Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Resistance

Resistance is one of the most controversial and emotional issues associated with the Holocaust and other genocides. The overwhelming scope of the Holocaust raised the question, How could so many people be murdered? Initially, writers proposed that it could only happen if the victims allowed it to happen through their own powerlessness. The phrase, "Jews went like sheep to the slaughter," as described most famously in the writings of Hannah Arendt, and later adopted by Raul Hilberg, summed up the early opinion that Jews offered little or no resistance. Later research, however, demonstrated that the issue was perhaps not the lack of resistance but how resistance was defined and, equally important, not why there was so little but how there was so much resistance that actually occurred.

Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust

The overwhelming might of the Nazi...