THE JEWISH RESISTANCE DURING THE HOLOCAUST. The claim that Jews were merely passive is getting swept away. David Kopel and Glenn Reynolds wrote back in October 2001:

Although the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto were eventually defeated in a tactical sense, the Warsaw battle was a tremendous strategic victory for the Jews. According to Raul Hilberg: "In Jewish history, the battle is literally a revolution, for after two thousand years of a policy of submission the wheel had been turned and once again Jews were using force."

There were other Jewish uprisings. Even in the death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka, Jews seized arms from the Nazi guards and attempted to escape. A few succeeded, and, more significantly, the camps were disrupted. (For more on Jewish resistance in Eastern Europe, see Harold Werner, Fighting Back: A Memoir of Jewish Resistance in World War II; Yechiel Granatstein, The War of a Jewish Partisan; Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans; and Chaika Grossman, The Underground Army: Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto.)

Now, David Kopel writes in an an article that will be published in volume 19 of the Journal on Firearms & Public Policy:

Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust. They shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule. [Emphasis added]

Now if the Israeli government could just learn to fight back.

Technorati Tag: Israel and David Kopel and Warsaw Ghetto and Holocaust.