'It is better to fall from a bullet while running than to run to your grave': The bravery of the Jewish Ghetto rebels that we have not heard of
From the summer of 1942, and for a year onward, many Jews from the small ghettos went out to fight for their lives, but those revolts have been forgotten. Some were organized ahead of time, others were spontaneous, but all were characterized by heroism against the Nazi enemy.
When Leon Gershovich, an educator and historian who researches the history of the Soviet Union Jews, recounts the uprising of the Jews in the small town of Lakhva in September 1942, it is difficult not to get goosebumps. The centuries-old Jewish community of the town, today part of Belarus territory, was home to at least 2000 people right before the Holocaust. When the Germans captured Lakhva approximately two weeks after they invaded the Soviet Union, only a few Jewish residents managed to flee. The rest were trapped and waited for their demise.
At first, Berel (Dov) Loftin, the head of the town's Judenrat, succeeded in thwarting the mass murder of the town's Jewish population by bribing the Germans. Still, for them, it was only a temporary delay of the inevitable. At the beginning of April 1942, a ghetto was built in Lakhva, and in it, they placed not only the local Jews but also the Jews of the surrounding area.
In the face of the reports of the extermination of Jews in other towns, the young people living in the ghetto began organizing clandestinely. At first, they did this as a group of five people led by Yitzchak Rochtzin, commander of the Betar Movement's nest in Lakhva, and later another approximately 30 young people organized into similar groups. They hoarded cold weapons and forged connections with a partisan who was a town resident and with the Judenrat to acquire weapons.
On September 3rd, 1942, the Germans and the local police support encircled the ghetto. Rochtzin alerted the movement's members and wanted to breach the ghetto's fences immediately, but Loftin requested they wait until morning. When he discovered in the morning that the Germans were destroying the ghetto, he torched the Judenrat's establishment and sent people to set fire to the rest of the houses and warehouses in the ghetto.
"The resistance movement's members began a rebellion, at first in the southern part of the ghetto and afterward in its northern part," Doctor Gershovich recounts. "Rochtzin pounced on a German soldier, using an axe to crush his head. Other Germans shot and killed him. Under the cover of the raging fire and turmoil, about 1000 Jews in the ghetto breached the gates and fled. Loftin was injured but managed to reach the forest, as did 600 others. About 400 Jews were killed mid-flight. Six German and eight police support officers were killed, and some were injured.
"Most of those who fled were captured over the following few days. About 120 Lakhva Jews wanted to join the partisans in the area but were rejected by them. So, they established a Jewish partisan unit composed of 25 members that operated until January 1943, when its members left it to join Soviet partisan units. All in all, 90 of those who fled Lakhva survived to the end of the war."
Many do not know this story of the bravery of the uprising in Lakhva, like other stories of uprisings that occurred at that time in other small towns in the area. Most of them are commemorated, primarily in the local communities' Yizkor remembrance books, but were omitted from the central discourse of the teachings of the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance.
Gershovich, who will be presenting his research on the causes of these rebellions at an international conference that will take place in Warsaw initiated by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, explains that "there have been quite a few survivors of the most famous uprising in Warsaw, and because some have them were part of Israel's leadership when the state was established, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol."
A brave fight – and a tragic ending
"The ghetto uprisings began in mid-1942," says Gershovich. "They occurred in response to the rumors about the mass deportation or murder of Jews from nearby communities, in response to the Germans' attempts to exterminate the Jews, or because of reports regarding planned acts such as these. Some uprisings were preorganized, and some were spontaneous.
"Cases of spontaneous opposition by Jews in the ghettos to the murders committed by the Germans and their allies began as early as 1941 following the Nazis' invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of their murder of the Jewish population there. This is how it was, for example, in Pasvalys in Lithuania. But these were only individual cases with little to no success, and reports on them are few and far between."
Yitzchak Rochtzin, one of the Lakhva ghetto uprising's leaders, said: "We have nothing to lose. It is better to fall from a bullet while running than to run to your grave. There is a chance that some will succeed in fleeing and will avenge those who will be murdered."
In May 1942, the Radin Ghetto Uprising occurred in the west of today's Belarus. The tragic course of events in this town is similar to what will happen in three months in Lakhva and other places. On May 8th, the ghetto was encircled, and its gates were blocked, and two days later, 100 Jewish men were taken to dig pits outside the town. While digging, the men waited for a signal from the blacksmith Meir Stolier, and when they received it, they charged the guards with shovels and fled. Seventeen of them managed to escape, and the rest were shot. Approximately 1000 of the ghetto's residents were taken to the trenches and murdered there, while about 300 craftsmen and their families were left inside the ghetto. During the uprising, about 300 Jews managed to escape or hide. The ghetto ceased to operate about a month later when the Jews who were left alive or those who survived by hiding were transferred to the Szczuczyn Ghetto.
The Slonim Ghetto Uprising, also located in today's Belarus, was preplanned and occurred at the end of June 1942. Tunnels leading outside the ghetto were dug during the preparations, and on the morning of June 29th, the Jewish families entered them. The resistance movement members, led by David Epstein, fired upon the German soldiers and the police support force. At least five Germans were killed, and some were injured. Several Jews fled to the forests, and several dozen established a partisan combat group.
