NOT LIKE SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER

Albert Ziegler

Holocaust Oral Historian

Dr. Timothy Pytell

Holocaust-Perpetrators and Victims

“Like Sheep to the Slaughter”

Abba Kovner

“…it is not just survival, but the quality of survival that is important: the question is, did one survive without abandoning a sense of morality, ethics, [and/or] humanity? If one survived by jettisoning that sense, one did not survive at all. But I must immediately add a rider to that, for a question that bothers me is that if I had had to hold out longer, would I have tried to do so at any cost-does there come a point at which you decide to cross, or not to cross, the moral boundary? And how conscious is the individual of that decision?”[1]

The Holocaust was a war against humanity. The Holocaust had two distinct objectives: dehumanization of the Jews, which was present from the beginning to the end and the genocide of the Jews that evolved later. The debate in regards to the resistance of the Jews, centers on both what was possible and what was not, which ultimately depended on circumstances. The controversy centers on the different gradations of resistance that run the gamut from heroic to stoic. Resistance to dehumanization does not include the struggle for survival under horrendous conditions, which is a fight for life; the fight for food and shelter is not the same as the struggle to maintain one’s humanity. The struggle not to succumb to the dehumanization process is resistance. This will be demonstrated through an examination of the many issues involved regarding resistance, various definitions of resistance, different forms resistance took, the influence of the past, the moral boundary, and the penalties for resistance.

Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg, and Henri Michel, all three noted historians, define resistance from distinctly different viewpoints. The manner in which acts of resistance are defined, determines whether an action or in-action can be classified as resistance. The proper definition is the key to a fuller understanding of the extent of behaviors or in-actions that fit under the classification of forms of resistance. Bauer asks, “What do we mean by resistance?”[2] Hilberg explains it thusly, “resistance is opposition to the perpetrator.”[3] Bauer analyzes Hilberg’s definition of resistance as follows, “…Hilberg…seems to regard armed resistance as the only, or nearly only, legitimate form of real resistance.”[4] Bauer criticizes Hilberg’s definition, for its minimization of the importance of acts of unarmed resistance. Bauer claims, unarmed resistance is a form of resistance and that, “…armed resistance during the Holocaust was possible only under conditions that most Jews did not enjoy.”[5] Bauer also explains that, “Henri Michel, perhaps the most important contemporary historian of anti-Nazi resistance, defines the term negatively: resistance was the maintenance of self-respect. He writes that ‘acceptance of defeat whilst still capable of fighting was to lose one’s self-respect.’”[6] Bauer himself defines “…Jewish resistance during the Holocaust as any group action consciously taken in opposition to known or surmised laws, actions, or intentions directed against the Jews by the Germans and their supporters.”[7] Bauer is correct in his analysis of Hilberg and Michel but his definition falls short as well. Jewish resistance during the Holocaust was, any action that engaged or that did not engage the oppressor, individual or group, armed or unarmed, consciously taken in opposition to the perpetrators’ enacted or perceived intentions of dehumanization, and/or murder of the Jews by the Germans, and/or their supporters. This included acts of defiance that preserved a person’s humanness. Michel writes that the “…’acceptance of defeat whilst still capable of fighting, was to lose one’s self-respect.’” Self-respect is the equivalent of maintaining a combination of moral character and dignity, their humanity. A person’s life can be taken, but you cannot take away their mind’s ability to remain human, unless that person allows it. The continuation of the battle to maintain one’s humanity, even while going to one’s death, is not an acceptance of defeat, it is resistance to dehumanization. Suicide to save others from pain and anguish or possibly death or as an inescapable choice between death and dehumanization was the maintenance of one’s humanity and an active action that prevented the perpetrators from achieving their goal, in the manner of the perpetrator’s choosing. Whether a person lived is not the seminal factor in determining whether the person resisted. From the first acts of marginalization to the implementation of the basest of barbaric acts, the Jews in most cases attempted to resist, if not their death, than their dehumanization, but there were penalties for resistance that required consideration. The penalties for resistance varied from place to place and time to time, as well as the circumstances, and the personal characteristics of the perpetrator and the victim. Bauer identifies, one penalty for a potential resister to consider as being the policy of “…collective responsibility. The Nazis murdered a great many persons in retribution for the rebellious acts or suspected sedition of the few.”[8] This policy, which targeted many victims as a response to resistance could include the family of the resister. As Bauer points out there was the “…fundamental problem of family responsibility.”[9] Any act, which did not follow directives precisely, was resistance. Many people died in physical acts of resistance. The fact that people did not engage in armed resistance does not equate to an acceptance of defeat. Resistance to dehumanization was the fight against the attempted destruction of one’s humanity as well as one’s life.

