ghetto residents escaping: They liquidated the ghetto on April 30, 1942, and again on August 6. In the first incident, 1,200 of the most able-bodied Jews were marched out of the city and shot, then thrown into mass graves. The second incident resulted in 2,000 to 3,000 being shot, but the Partisans were able to fight on and remain hidden in the forests for the rest of the war.
7 Czestochowa Ghetto Uprising
Czestochowa is a fairly large city in southern Poland and was one of the first cities to fall to the Germans after the Polish Army was defeated. Germany annexed it on September 3, 1939, two days after beginning WWII. The next day, the Wehrmacht, not the Waffen SS, committed one of their very few war crimes when they fired on unarmed civilians in two separate areas of the city, killing almost 600 men, women, and children. Soldiers who were involved have stated that this was not done because the victims were Jewish, but because the 42nd and 97th Wehrmacht Regiments were nervous and inexperienced. Many of the victims were non-Jewish.
On April 9, 1941, the ghetto was completed and 95 percent of the city’s Jews were forced in—about 45,000 total. The SS had taken over control of the city. On June 26, 1943, in the face of weekly deportations to Treblinka death camp and a supposed imminent liquidation, the 5,000 or so Jews inside the ghetto staged an urban firefight primarily along Nadrzeczna Street, where they took cover in makeshift bunkers and street-level basements. They were very poorly armed, with only one gun for every four people, and a few hundred Molotov cocktails, but those who weren’t armed at the outset hoped that they could strip weapons from dead Germans. They did so, and lasted an amazing five days, but the SS had no real difficulty in quelling them. Their leader, Mordechai Zylberberg, shot himself just before the SS stormed into his bunker. Around 1,500 Jews died fighting, 500 were executed immediately afterward (many of them by flamethrowers), and some 3,800 to 4,000 who had been unable to arm themselves were captured and shipped to various labor camps.
6 The Sobibor Uprising
Sobibor was one of the first death camps set up with the determined and large-scale purpose of murdering almost every Jew who was sent to it. The Nazis made the mistake of transporting hundreds of Soviet POWs to the camp for labor. Those who were Jewish were executed, but few precautions were taken because according to Nazi ideology the Soviets were subhuman and incapable of fighting back. However, these POWs were experienced, battle-hardened soldiers—and one of them, Alexander Pechersky, could not bring himself to tolerate this wholesale slaughter. He was Jewish but fortunate not to look so, and after one month of incarceration in the camp he joined a covert resistance effort led by Leon Feldhendler with the goal of a successful escape.
Two months later, the Sobibor prisoners sprang their plan. Pechersky and Feldhendler were among the very few prisoners involved in the uprising who had any experience killing other people. They lured guards and SS officers around the rear of one of the barracks or into a machine shop and stabbed, garrotted, or bludgeoned them to death. Each dead guard offered a uniform and weapons to another prisoner. They intended to kill every single guard and officer in the camp and then simply walk out through the main gate, but an errant guard spotted them and sounded the alarm. Half the prisoners made it out of the camp and into the woods, where more died by stepping on landmines. Some 50 managed to evade recapture by hiding in barns, haystacks, drain pipes, and farmhouses. The local non-Jewish Poles risked their own lives by stowing them away in crawlspaces.
5 The Bielski Partisans
Now famous via the 2009 film Defiance, the Bielski Partisans were led by four Jewish brothers: Alexander, Tuvia, Asael, and Aron Bielski. They organized a resistance group of 17 total after the liquidation of the Stankiewicz Ghetto in modern-day Belarus. In August 1941, the Bielskis’ parents, sisters, and the rest of their entire family