Jewish Holocaust resistance was honorable, fierce
Recent letters in The Bee about gun ownership showed unfamiliarity with how Jews fought back during the Holocaust. There was actually resistance in 100 ghettos in Poland.
Best remembered was the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 by heroic Jews with Molotov cocktails and small arms. It took German tanks and flame-throwers a month to eliminate the last Jews. In Vilna, Jews fought for their honor even when they knew they would be destroyed.
The film “Defiance” recounted the true story of how the Bielski brothers organized partisan fighters in the forests of Belarus and saved 1,200 Jews even when the Germans struck with 52,000 soldiers and the Luftwaffe.
There were also documented uprisings against death camp guards in Treblinka and Sobibor (1943) and Auschwitz (1944) as well as operations by the massive underground Armee Juive (Jewish Army) in southern France.
Considering how rapidly some European armies capitulated, the Jewish resistance deserves more honorable notice.
Murray Farber, Fresno
This story was originally published March 9, 2018 at 2:44 PM with the headline "Jewish Holocaust resistance was honorable, fierce."