Resistance took many shapes, which connected the human mind to the fight against dehumanization. Armed resistance and sabotage are commonly thought to encompass the entire scope of resistance, but intentionally slow or shoddy work by forced laborers was a form of resistance, that is, if starvation or illness were not the cause of the slow or shoddy work. It constituted resistance, if the intent was to fight back in the only way they could against the Nazi regime. Anything a person did which slowed the pace of the destruction of the Jews, slowed, or stymied the Nazi war effort, was a form of resistance that did not engage the enemy. Sidney Iwens, Holocaust survivor, discussed one instance that occurred in December 1942, in the Daugavpils, Latvia ghetto:

While mother was preparing food in the laundry, Hinda said: ‘I want to show you something.’ She pulled out from under a blanket a black and velvety article of clothing. While we felt its silky softness, she explained: ‘This is a sealskin vest. I don’t want Mother to see it.’ And she put it back. The vests come from 322. They were supposed to protect Germans from the Russian winter and were probably issued only to pilots or officers. I couldn’t imagine regular soldiers getting something so valuable. Lately, in the 322 warehouse vests had been appearing and people had discovered that there was a very good market for them-Latvian ladies made fur coats and jackets from them. What happened when someone was caught with such a prize possession can well be imagined. When I said, ‘Don’t you think it’s too dangerous to handle something so hot?’ she answered, ‘What I am thinking is that, every time I get rid of one of these, a German has to freeze in the bitter Russian cold.’[10]

The fact that people analyzed how they could thwart Nazi plans shows the will to resist. This will permeated people’s thoughts, both as a means of desensitizing themselves to the extreme horrors they faced, and as an inspiration for the struggle to maintain their humanity. For some, maintaining one’s dignity and humanity meant the continued involvement of culture as a part of life. The importance of religious culture was demonstrated every moment that a Jew believed in God, against the will of the Third Reich. Religious observance was punishable by death, because the practice of Judaism was illegal. In the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania, Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a Halakhic authority said, “People, plain people, approached me with their questions. Because life was not normal and there was a war on, they were not always sure what the Torah required of them.”[11] Oshry fielded many inquiries that placed the observance of religious law against the cruel realities of a life and death struggle. A list of some of the spiritual issues he dealt with includes:

Cooking on the Sabbath in the ghetto
May a person save himself by causing the death of a fellow Jew
Critically ill patients fasting on Yom Kippur
Taking the property of the dead
Saving one's self with a Baptismal certificate
Passover in the ghetto
Risking one's life to study or to pray
Seeking out the murders of one’s parents
Using gold from the teeth of the dead
Women prostituted by Germans
Cannibalism

Religious Jews felt that religious observance fulfilled God’s commandments. Holocaust survivor, Philip Markowicz explained the importance of adaptation, which was sometimes possible in the ghettos, as a form of spiritual resistance:

Because my sister was working over there in the kitchen, she brought home potato peels. We washed them, we cleaned them, we cooked them, and we ate them. Then later we grind it, and…we made a Shabbat meal everything from potato peels, would you believe that?...We made Gefilte fish out of this, we grounded up potato peels and we put in sugar a little bit, and onions for taste, and then we made soup out of it, you know. Then we made; we fried little pancakes, like little latkes. And then for meat, we put in different kind of ingredients and made kind of meatballs out of it, you know. And then after the end even Tzimmes made out of it, all different kinds of things, carrots and things we put in it, you know.[12]

This adaptation of available food products to observe the Sabbath was for the Markowicz family a way to resist the attempted dehumanization of the Nazis and a way to fulfill God’s commandments. Bauer explain that the Markowicz family was not alone in their quest to maintain their religious observance. He relates that, “… there were in Warsaw alone some 600 illegal minyanim, groups of Jews praying together throughout the period when all public religious observance was forbidden.”[13] The quest for religious piety was present from the beginning of the horrors to the moment of death. The goal of eradication that evolved made it illegal to be Jewish, to continue practicing Jewish religious life, and to continue Jewish education. Bauer states that we should “consider the question of education. Until the late autumn of 1941, education of any kind was forbidden in Jewish Warsaw. But it took place clandestinely, in so-called complets where small groups of pupils would meet either in the soup kitchen or in the home of the teacher. We find evidence for this, in fact, in a large number of places in Poland. There were also clandestine high schools in Warsaw…”[14] Religious observances, as well as the continuance of education, were not the only forms of resistance available to many Jews, whether alone or in groups.

