Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

For the resistance survivors and in remembrance of their families and comrades, and for the memory of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Warsaw who fought with spirit and will.

Acknowledgements
 Introduction: Memory, Resistance and Reclaiming the Self 1 1 The Moral Justification for Killing 9 2 Collective Trauma: The Disintegration of Ethics 27 3 The Moral Position of Violence: Bielski Survivors 55 4 The Moral Goodness of Violence: Necessity

in the Forests 79 5 Spiritual Resistance: Understanding its Meaning 103 6 Condemned Spirit and the Moral Arguments of Faith 121 7 The Silence of Faith Facing the Emptied-out Self 141 8 Law and Spirit in Terrible Times 155
Notes
169
Bibliography
189
Index
199

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I am grateful to a number of individuals and organizations for invaluable aid and assistance during the writing of this book. I would like to thank the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Shoah Foundation, both in Los Angeles, for their help in locating resis
tance survivors. I am also indebted to Wendy Lower and Paul Shapiro and their staff, of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for allowing me access to the library, archives and working space within the Museum. Also I would like to thank Michael Haley-Goldman for his archival assistance at the Museum.

Pieces of this research were developed in a number of invited pre
sentations: The George Washington University Seminar in Political Psychology and Leadership (The
Judenrat
and Collaboration), December 1997; The Washington School of Psychiatry, Seminar in Group Psychology (Resistance, Collaboration and Groups in the Holocaust), January 1998; The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital: Grand Rounds Lecture (The Impact of Violence on the Self), July 1998; The United States Holocaust Conference in Millersville, PA, Plenary Session (Mass Murder and the Actions of Jewish Resistance), April 1998; The Austin Riggs Center, Conference on ‘Psychosis and its Social Context’, Stockbridge, MA (Resistance, Madness and Voices of Sanity), October 1998; the Conference for the Study of Organizational Change, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO (The Psychology of Organization in Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust), September 1998; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Noon Lecture Series (Franz Fanon’s Theory of Violence and Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust), May 1999; The United States Department of State, Secretary’s Open Forum (The Psychology of Genocide and the Psychology of Resistance), June 1999; the United States Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Alexandria, VA (The Concept of ‘Worthless Life’ and the Jewish Resistors’ Reaction and Action), October 2000; California State University at Long Beach, Lecture Series (Moral Issues in Jewish Resistance and Annihilatory Violence), November 2002.

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Mitch Branff, of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation in San Francisco, was most generous in helping me locate resistance survivors and in speaking to me about their experiences. Thanks are also due to Shaare Tefile congregation in Silver Spring, Maryland and B’nai Shalom congregation in Olney, Maryland for the opportu
nity to speak with the members about Jewish resistance and the psy
chological position of the survivor. For research support and funding I would like to thank the Provost’s Office of the University of Maryland College Park for the Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award, 2002–3, and its research stipend.

I am indebted to conversations with Miles Lerman, founder of the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Yitzhak Arad, both resistance survivors, who gave me valuable insights into the facts and experience of resistance and its psychology. Also, the research would not have been possible without the cooperation and conver
sation with the many resistance survivors who graciously offered me their time, hospitality and recollection. I am particularly grateful to Shlomo Berger, Vernon Rusheen, Ben Kamm, Sonia Bielski, Sonia Oshman, Leah Johnson, Charles and Sarah Bedzow, Aaron (Bielski) Bell, Elsi Shor, Frank Blaichman and Simon Trakinski. These resis
tance survivors were not only generous with their time, but willing to respond to questions that moved into emotionally troubling areas. I would also like to thank Zvi Bielski who gave me invaluable insights into the actions of his father, Zush Bielski, and his uncle, Tuvia Bielski.

A number of friends and colleagues commented on different phases of the typescript and its development. I would like to thank Bob Alperin, Benjamin Barber, Mary Caputi, Michael Diamond, Jane Flax, Roger Haydon, Jerrold Post, Seymour Rubenfeld, Mark Warren and Victor Wolfenstein. Mark Lichbach and Fred Alford read the entire typescript, and their suggestions were critical in the various permutations of the approach and the ethical, religious and theolog
ical issues pertaining to Jewish resistance. I would also like to thank my typist Flora Paoli who, over the years, has been an inspiring source of information, technical intelligence and editing. Her painstaking care in transforming scribbled-over text into a neat typescript has been an art that guides and informs my writing.

Finally, without the patience and tolerance of my family – my wife, Cyndi, and my sons, Jeremy and Jason – I never would have had the emotional space to complete this study. For their under
standing and occasional interruptions, which unknown to them were essential for my own mental equilibrium over the course of writing this book, I am grateful.