How rebel groups form in genocide: The Warsaw Ghetto fighters

2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110466
Author(s):  
Julia Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Capacity Building ◽  
Power Asymmetry ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
Formation And Evolution ◽  
Rebel Group ◽  
Group Mobilization

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is emblematic of armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust; it should also be emblematic of rebel organization formation and capacity building in the most extreme power asymmetry. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened because civilians who were directly experiencing a genocide formed rebel organizations that gained the capacity to hold territory. Drawing from video testimonies and memoirs of survivors, diaries of witnesses, and the work of historians, this study analyzes the formation and evolution of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) to create and begin to validate a generalizable theory on how rebel organizations form in genocide, and how they create the capacity to hold territory from the genocidal opponent. The ŻOB evolved from a violent resistance organization to a rebel organization with a military infrastructure that could hold territory against the Nazis; further, it was this capacity to hold territory that allowed the ŻOB to win the survival of many Jews. These findings offer important insights on the possibility of rebel group mobilization against genocidal persecution, and can be used to understand contemporary genocide resisters.

Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Einwohner ◽  
Thomas Maher
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Study Design ◽  
Threat Assessment ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Death Camp ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Resistance

Recent work in the field of social movements has argued for the importance of threat as a factor that explains the emergence of collective action. However, threat remains poorly specified and understood. This article seeks to refine the concept of threat and its role in mobilization with an examination of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Our study design compares two cases where resistance took place (the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sobibór death camp) with two cases where resistance did not occur (the Łódź Ghetto and the Bełżec death camp). Our comparison of these cases finds that mass resistance occurred only when and where Jews correctly assessed the threats facing them. We use these findings to identify five dimensions of threat: severity, temporality, applicability, malleability, and credibility. We argue that recognizing these dimensions and the ways they interact is especially useful for understanding action in repressive contexts.

The Author of Himself

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Television Program ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
History Of

The author of this book was born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1920, and he moved to Berlin as a boy. There he discovered his passion for literature and began a complex affair with German culture. In 1938, his family was deported back to Poland, where German occupation forced him into the Warsaw Ghetto. As a member of the Jewish resistance, a translator for the Jewish Council, and a man who personally experienced the ghetto's inhumane conditions, the author gained both a bird's-eye and ground-level view of Nazi barbarism. His account of this episode is among the most compelling and dramatic ever recorded. He escaped with his wife and spent two years hiding in the cellar of Polish peasants. After liberation, he joined and then fell out with the Communist Party and was temporarily imprisoned. He began writing and soon became Poland's foremost critical commentator on German literature. When he returned to Germany in 1958, his rise was meteoric. He claimed national celebrity and notoriety as the head of the literary section of the leading newspaper and host of his own television program. He frequently flabbergasted viewers with his bold pronouncements and flexed his power to make or break a writer's career. This, together with his keen critical instincts, makes his memoir an indispensable guide to contemporary German culture as well as an absorbing eyewitness history of some of the twentieth century's most important events.

scholarly journals The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of “The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by Day”

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Izabela Olszewska
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Day By Day

The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by DayThe Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is one of the most significant testimonies of the annihilation of Polish Jews to be preserved in social life documents, mainly written reports and photographs. The founder of the Archive, Emanuel Ringelblum, described the purpose of the collected materials as follows: “We wanted the events in every town, the experiences of every Jew – and every Jew during this war is a world unto himself – to be conveyed in the simplest, most faithful manner. Every redundant word, every literary addition or embellishment, stood out, causing a sense of dissonance and distaste. The life of Jews during this war is so tragic that not a single extra word is needed”. The aim of the paper is a linguistic analysis of the drastic language of the Holocaust on the basis of The Ringelblum Archive: Annihilation - Day by Day. Język okrucieństwa Holokaustu na przykładzie Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu ZagładyPodziemne Archiwum Getta Warszawskiego jest jednym z najważniejszych świadectw zagłady polskich Żydów zachowanych w dokumentach życia społecznego, głównie w reportażach i fotografiach. Założyciel Archiwum, Emanuel Ringelblum, następująco opisał cel zebranych materiałów: „Chcieliśmy, aby wydarzenia w każdym mieście, doświadczenia każdego Żyda – a każdy Żyd w czasie tej wojny jest światem dla siebie – były przekazywane w najprostszy, najwierniejszy sposób. Każde zbędne słowo, każdy dodatek literacki czy ozdoba wyróżniały się, powodując poczucie dysonansu i niesmaku. Życie Żydów w czasie tej wojny jest tak tragiczne, że nie potrzeba ani jednego dodatkowego słowa”. Celem artykułu jest analiza lingwistyczna drastycznego języka Holokaustu na podstawie książki Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu Zagłady.