Acts of religious practice and education joined with cultural expression in the form of humor when possible. Laughter lightened the spirit by removing the victim from the fear that engulfed them every moment of everyday, while any bit of happiness, would be an example of the powerlessness of the Nazis to stifle Jewish optimism, thus laughter was a coping mechanism and a form of resistance. Did coping mechanisms like humor change the behaviors of the potential victims and contribute to their victimization? Author and Historian, Steve Lipman states:

Humor like religious profession, was a form of spiritual resistance among the oppressed. Where it ranked in the hierarchy of more substantive acts of opposition to the Nazis, and how it was related to them, is admittedly open to debate. Did humor make a more steadfast fighter? Or did it make an individual docile, less likely to retaliate? Is laughter ultimately ‘a safe and civilized alternative to violence?’ Both sides can be argued. During the Holocaust, religion and humor served a like-though not identical-purpose: the former oriented one’s thoughts to a better existence in the next world, the latter pointed to emotional salvation in this one. Both gave succor and provided an intellectual respite beyond the immediate physical surroundings.[15]

When all forms of armed resistance were unavailable, laughter and humor were forms of resistance that could not be taken away. The forms of resistance that were possible depended on whether a person was in a ghetto, labor camp, or death camp. More things were possible in a ghetto than in a labor camp or a death camp, but with that said, there were many acts of resistance. However, the questions raised above by Lipman require examination. “Did humor make a more steadfast fighter?”[16] If steadfast means relentless than at times it did, if a fighter sees the oppressor in a comical manner than it could have the effect of reducing the feeling of fear of the oppressor. “…did it make an individual docile, less likely to retaliate?”[17] If it removes the fear, it is less likely to make the individual docile, than to make them more unwavering. As far as the question “Is laughter ultimately ‘a safe and civilized alternative to violence’”[18] goes, laughter will not stop bullets nor will it negate the effects of poisonous gas. Laughter as a coping mechanism was dangerous. Going to a cabaret or even staying in your own home presented dangers when mockery was pointed at the Nazis, this did happen in the early days of the Third Reich. There was danger of arrests, beatings, and/or death. As Lipman states:

Jokes were made about every facet of life and death in the Nazi era. No target, including God himself and His prophets-the Jewish parentage of Jesus was often cited as endangering Christ’s life-was out of bounds. Starvation, disease, beatings, murder, and every form of persecution were grist for the victim’s joke mill. Nazi pomposity, the spotless uniforms, the exaggerated reports of military triumphs, and the hyperbolic use of language similarly leant themselves to mockery. Both the foibles of prominent German leaders and the behavior of ‘average’ Nazis-civilians and soldiers-became topics of underground wit. ‘The Nazis were easy to caricature,’ says Wolfgang Roth, a set designer who worked in Berlin’s cabaret world in the early days of the Third Reich.[19]

The Nazis could not stop the mind from thinking. Thinking is what kept people alive, always being aware and being prepared to act spontaneously, was a resistance mechanism. Bauer asks, “Can one speak of an unorganized, spontaneous action of Jews as expressing true resistance to Nazi enactments?”[20] The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. Often the choice to resist was unorganized and spontaneous, and based on circumstances unfolding at the very moment of decision, as well as the influences of the past.

