement, and immigrated to Palestine in 1946.

Photos of the uprising.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who headed the Jewish Self-Help Society (Jewish relief organization) in Warsaw, asked Rachel Auerbach to organize a public kitchen. Once Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, public kitchens supplied the hungry masses with a daily meal. Auerbach heeded Ringelblum's request. She also became a member of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive. In this capacity she documented the sights she encountered in her everyday work and the starvation of the Ghetto's inhabitants (approx. 450,000 people). Auerbach was one of three of the Archive's members to survive the war. She dedicated her life to the documentation of and research into the Holocaust.

Peretz Opoczynski was a journalist, writer, and educator. During World War II Opoczynski was a member of the underground archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”). Opoczynski documented the sights he saw and his experiences as a mailman in the ghetto.

Abraham Lewin, an educator and a member of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive maintained a diary depicting the wartime events in the Warsaw ghetto. It is rare in that it covers in real time the Great Deportation of the summer 1942, during which some 265,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in Treblinka, and some 10,000 were murdered within the ghetto. Abraham Lewin survived the Great Deportation and continued documenting the tragic events of the ghetto until his capture by the Nazis.

A brief animated overview of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the events leading up to it. The first widespread civil uprising to take place during World War 2, the uprising has become a symbol of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Part of Yad Vashem's "Key Historical Concepts in Holocaust Education" video series.

An educational film about Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It begins with Jewish life in Warsaw and progresses through ghetto life and the ultimate uprising.

This educational version of the documentary tells the story of the Oyneg Shabes archive, created by a clandestine group in the Warsaw Ghetto who vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda by detailing life in the ghetto from the Jewish perspective.

Includes a downloadable Study Guide to the film "Uprising."

Reflections on life in the Warsaw ghetto written by Rachel Auerbach from the Aryan side of Warsaw, November 1943.

The story of Reidar Dittmann, a member of the Norwegian Resistance. Includes a 15-minute video interview.

In the face of Nazi terror, many Jews resisted the Germans and their collaborators. Underground resistance movements developed in over 100 ghettos in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. Further, under the most adverse conditions, Jewish prisoners succeeded in initiating uprisings in some of the Nazi camps. Jewish partisan units operated in France, Belgium, the Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, and Poland. Jews also fought in general French, Italian, Yugoslav, Greek, and Soviet resistance organizations. While organized armed resistance was the most direct form of opposition to the Nazis, resistance also included escape, hiding, cultural activity, and other acts of spiritual preservation.

List of names with links to full bios.

As an expert forger of identity papers, Alice Cohn worked with a Utrecht-based resistance group (The Utrecht Children's Committee) while in hiding. Their production of so-called “wild papers,” including ID and ration cards, saved up to 350 Jewish children from the Nazis. During the war’s final year, Cohn’s handiwork helped prevent young Dutch men from being sent to Germany as forced laborers.

Extensive website on Jewish Partisans, including e-learning opportunities, videos, and lessons.

This is a 4-part piece. Advance at the bottom of the page.

This exercise contains examples of people who disagreed with, or even resisted, the Nazi regime. By the end of this activity you will have developed your understanding of empathy and the importance of making decisions and acting upon them; all necessary attributes in protecting and upholding democratic values and human rights.

Students learn the various forms of resistance during the Holocaust and explore examples from 1933–45.

Students explore the stories of individuals, groups, and nations who made choices to resist the Nazis, as well as the bystanders who decided to remain silent.

Three years after Vera Laska joined the Czechoslovak underground railroad, she was arrested at the age of fifteen and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a political prisoner. Throughout her testimony, Vera engagingly describes her refusal to feel powerless despite overwhelming adversity. The lesson’s theme, Power of Resistance, examines the relationship between Vera’s beliefs and actions in her experiences during the Holocaust. Includes video (30:52), Background on Non-Jewish Resistance, and Lesson Packet.

Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements developed in about 100 Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. Their main goals were to organize uprisings, break out of the ghettos, and join partisan units in the fight against the Germans. The Jews knew that uprisings would not stop the Germans and that only a handful of fighters would succeed in escaping to join with partisans. Still, Jews made the decision to resist. Further, under the most adverse conditions, Jewish prisoners succeeded in initiating resistance and uprisings in some Nazi concentration camps, and even in the killing centers of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. Other camp uprisings took place in camps such as Kruszyna (1942), Minsk Mazowiecki (1943), and Janowska (1943). In several dozen camps prisoners organized escapes to join partisan units.

Despite enormous obstacles, many Jews throughout German-occupied Europe attempted armed resistance against the Germans. Individual Jews or groups of Jews engaged in planned or spontaneous opposition to the Germans and their allies. Jewish partisans were especially active in the east, where they fought the Germans from bases established behind the front lines in forests and ghettos. Because antisemitism was widespread there, they found little support among the surrounding population. Even so, as many as 20,000 Jews fought the Germans in the forests of eastern Europe.