Remediation and hypermediacy: Ezekiel’s World as a case in point

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-229
Author(s):  
Ayelet Kohn ◽  
Rachel Weissbrod
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
World War ◽  
Graphic Narrative ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Graphic Narratives ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
Resistance Movement

This article deals with Kovner’s graphic narrative Ezekiel’s World (2015) as a case of remediation and hypermediacy. The term ‘remediation’ refers to adaptations which involve the transformation of the original work into another medium. While some adaptations strive to eliminate the marks of the previous medium, others highlight the interplay between different media, resulting in ‘hypermediacy’. The latter approach characterizes Ezekiel’s World due to its unique blend of artistic materials adapted from different media. The author, Michael Kovner, uses his paintings to depict the story of Ezekiel – an imaginary figure based on his father, the poet Abba Kovner who was one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance movement during World War II. While employing the conventions of comics and graphic narratives, the author also makes use of readymade objects such as maps and photos, simulates the works of famous artists and quotes Abba Kovner’s poems. These are indirect ways of confronting the traumas of Holocaust survivors and ‘the second generation’. Dealing with the Holocaust in comics and graphic narratives (as in Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 1986) is no longer an innovation, nor is their use as a means to deal with trauma; what makes this graphic narrative unique is the encounter between the works of the poet and the painter, which combine to create an exceptionally complex work integrating poetry, art and graphic narration.

scholarly journals Weakened by the storm

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Walch
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Tropical Storms ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Group Recruitment ◽  
Rebel Group

How do natural disasters affect rebel group recruitment? Some influential research to date suggests that natural disasters – by lowering the opportunity cost of joining an armed movement – are likely to facilitate rebel group recruitment. In contrast, this study argues that natural disasters can negatively affect rebel organization and their recruitment efforts. It posits that natural disasters may weaken rebel groups in two main interrelated ways: (1) by leading to acute scarcity for rebel combatants and supporters, weakening the rebel group’s organizational structure and supply lines, and (2) by increasing government and international presence in areas where the insurgents operate. Empirically, this article explores these suggested mechanisms in two cases of natural disasters in the Philippines (typhoons Bopha in 2012 and Haiyan in 2013), which affected regions partially controlled by the communist rebel group, the New People’s Army (NPA). Based on data from extensive fieldwork, there is no evidence suggesting a boom in rebel recruitment in the wake of the typhoons. Rather, the NPA was temporarily weakened following the tropical storms, significantly impacting the civil war dynamics in the Philippines.

Maimonides and Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira: Abandoning Reason in the Warsaw Ghetto

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face

This chapter focuses on theological implications of the Holocaust, which was a time when suffering and loss were of such catastrophic proportions for Jewish history and theology. It talks about the Maimonidean view of evil as a ‘privation’ or an absence of good that is no longer acceptable in the face of a million children systematically gassed and burned. It also points out the acceptance of a theory of divine providence that conditions God's watchful eye on the development of one's intellect that is considered morally problematic and theologically offensive. The chapter concentrates on Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe who heroically persevered as a hasidic master that ministered to his followers during the Holocaust. It recounts how Rabbi Shapira delivered sermons and published posthumously as Holy Fire in the Warsaw ghetto between autumn 1939 and summer 1942.

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