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Cargando... Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprisingpor Israel Gutman
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On April 19, 1943, thousands of Nazi troops were given the order to remove all Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, a few square blocks sheltering the remnants of the half million or more Jewish citizens of Poland's capital, to the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. They were to kill those who resisted. A few hundred of the trapped Jews, mostly teenagers, armed only with pistols, Molotov cocktails, and a few light machine guns, vowed to fight back. Resistance is the full story of the uprising and the events leading to it, told by a survivor of the battle who is now a world-renowned Israeli scholar of the Holocaust. Warsaw in the 1920s and 1930s was the home of Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish community. It included the rich, the poor, and the middle class; casual assimilationists and ardent Zionists; representatives of the full spectrum of political and religious factions. Then came the German onslaught of ruthless violence against the Jews--isolation and starvation amid desperation and disease--then deportations. As the ghetto walls rose, hundreds of thousands were rounded up and sent to Treblinka. But resistance began to take shape, and when the final attack order came, the ghetto fighters stood ready. Includes excerpts from diaries, letters, and other documents of the period. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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When the purging began it was with promises that the people would simply be sent to work camps. Many thought they could survive it. There were rumors that they were death camps but it was difficult to confirm with limited access to news. Much of the ghetto was emptied out by the time the resistance gained ground.
There were several attempts by ghetto residents to connect with resistance movements outside, including the Communist party, which was thought to be a source of weapons and assistance against the Nazis. In the end, however, it was the young people of the ghetto who developed the plans and found weapons, and even organized the development of a series of underground bunkers to hold hundreds of people. It was young people who were willing to die in the effort to resist the Nazis, a David-and-Goliath situation that was doomed to fail.
This account is important because of the details, and because of the restraint Gutman shows in illuminating the lack of assistance by other countries and even by nearby Polish citizens. Yes, there were small underground groups that helped, but in general those opposed to the Nazi treatment of the Jews simply wrung their hands. When the ghetto was on fire and Nazis were shooting every Jew they could find there were street fairs outside the ghetto walls, and people were going about their business and enjoying themselves.
Many ask why the Jews were such "sheep" for so long. This book goes a long way to answer that question. What choice did they have, especially when there was a chance they could escape death? They had little choice, yet they did resist. While the rest of the world stood by.
I can't help but think of how the rest of the world continues to stand by when atrocities are committed. Syria? Rwanda? Bosnia? Rohingya? Darfur? Our hands are still dirty. ( )