In retaliation to the uprising, the Nazis set fire to the ghetto, and it was destroyed by July 15th. Throughout those two weeks, thousands of Jews were murdered in their homes, on the streets, and inside the firing trenches near Slonim.
In September 1942, the Jews living in the Tuchin Ghetto, located in northwestern Ukraine of our time, rebelled.
Gecel Szwarcman, head of the local Judenrat, and his deputy, Meir Himmelfarb, began organizing an uprising along with other young people from Tuchin as early as July. They gathered weapons, prepared flammable materials, and organized groups of fighters for when the day came. The resistance movement fighters had rifles, guns, hand grenades, and a little ammunition.
On September 24th, the German officers and the Ukrainian cooperators encircled the ghetto and began raining fire upon it. Jewish fighters returned fire, and other Jews torched all the ghetto's houses and synagogues that the Germans converted into warehouses. The ghetto's fence was breached in several places.
Approximately 2000 of the ghetto's residents fled to the nearby Postomity forests, and two Ukrainian officers and several Germans were killed in the fighting. About 1000 of those who fled were captured within three days and were executed; approximately 300 women and children returned to the ghetto of their own volition because of the difficult conditions in the forest.
On September 26th, Szwarcman and Himmelfarb came forward to the Germans, identified themselves as the organizers of the uprising, and requested they be allowed to die in the Jewish cemetery. They were both shot and killed. Almost all those who remained in the forest died, were turned in, or murdered by the locals, and a few of the young Jewish people joined the Soviet partisan units.
In August 1943, the Jews of Hlybokaye, Belarus, rebelled. From 1942 resistance units comprised young people operating in the town's ghetto, several of whom joined the partisans. On August 15th, 1943, during a meeting of the resistance movement's leadership, they decided to rebel, blow up the town's government buildings and take advantage of the resulting turmoil to escape the ghetto.
The operation was even coordinated with the partisans in the area. On August 17th, the partisans attacked the Germans in the nearby towns and drew nearer to Hlybokaye. The Germans defended the town with tanks, cannons, and soldiers, and on August 18th, after a battle in which air support was also given to the Germans, the partisans were forced to retreat, and the Germans encircled the ghetto.
On the morning of August 19th, when the Germans attempted to enter the ghetto and locate Jews in hiding places, the resistance fighters began firing at them. Several armed Jews tried fleeing, but the Germans opened fire on them with machine guns and cannons, and most were killed. Only a few managed to escape. According to the partisans' data, about 100 Germans were killed in these battles. On August 20th, the ghetto was bombarded by planes, and many were killed. Almost all the Jews who remained in the ghetto, including Liberman, were killed in the act. The few survivors joined the partisans.
Human dilemmas that discouraged Jews from acting
Rochtzin's poignant words before the Lakhva Ghetto Uprising were echoed by others in the other towns where the Jews rebelled. "We need to be first, without fear, not to retreat," called Rochtzin to his comrades before the start of the battle. "If someone's fate is to fall in battle, he can find comfort in the fact that he has paved the way to life for others. We have nothing to lose. It is better to fall from a bullet while running than to run toward your grave. We have a chance that several will be able to escape and avenge those killed. Our goal – is forward, not retreat."
The chronicles of history may not have preserved the names of all the resistance leaders like Rochtzin in the other ghettos or the exact words they spoke. Still, the uprisings in Dzisna, Druya, Nyasvizh, Kletsk, Torchyn, Turiisk, Sarny, and Kostopil prove that at any given time, this was possible – desperate Jews did not go to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter.
In Tuchyn, the Germans and Ukrainians encircled the ghetto and began to rain fire on it. Jewish resistance fighters returned fire, and others torched all the ghetto's houses and synagogues that the Germans converted into warehouses.
Most of the uprisings occurred between the summers of 1942 and 1943, in an area that was once a part of Poland between the two world wars but became a part of the Soviet Union in September 1939 and today belongs to Belarus. This raises two main questions: why then and why there?
Gershovich reminds us that the debate on these matters began well before he began researching them. He explains that Yitzchak Arad, may his memory be blessed – a Holocaust researcher and a partisan himself who fought the Nazis in his youth – ascribed similar attributes to all the ghettos in which uprisings occurred: organization and the torching of the ghettos, the breach of the ghetto's fences and gates and escape into the forests. No less important is that these ghettos were characterized by the Judenrat's and the Jewish police's association in the underground organizations and the uprisings.
"The characteristics of the uprisings in the small ghettos can be divided into objective and subjective ones that are connected to the motives of the Jews who participated in the active resistance of the Germans," says Gershovich. "In the first group of motives, I include the element of topography –proximity to forested areas to which people can easily escape and from within it to wage partisan warfare, and also the element of land cover: most of the small ghettos were characterized by small one-story houses made of wood that did not provide hiding places and were not suited for urban warfare, but did allow people to relatively easily torch them and take advantage of the chaos to breach the fences and escape."
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