A look at resistance by Jews to the persecution and genocide committed by the Nazis and their collaborators across Europe between 1941 and 1945.

This 24-page piece addresses: Youth Protests, the White Rose, Resistance from the Christian Churches, and Military Resistance Against Hitler.

Includes list of Jewish Resistance Groups, their area of activity, the name of the organization, and their leadership.

Jules-Geraud Saliege was a French Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishhop of Toulouse from 1928 until his death in 1956. During the Nazi occupation of France, he was outspoken in attacking the German treatment of Jews and conscription of Frenchmen. For his criticism of the Nazis' and Vichy's anti-Jewish policies, he was praised by the Vatican newspaper. Saliege was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem in 1969.

Faye Shulman was born in Poland in 1924. She received her first camera from her brother when she was 13, and it was that camera which ultimately saved her life, and allowed her to later document Jewish partisan activity. She is one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers. Schulman's rare collection of images captures the camaraderie, horror and loss, bravery and triumph of the rag-tag, tough partisan—some Jewish, some not—who fought the Germans and their collaborators.

From late 1942 onwards, increasing numbers of young Jews escaped from ghettos and formed partisan groups which fought the Nazis. The largest groups of Jewish partisans were based in the forests of eastern Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The following song became the anthem of these partisan groups. It was written in Yiddish by Hirsh Glik, a young poet in the Vilna Ghetto, after he heard news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

While many non-Jews exploited the Holocaust for personal gain or reacted with indifference, a courageous minority took action. One of them was Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a writer and a member of the Polish resistance movement. Kossak-Szczucka was a strong Polish nationalist and was widely regarded as an antisemite. When the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp began, she published a pamphlet entitled ‘Protest!’ in which she condemned the passivity of the world in the face of mass murder. These are some extracts from ‘Protest!’.

On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebel after learning that they were going to be killed. Members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV rose in revolt.

Investigate different examples of protest and resistance by Germans against the Nazi regime in the 1940;s, including the White Rose resistance group.

Learn about the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Kids, two German youth groups that questioned Nazism.

Read a secretly-published 1942 pamphlet entitled “Protest” that condemned the deportation and murder of Jews.

This pamphlet explores examples of armed and unarmed resistance by Jews and other Holocaust victims.

Includes links to many topics.

Links to myriads of topics on the JVL site.

Links to many other specific topics.

Spiritual resistance during the Holocaust refers to attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity, personal integrity, dignity, and sense of civilization in the face of Nazi attempts to dehumanize and degrade them.

Holocaust survivors Vitka Kovner, Joseph (Julik) Harmatz and Baruch Shub describe partisan activities. Hebrew with English subtitles.

Holocaust survivor Anna Heilman recalls her part in a revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was a prisoner, and describes the aftermath of the revolt.

Baruch Shub was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1924, the second child in a Hassidic family of six. In 1939 the Soviets conquered Vilnius, and in June 1940 the city was annexed and Communist rule instituted. Consequently, the universities were opened to Jews, and Baruch went to study mechanical engineering. In June 1941, the Germans conquered Vilnius and began murdering Jews in Ponary. Baruch found work at a German garage repairing military vehicles. In September the Jews of Vilnius were confined to a ghetto. Baruch and his older sister, Zipporah, hid in a truck travelling to Radoszkovice, where Baruch found work again in a German garage. On 11 March 1942, the Jews were ordered to gather in the town square. From his hiding place in the garage, Baruch saw a huge line of people, including children, moving slowly towards a barn. The sound of shooting could be heard. At night, the barn caught fire and a thick stench filled the skies. Zipporah was among the 840 Jews murdered there that day. After the ghetto was set up, the Jewish youth established an underground movement in the ghetto, bought weapons and prepared to escape to the forests to join the partisans. However, the Germans threatened death should anyone be found missing from the ghetto, and their activities ceased. After hearing from his mother in Vilnius, Baruch returned to his hometown, where he worked in German manufacturing plants. He established an underground movement with his friend Yaakov (Kuba) Koshkin, and later joined the FPO (United Partisans Organization). In September 1943, the Germans carried out a number of aktionen (roundups of Jews in preparation for their deportation to concentration, forced labor or death camps). Following an armed clash with the Germans, Baruch and some friends joined a group of partisans in the Rudnicki Forest. Two weeks later, the Vilnius ghetto was liquidated. Baruch enlisted in a Russian paratrooper unit, participating in various military operations. In July 1944, the Red Army conquered Vilnius, and Baruch discovered that his entire family had been murdered. After his army discharge, he decided to emigrate to Eretz Israel, finally arriving in October 1945. He was recruited to the Haganah, serving as an airplane technician during the War of Independence. Two years later he transferred to El Al, rising through company ranks to Chief Flight Engineer. After 33 years, he retired. Hebrew with English subtitles.

Holocaust survivor Vera Laska describes her teenage experience as part of the resistance against the Nazis in Czechoslovakia.

