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RESISTANCE
A German train sabotaged
A GERMAN TRAIN SABOTAGED by Slovak partisans.
A GROUP OF DUTCH RESISTANCE
A GROUP OF DUTCH RESISTANCE members and hidden Jews crowded into a room, possibly listening to a clandestine radio. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hans Aussen.
A PARTISAN
A PARTISAN, is a “member of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory,” and during World War II these groups destroyed railroad tracks, blew up fortifications, ambushed German-occupied towns, and disrupted communications in order to stop the invading Nazis. The lives of partisans were incredibly tough. In most cases if a Jew escaped into the forest and encountered a 100% Russian or Polish groups they were robbed or shot. Most did not accept Jews unless they brought a weapon. Also notice there are no pictures of children because they could not survive there. There were a lot of Jews in the Markov Brigade because Col Markov' prewar wife was Jewish, so he was more accepting of young Jewish men and women.
A Polish resistance fighter
A POLISH RESISTANCE FIGHTER during the Warsaw Uprising, 1944. The woman is armed with a Błyskawica submachine gun, produced by the Polish Home Army, based on the British Sten submachine gun.
A VERY REAL THREAT
A VERY REAL THREAT: Jewish Elderly Resistance in Nazi Germany.
ARSÉNE TCHAKARIAN
ARSÉNE TCHAKARIAN speaking about the executions. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Arsène Tchakarian was the last surviving member of a Communist military unit in the French Resistance. Mainly Jews and immigrants, they risked everything to fight the Nazi occupation.
AS AN ADOLESCENT WILLY BRANDT
AS AN ADOLESCENT WILLY BRANDT. (1913–92). At the end of World War II, Willy Brandt set as his foremost goal the achievement of a lasting peace. Shortly after he became chancellor of West Germany, Brandt was honored with the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for his steady efforts to relax international tensions.
Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in Lübeck, Germany, on December 18, 1913. His mother was a saleswoman; he never knew his father. His grandfather reared him to be an ardent socialist. At the age of 14 he wrote for the local socialist newspaper. By 1930 he and other young Social Democrats were clashing with members of the Hitler Youth. When, as he wrote later, his country had become “enemy territory,” Brandt escaped in a fishing boat in 1933 and took the name Brandt. During World War II he worked as a journalist in Norway and Sweden while aiding anti-Nazi resistance forces. He took Norwegian citizenship. In 1947 Brandt was assigned as a press attaché to the Norwegian military mission in Berlin. Because he wanted to become active again in Germany’s politics, he applied for and received German citizenship.
Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in Lübeck, Germany, on December 18, 1913. His mother was a saleswoman; he never knew his father. His grandfather reared him to be an ardent socialist. At the age of 14 he wrote for the local socialist newspaper. By 1930 he and other young Social Democrats were clashing with members of the Hitler Youth. When, as he wrote later, his country had become “enemy territory,” Brandt escaped in a fishing boat in 1933 and took the name Brandt. During World War II he worked as a journalist in Norway and Sweden while aiding anti-Nazi resistance forces. He took Norwegian citizenship. In 1947 Brandt was assigned as a press attaché to the Norwegian military mission in Berlin. Because he wanted to become active again in Germany’s politics, he applied for and received German citizenship.
BELORUSSIAN RESISTANCE
BELORUSSIAN RESISTANCE, Byelorussian guerillas posing in a forest, circa 1943; note PPD-40 submachine gun, Mosin-Nagant M1891 rifle, and German bayonet. The partisan movement was so strong that by 1943–44 there were entire regions in occupied Belarus, where Soviet authority was re-established deep inside the German held territories. There were even partisan kolkhozes that were raising crops and livestock to produce food for the partisans. During the battles for liberation of Belarus, partisans were considered the fourth Belarusian front. As early as the spring of 1942 the Soviet partisans were able to effectively harass German troops and significantly hamper their operations in the region.
BIELSKI PARTISANS
BIELSKI PARTISANS, Jewish Partisans in the Naliboki Forest is located in Belarus, on the right bank of the Neman River in the Belarusian Ridge. The forest is a large complex that includes pine forests, swamps, and hilly areas. Once the Bielski brothers had gathered as many people as they could, they began to obtain as many guns as possible for their protection. When this was completed, the group went to the forest. This is a place where the Bielski brothers had spent a lot of time when they were young. The group created by the Bielski brothers grew to 100 members by the fall of 1942.
Camp uprising
CAMP UPRISING took place in the Kruszyna (1942), Minsk-Mazowiecki (1943), and Janowska (1943) camps. In several dozen camps prisoners organized escapes to join partisan units. Successful escapes were made, for example, from the Lipowa Street labor camp in Lublin. Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
Danish fishermen
DANISH FISHERMEN used this boat to carry Jews to safety in Sweden during the German occupation. Denmark, 1943 or 1944.
DANISH JEWS
DANISH JEWS being transported to Sweden
DR. GISELA PERL
DR. GISELA PERL was born in Siget (now belongs to Romania). After graduating high school, she went on to study medicine and later specialized in gynecology. With the Germans invasion of the city in 1944, Dr. Pearl was sent with her family to the ghetto and later to Auschwitz. Because of her medical background, she was sent to work in a clinic in the camp. Dr. Pearl is famous in the camp for helping pregnant women in abortions because, the debt of a pregnant woman, was dead in the gas cells, or undergoing difficult experiments by Dr. Mengele. Dr. Pearl performed the abortions late at night and in hiding, with her bare hands and without appropriate medical equipment, at considerable risk. Later Dr. Pearl was moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she lived until the liberation of the camp. After the release she became aware of the death of her family members, including her husband and son. Heartbroken, she tried to commit suicide but failed. Her daughter, Gabriella, who was hidden during the Holocaust, survived. In 1947 she immigrated to the United States. Her initial application for citizenship was met with refusal given by Americans' suspicions of collaborating with the Nazis in the war. Later, and in light of the involvement of American politicians in the matter, she received American citizenship in 1951 and returned to work as a gynecologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and became a world-renowned specialist in the field of fertility, it is said that she helped with the birth of more than 3,000 babies.