The past influenced the actions of the entire world during the Holocaust, as it does in every age. The influence of the past played a major role in the reactions of Jews under Nazi control. In every era of history, in different parts of the world, Jews were the victims of oppression, degradation, and murder. Each of these periods of anguish passed, and again Jews lived in peace. Albeit exponentially, the Holocaust proved to be similar to all other Jewish persecutions through the ages in that, the end did eventually come, they did survive, and clinging to hope and their humanity, there was a rebirth of Jewish life. It has almost become instinctual for Jews to survive under the severest of conditions. Based on their historical sense and hope, the Holocaust victims thought that the Nazi era would pass as well. Noted historian, Isaiah Trunk and Hilberg viewed the influence of the past upon resistance in a similar manner, while Bauer perceives it from quite a different perspective from theirs. Raul Hilberg conveys the influence the past had on Jewish reaction this way, “They hoped that somehow the German drive would spend itself. This hope was founded in a 2,000-year-old experience.”[21] Again, the Jews had to rely on their historical sense when deciding whether to stay or emigrate, and this choice was only available at an early stage of the Holocaust’s development. For a person to emigrate there would have to be an available destination. For most people that was not possible since all the countries of the free world had turned their collective backs to them. To stay required a plan of survival, since there was no collective Jewish community to coordinate, an effective resistance effort. The free world and the totalitarian world would have allied themselves against an attack on Europe’s Christian population by the Jews as a pre-emptive strike when something that could not be imagined began to evolve into a reality. If this were, the course of action chosen by the Jews it would take weapons and necessary supplies, and a coordinated time to attack. Determining the proper time to attack and at precisely what locations to be successful is something that experts in warfare wrestle with to this day. The Jews of Europe could not defeat an army as powerful as Hitler’s army, when the countries of Europe were falling like dominos. That would then leave futile forms of armed resistance against unbeatable odds. That left resistance to dehumanization as one of the most prevalent and likely to be successful form of war available to the Jews. Knowledge of the past proved to the Jews that they were lost, even those that would not admit it to themselves. Yehuda Bauer disagrees with Hilberg’s premise that “…the lack of Jewish armed resistance to the Holocaust was a consequence of the fact that Jews during their long [D]iaspora had not had occasion to learn the art of self-defence.”[22] He states “Jews did defend themselves throughout the ages by force of arms when this was feasible or when they had no other choice…”[23] It was not feasible once the extermination process began, for the Jews to defeat the Nazis through armed Jewish resistance. In addition, Trunk explains that there is an “…instinct of self-preservation, which prompts people to resist the thought of imminent destruction and to cling to…hope...”[24] This hope or ‘instinct of self-preservation’ as Trunk calls it was grounded in history. This hope was the impetus of resistance, which the victims of the Holocaust so vividly displayed, resistance often based on hope; hope that the persecutions would cease before the person’s life did, and when it did, the person would have survived with their humanity, thus negating the Nazi attempt at dehumanization. In the words of a Holocaust survivor, “…it is not just survival, but the quality of survival that is important: the question is, did one survive without abandoning a sense of morality, ethics, [and/or] humanity? If one survived by jettisoning that sense, one did not survive at all.”[25] The battle to survive drove some people to cross a moral boundary, while for others, even as death beckoned, went to their death knowing that they had won the battle against dehumanization, they had maintained their dignity and humanity.

The choices in how one survived were not always choices, often they were forced upon the victim by circumstances. Forced cooperation/collaboration is not the same as voluntary cooperation/collaboration, it is not capitulation, and it is not succumbing to dehumanization. Nathan Nothman, Holocaust survivor, shared his horrific experience during an oral testimony thusly:

A German came in, maybe about 25 SS, he took three of us. We went into kindergarten. There was a kindergarten, not like in the ghetto, there was few hundred children, babies with pillows, but the pillows was, there was a pillow and there was attached like a string, so when you tied it…so the babies like a ya know…190 degree curve. So we went in and there was screaming and crying, and there was a nurse, he went to the nurse and killed her…shot her in the head with dum-dum bullets…the whole thing exploded. First time I saw it I said “Oh my god what’s going on”. Looking up to God and looking left to right but there was no one there, he said “Come on, take the two babies down and put them by the sidewalk” two babies, I can hardly carry one…and the baby were crying and they were smelly. We cannot do it, he said, “Shut your mouth” he shot one of us. I don’t know why, he put a gun to my temple, but I didn’t cry, I was, I didn’t care no more so he shot him, and I said “Why not, ya know, wonder, why not me I don’t know why” so we took the baby on the bottom and the baby on the top, and we grabbed it, and we grabbed the baby and we went down and I…I…heard the baby, (quick short gasping sounds) the baby, choking to death, so I took my teeth and lift the pillow so the baby could breathe. So I see, (more short gasping sounds), the baby’s trying to breathe, so we put the babies by the building, three, four, five lines the building was maybe a hundred feet, eighty feet, a hundred feet long…it was a beautiful day in March, the German came in with the German Lugar, shot each baby in the head, and he changed the clipper and shot everything…we was standing there, we don’t know what’s going on, I never in my life, I never saw something in my life, so we just said “God, my God you are Father from from from from, from everyone, do something about it” in our min, now the he kill everything, without cry without nothing he kill, but like he would kill a fly…Then came a horse with a buggy, and a big platform, you know, when you open the side, and you can lock it and the platform must be high like that (he points with his hand), so when they close that platform, he told us to schmiez, to throw the dead children onto that buggy. So would like to carry slowly the, he said, “No, throw it” so we supposed to take it by the hand or by the feet and throw it. Sometimes the pillow fell out, sometimes with the pillow, but when they shot with the dum-dum bullets, the whole thing exploded, so he tell us to clean everything with our hand, and put everything on the buggy, the human body, everything with our hand, we were bloody and a lot of times I throw that baby so the baby hit the, hit that gate and fell down on the floor, so, on the, on the concrete floor, so we supposed to clean up, and that was terrible, we were bloody, I was 15, 16, 17, 16.[26]

This was not cooperation, or collaboration; this was the attempted dehumanization of Nothman. The entire system of dehumanization, both ghetto and camp experiences demanded that people adjust their morality to the current environment, in order to survive. Sometimes, there was no choice; the best most Jews could do was to try to retain their humanity, and hope they were fortunate enough to survive. Their humanity, built upon the scattered morsels of memories of the past, proved they were not subhuman. Bauer points out when speaking about the Jews that, “they asserted several principles: that contrary to Nazi lore, they were human; that Jewish tradition, history, and values had a meaning for them in the face of Auschwitz; and that they wanted to assert their humanity in a Jewish way.”[27] Although most experiences were so horrendous that it was impossible for the survivor to ever recover from, and be able to re-implement their morality in full. For those who had a choice, and chose to voluntarily, enrich themselves or to collaborate beyond the necessary struggle for survival, meant they chose to succumb to dehumanization. Those who did only what was necessary to ensure their survival, did not voluntarily cooperate, or collaborate and demonstrated their righteousness. Although, when a Holocaust survivor reflected upon the issue of crossing the moral boundary, he had these questions, “…if I had had to hold out longer, would I have tried to do so at any cost-does there come a point at which you decide to cross, or not to cross, the moral boundary? And how conscious is the individual of that decision?”[28] Yehuda Bauer states that, “…there were uncounted instances of dehumanization in a stark fight for survival: bread was stolen from starving inmates by their comrades, violent struggles broke out over soup, over blankets, over work details – struggles which only too often ended with death.”[29] Survivor and author, Primo Levi, asserted that, “Survival without renunciation of any part of one’s own moral world-apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune-was conceded only to very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and saints.[30] The key words in that statement are “any part.”[31] Levi acknowledges that most people were not made of that fiber; he categorizes individuals into two groups “the saved and the drowned.”[32] The saved being those that abandoned their morality, because they had a better chance of surviving physically, and the drowned being those who held onto their morality, even at the cost of their lives. Which again brings us to the question; “…did one survive without abandoning a sense of morality, ethics, [and/or] humanity?”[33] Few people went through the Holocaust without abandoning some part of his or her dignity and humanity.

To resist dehumanization means to maintain one’s humanity, and not to succumb to the pressure to cooperate, or collaborate. Under the horrendous conditions of the Holocaust, people fought to survive, as well as fought against dehumanization. However, when no hope was left, some people did succumb to dehumanization. The Jewish councils were often forced, on penalty of death, to cooperate with and accommodate the Nazis. They were ordered to fill quotas for forced labor, and for resettlement to the east, a Nazi euphemism they did not fully understand. With this in mind, the council members analyzed which individuals had the best chance to survive, and those most likely to die, saving the strong and turning over the weak, choosing the latter group for resettlement. No doubt, that some members based their decisions not on those criteria, but rather on who they personally liked, or wanted to save. Those members choosing the later method cooperated and some could say collaborated, albeit perhaps because of the threat of death, but certainly not in an altruistic nature, but as a form of self-serving appeasement of the Nazis and themselves. Historian Isaiah Trunk, when discussing the ambiguity of Jewish councils indicates that decisions based on the “…traditional Jewish optimism that, perhaps, a miracle might yet mercifully come at the last minute,”[34] guided behaviors that saved many Jewish lives, and destroyed many Jewish lives as well. When examining this issue it is essential to distinguish between voluntary and forced cooperation and collaboration. Forced cooperation and collaboration does not take a person across the moral boundary. There is a difference between having no choice and culpability.