Joseph Cooper, a Holocaust Survivor, talks about how he risked his life by singing Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur at Sosnowiec concentration camp. Joseph was born in Kielce, Poland, to orthodox Jewish parents. He spent three years in the confines of the Kielce ghetto and in 1943 was deported to Pionki labour camp to do forced labour. In 1944, he was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where he endured brutal treatment. Even in the most deplorable of conditions, he maintained his faith through song. After surviving a death march, Joseph was liberated at Ebensee concentration camp by the American Army in 1945. In 1948, he immigrated to Canada, serving for 49 years as cantor for the largest conservative synagogue in Canada.

Ruth Brand talks about the decision to fast on Yom Kippur—also known as the Day of Atonement—in Auschwitz II-Birkenau as a form of resistance.

Saul Reichert was born in 1930 in Zgierz, Poland but he grew up in Pabianice. Soon after the occupying German forces established the ghetto, Saul’s family was forced to move in. In 1942 they were transferred to the Lodz ghetto and in 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this excerpt, Saul recalls how they celebrated Rosh Hashanah in the camp.

Holocaust survivors Thea Epstein, Moshe Alpan, and Ephraim Agmon describe the underground resistance movements in France and Hungary.

Samuel Rajzman was one of the very few survivors of the Treblinka death camp - he was lucky enough to escape. The testimony (in writing) he gave, more than 60 years ago, is still important to understand the enormity of the crimes committed in that death camp and in the Final Solution.

Jewish inmates organized a resistance group in Treblinka in early 1943. When camp operations neared completion, the prisoners feared they would be killed and the camp dismantled. During the late spring and summer of 1943, the resistance leaders decided to revolt.

Nothing remains of Treblinka extermination camp apart from the ashes of the estimated 870,000 mostly Jewish men, women and children that the Nazis gassed and buried underground. Samuel Willenberg is the last survivor of the Jewish prisoners' revolt in the camp and he had returned for the 70th anniversary.

Dr. Paul Bookbinder, University of Massachusetts, discusses the roles of bystanders and resisters during the Holocaust.

Short documentary films made from a collection of 50 original interviews with surviving Jewish Partisans.

A common question when we’re studying about the Holocaust is, “Why didn’t the Jews resist?” But they did. In this video we discuss different forms and types of resistance, both spiritual and armed. In the unprecedented inhumanity of the Holocaust there were Jews who found the strength and the courage, both physical and spiritual, to retain their humanity and resist hopelessness and dehumanization. The story of their resistance is a human story that shows the heights that human beings can reach even in the depths of despair.

In this event hosted by USC Shoah Foundation, in partnership with Writer's Bloc and Holocaust Museum LA, Nancy Spielberg and author Judy Batalion engage in a riveting conversation about the untold tales of determination, cunning, and courage of women who fought the Nazis. Batalion unveils countless stories of ingenuity, ferocity, and daring by girls and young women who fought the Nazis in Hitler’s ghettos in Poland. They blew up trains. They smuggled food and guns. They distributed false papers. They built bombs from a recipe unearthed in an old Russian pamphlet. They bought munitions. They spied. They sabotaged Hitler’s supply lines. They killed Nazis. These “ghetto girls” used their brilliance, their bravery, and often their beauty, to fight their captors.

This 78-minute film weaves together excerpts from testimonies of Holocaust survivors recorded in 1993. These Jewish men and women are from countries of both eastern and western Europe and secular and religious backgrounds. They share how they struggled to live, cope, and maintain their humanity under extreme conditions of deprivation, terror, and mass murder. Some survived in hiding, others in Nazi camps. Some evaded deportations to death camps to join the anti-Nazi resistance or engaged in acts of sabotage as forced laborers. Some benefited from that all too rare assistance offered by non-Jews to help hunted Jews. Three of them lived to tell an extraordinary escape story. Regardless of their situation, everyone required not only physical strength but also, as some would say, luck, in order to survive. They also exhibited remarkable resilience and relied on inner courage, even after many of their family members had been killed.

This film tells the story of the Bielski brothers’ resistance against the Nazis and rescue of 1200 Jews during World War II.

The Bielskis saved over 1,200 people in their all Jewish partisan unit in wartime Poland, and is the single largest rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust. This film is part of JPEF's on-line course on teaching with the motion picture "Defiance".

During the Holocaust, more than 3,000 women fought back against the Nazis in ghettos, forced labor camps, concentration camps, and partisan units. In this program, Dr. Lori Weintrob, Director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center, explores the heroic lives and legacies of these female resistance fighters in conversation with Rokhl Kafrissen, Yiddish culture writer and Tablet Magazine contributor, and Rachel Roth, a survivor of Auschwitz.

On August 2nd, 1943, the underground Jewish resistance in Treblinka staged a revolt against the Nazi guards. The camp had been created with one sole purpose: To enable the mass murder of Jews. Between 870,000 and 925,000 people were killed in Treblinka; most were gassed upon arrival.