ELIAHU BORAKS, MEMBER OF JEWISH UNDERGROUND IN VILNA AND BIALYSTOK GHETTOS
ELIAHU BORAKS, member of Jewish underground in Vilna and Bialystok ghettos, at the outbreak of the war, he was drafted and served in the Polish army. In 1940 he arrived in Vilnius.
FIGHTERS OF THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING
FIGHTERS OF THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING, from right: Małka Zdrojewicz, Bluma and Rachela Wyszogrodzka. They took shelter in a bunker with a weapons cache and were forced out by SS soldiers. Bluma Wyszogrodzka was shot. Małka Zdrojewicz and Rachela Wyszogrodzka were marched to the Umschlagplatz and deported to Majdanek concentration camp, where Rachela Wyszogrodzka was murdered. Małka Zdrojewicz survived the war and moved to Israel.
FRANK BLAICHMAN
FRANK BLAICHMAN, born in the small town of Kamionka, Poland, on December 11, 1922, Frank Blaichman was just sixteen years old when the German army invaded his country in 1939. Following the invasion, German officials issued regulations intended to isolate the Jews and deprive them of their livelihood. Frank took great risks to help his parents and family survive these hardships. With a bicycle, he rode from the neighboring farms to nearby cities, buying and selling goods at each destination. He refused to wear the Star of David armband and traveled without the required permits, but his courage and fluent Polish ensured his safety. When word spread that the Jews of Kamionka were to be resettled in a nearby ghetto, Frank hid in a bushy area outside of town. He stayed with a friendly Polish farmer and then joined other Jews hiding in a nearby forest. In the forest, the threat of being discovered was constant and Polish hoodlums beat any women who left the encampment. Frank encouraged the men to organize a defense unit. He obtained firearms by posing as a Polish policeman, using an overcoat he had found. After a German attack on the partisans’ encampment killed eighty Jews, the survivors left the forest to hide with sympathetic farmers. Always on the move, they killed German collaborators, destroyed telephone lines, damaged dairy factories, and ambushed German patrols. Frank’s squad joined a larger all-Jewish unit, with strong ties to the Polish underground and Soviet army. They were responsible for protecting 200 Jews living in a forest encampment. Only 21, he was the youngest platoon commander in the unit and escorted the future prime minister of Poland to a secret meeting with Soviet high command.
FRENCH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS
FRENCH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS shooting at Nazi snipers. Credit...Getty Images
GERMAN RESISTANCE TO HITLER
GERMAN RESISTANCE TO HITLER, a group of leading Socialists arrives at the Kislau camp. Under SA guard, a group of leading Socialists arrives at the Kislau camp, one of the early concentration camps. Local Social Democratic party leader Ludwig Marum is fourth from the left in the line of arrivals. Kislau, Germany, May 16, 1933. Landesbildstelle Baden.
GROUP OF JEWISH PARTISANS
GROUP OF JEWISH PARTISANS, fighters in Soviet territories, circa 1942-1944. (Wiener Holocaust Library Collections)
GROUP PHOTO OF PARTISANS FROM THE VILNA GHETTO
GROUP PHOTO OF PARTISANS FROM THE VILNA GHETTO. Lithuania, circa 1942-1944. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
GROUP PORTRAIT
GROUP PORTRAIT, of a Jewish partisan unit operating in the Lithuanian forests. Many of its members had been involved in resistance activities in the Kovno ghetto. Lithuania, 1944.
GRYNSZPAN PARTISN GROUP
GRYNSZPAN PARTISAN GROUP, in the picture there are: Yechiel Chil Grynszpan, Dora and Abraham Grynszpan and my dear Zeev Litwak, the Patzan, on the right, the youngest of the group, Blima Lorber had the honor to be a friend of.
IRENA SENDLER
IRENA SENDLER, as head of the children’s section of Żegota, the Polish underground Council for Aid to Jews, Irena (“Jolonta”) Sendler regularly used her position as a social worker to enter the Warsaw ghetto and help smuggle children out. Hiding them in orphanages, convents, schools, hospitals, and private homes, she provided each child with a new identity, carefully recording in code their original names and placements so that surviving relatives could find them after the war. Arrested and tortured by the Gestapo (the German secret state police) in the fall of 1943, she was sentenced to death, but Żegota managed to rescue her before she could be executed. She assumed a new identity and continued her work for Żegota. Yad Vashem recognized Ms. Sendler with the Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965. She died in Warsaw, Poland, on May 12, 2008, following a long illness.
Jeanne Daman
JEANNE DAMAN, the Belgian teacher who was outraged by the persecution of the Jews and joined a rescue network.
JEWISH PARTISANS GRODNO AREA
JEWISH PARTISANS GRODNO AREA, the "Lenin" Partisan Brigade, active in the Zhetl region, Poland, during WWII. The Jews in Grodno were separated in two closed ghettos. The first ghetto was located in the center of the old city near the local fortress and crowded together 15,000 Jews classified as “productive.” The second, 1.5 miles away, held 10,000 in a larger area. Deportations from Grodno began in November 1942. Thousands of Jews were sent to Auschwitz, to the transit camp of Kielbasin (on their way to the death camps) and to Treblinka. Soviet troops liberated Grodno on July 14, 1944. About 200 Jews from the city were still alive, including partisans. Ambushed a German tank in Byelorussia (Belarus),1943.
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