The Nazis did not accomplish the dehumanization of the Jews, without a fight, and were only successful in a limited way. The murder of six million Jews does not mean that the Jews capitulated and became sub-human. They may have been killed, but that does not equate to their submission. A wider definition of resistance provides us a clearer insight into the heroic struggle against insurmountable odds that took place. An examination of the many issues involved regarding resistance revealed that, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust was, any action that engaged or that did not engage the oppressor, individual or group, armed or unarmed, consciously taken in opposition to the perpetrators’ enacted or perceived intentions of dehumanization, and/or murder of the Jews by the Germans, and/or their supporters. This included acts of defiance that preserved a person’s humanity. This struggle, not to succumb to the dehumanization process was resistance. When Abba Kovner said the Jews were led ‘like sheep to the slaughter,’ he was wrong.

Selected Bibliography

Bauer, Yehuda. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and

Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk, 148-63. Boston, 2003.

Gill, Anton. The Journey Back from Hell: conversations with concentration camp survivors.

New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989.

Hilberg, Raul. “Two Thousand Years of Jewish Appeasement,” in The Holocaust: Problems and

Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk, 142-47. Boston, 2003.

Iwens, Sidney. How Dark The Heavens: 1400 days in the grip of Nazi terror. New York:

Shengold Publishers, Inc. 1992.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. 1961.

Lipman, Steve. Laughter in hell: the use of humor during the Holocaust. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991.

Markowicz, Phillip. Interview by Albert Ziegler 29 October 1995, Video recording Part 2, in possession of Author.

Nothman, Nathan. Interview by Albert Ziegler on 5 April 1992, Video recording, in possession

of Author.

Oshry, Rabbi Ephraim. Responsa From The Holocaust. New York: Judaica Press, 1983.

Trunk, Isaiah. “Why the Jewish Councils Cooperated,” in The Holocaust: Problems and

Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk, 163-76. Boston, 2003.

[1] Gill, Anton. The Journey Back from Hell: conversations with concentration camp survivors. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989. 389.

[2] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 148.

[3] Raul Hilberg. “Two Thousand Years of Jewish Appeasement,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk, Boston, 2003. 145.

[4] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 149.

[5] Ibid. pgs 149-50

[6] Ibid. pgs 148-49

[7] Ibid. pg 149

[8] Ibid. pg 153

[9] Ibid.

[10] Sidney Iwens, How Dark The Heavens: 1400 days in the grip of Nazi terror (New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1992) 118.

[11] Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Responsa From The Holocaust (New York: Judaica Press, 1983), ix.

[12] Phillip Markowicz, Interview by Albert Ziegler 29 October 1995, Video recording Part 2, in possession of Author. Integrity of grammar left intact.

[13] Ibid. pg 158

[14] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed Ibid. pg 157

[15] Steve Lipman, Laughter in hell: the use of humor during the Holocaust (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991), 11-12.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid. pg 19

[20] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 160.

[21] Raul Hilberg. “Two Thousand Years of Jewish Appeasement,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk, Boston, 2003. 147.

[22] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 149.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Isaiah Trunk. “Why the Jewish Councils Cooperated,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 168.

[25] Gill, Anton. The Journey Back from Hell: conversations with concentration camp survivors. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989. 389.

[26] Nathan Nothman. Interview by Albert Ziegler on 5 April 1992, Video recording, in possession of Author.

[27] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 162.

[28] Gill, Anton. The Journey Back from Hell: conversations with concentration camp survivors. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989. 389.

[29] Yehuda Bauer. “Forms of Jewish Resistance,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 162.

[30] Primo Levi. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. 1961. 84.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Gill, Anton. The Journey Back from Hell: conversations with concentration camp survivors. New York: William

Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989. 389.

[34] Isaiah Trunk. “Why the Jewish Councils Cooperated,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L. Niewyk. Boston, 2003. 169.