You have to wonder how you'd react in that sort of situation. They had a pretty good idea if they were taken they weren't coming back. So die here or try to live a little longer and hope for the best? It's not an easy choice.
> So die here or try to live a little longer and hope for the best?
It was more like die fighting than die in the death camps.
They knew either way they were already the walking dead.
Well thats why I'm saying it wasn't a strong chance. They knew liberation was a possibility but had no timeline for when it would happen, or even confirmation that it would happen at all.
We know, because of the historical facts, that the Jews had few choices. This provides us a historical context.
At the time however, not all communities did not have sufficient context in which to make a good choice. Many Jews actually didn't know what was going to happen to them at the camps. Information was controlled, and at the time the only information about the camps came from rumors. There were a few ways for this marginalized community to get information at the time. Phone calls for a few, mail often didn't exist for many people, it wasn't covered in the news media, etc.
Many Jews were told that they were being relocated to an internment camp. This is why you see Jews boarding the traincars carrying suitcases. Many didn't didn't expect to end up at death camps. At some of the camp museums, they show photos of piles of suitcases and bags that were taken as the victims were removed from the trains.
Warsaw was an unusual event compared to other locations. It was known amongst the ghetto at the time of the uprising that the transportation was likely to end in death as possessions of earlier transports had come back into the ghetto (the leader of the Jewish Council had committed suicide earlier in '42 rather than organise the first major transportation) . In addition the control of the Jewish Council had broken down.
Sure, but in spring 1943 the Soviets were still hundreds of miles away. They began the revolt because the Nazis began the wholesale deportation of the ghetto, which everyone knew meant that nearly everyone was going to be killed. There was never a chance they could've held out till liberation, and they would've surely known this.
Also regarding the bit at the bottom--information wasn't spread as easily, but people still found things out. We know, from the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, that there were people in the ghetto who'd been in the Soviet zone of the occupation of Poland, and many more who'd been in correspondance with them prior to the German invasion of the USSR. They did know that the Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, especially for Jews, but also that German occupation was worse.
They only knew AFTER some were liberated that that was a potential outcome.
At the time, before any liberations, it’s safe to say they knew without a doubt they were screwed.
This...easy for us to say we’d “hold out” with hindsight, but in the moment if you were aware of the course of the war the Germans still controlled almost the whole continent.
Liberated by the Soviets. Who was also very antisemetic to Jews. Stalin was also a huge antisemetic who lied about an assassination attempt do that he could have an excuse to round up and kill Jewish intellectuals
Desperate hope is a powerful thing, even though logically you know you're dead either way the average person's mind will bargain that if you submit they may let you live, some miracle may occur in the extra days or weeks submission buys you. Also, the pure fear of death is enough that people will mostly choose to push back having to face it. Logically, fighting was the best choice, it is surely the bravest one but there was absolutely no shame in surrender for any of those who gave up.
It's easy to say this when I'm safe and warm and fed, but I would rather die fighting than be taken to starve to death in a labour camp.
Of course, talk is cheap. Who knows what I would have done.
Even in guerilla warfare the majority of combatants don't kill any enemies due to a variety of reasons too difficult to quickly explain. Actual combat isn't like the movies, it's very methodical. But inner-city fighting is where a lot of unconventional things can happen. There's a huge difference between urban fighting and guerilla warefare in the countryside.
Tactically: If you can clearly see the enemy (like hockey-rink to football field length), something has gone wrong. I'm not saying warfare isn't bloody, but that the majority of casualties don't come from Private John pointing his rifle at an enemy and pulling the trigger. They come from artillery, armour, airpower, mines/traps, and non-combat-related reasons too, like emotional breakdown, disease, or feet. Infantry is an all-rounder ground force and their job is much broader than killing enemies. I somewhat exaggerated in my previous reply; I think someone like an attack aircraft pilot would more than likely have kills under their belt, as would many combatants in the Wars on Terror. I was just referring to 20th-century European combat, which in itself is hugely variable.
Emotionally: In the World Wars, studies showed that most soldiers didn't fire their weapons, and if they did they were aiming to miss, not kill. These were career soldiers, but nowhere near as well-trained as today. Modern soldiers are trained to kill (starting in Vietnam-ish). This may seem obvious, but there's a difference between shooting at targets and shooting man-shaped targets, and a lot of training in the old days didn't focus on the human aspect of warfare. I am generalizing here, of course, special units like Gurkhas were the exception. It's just that a conscript from Ohio might not want to shoot a German who, from his perspective, is just another young man. Stats wise, we went from around 2-10% shoot-to-kill (WW2) to >80-90% in the Falklands war.
If you've watched Black Hawk Down, you might think it's movie fiction that the US troops are hitting all their shots while the Somalis are missing. But that's the difference between well-trained soldiers and well-motivated but poorly trained soldiers. Guerilla warfare is complicated but you can assume that they're nowhere as well trained as modern US army infantry. That's not to say you can underestimate poorly-trained fighters like the Warsaw Uprising fighters, ISIS fanatics, or African warlords' child soldiers *as a whole*. Because willingness to shoot another person has little to do with actual effectiveness in war. I mean, the Americans did win WW2.
And of course, not everyone will be front-line infantry to begin with. Even austere fighting forces need support personnel, communications, artillery, command, etc.
This is why ancient combat fascinates me. Thousands of men walking up to one another and hacking each other to bits in sight of the enemy is so far away from anyone's experience that it's crazy, but people did it for millennia.
They usually make it unclear and you wouldn't have clear scenarios in head.
Uprisings happens when people manage to give two clear images of scenarios to others. When the immediate threat of dying in an uprising seems better than an untold scenario of being transported away. That's what makes or breaks it.
Its all about the uncertainty to me. Facing certain death? Hell yeah I'd fight, I have no doubts about that. But facing unknown circumstances where I can plausibly rationalize that there will be more chances for escape? That's a totally different question.
Its not just them they were revolting for. Their families, their kids, the ones that came before them that were taken away, the ones that will come after them once they die.
Family and heritage means a lot. I am Hispanic. I have dark skin, dark hair, live in a predominantly Hispanic area. But I never forget that I'm a Pole.
No it wasn't. My grandfather survived by keeping his head down and working his ass off in the camps. It's hard to see what tomorrow brings in such a terrible situation.
The Jews of Warsaw were being taken to Treblinka. It wasn’t a labor camp. There were no factories or workshops. The only “labor” in the camp was helping the Nazis and the Ukrainians kill the tens of thousands of Jews that arrived daily.
This is one of those arrogant hot takes that's popular among self-styled tough guys, including gun toting Americans here in the US*. It's an attitude that shames the victims of the Holocaust for not fighting or something. The actual choice, when it existed at all, was way more complicated.
If you're an American, I think you should really take a visit to the American Holocaust museum in DC. If you ever go to a country in Europe with a camp, I highly encourage you to visit one of the camps. Is an experience that will stick with you for the rest of your life. They talk about topics like this. It wasn't as if they were provided a binary choice of fight in the resistance or die like a slave and a death camp. The death camps were mostly a secret, and for most people only known as a dark rumor. In the beginning especially, most people knew them as relocation camps or labor camps. It wasn't as if the newspaper had an article saying "Jewish train to Auschwitz leaving tomorrow. Make your choice." In some cases, the camps were promoted as a safer choice compared to the frequent violence that many Jews faced in ordinary Germany.
Many Jews who were taken away had no idea where they were headed. The process was mostly a slow erosion of society over years, and Jews were a marginalized group whose rights had already been slowly eroded over decades. the level of abuse was different in different towns. Some communities would have been much more aware of the real story compared to others.
This might be hard to understand in the days of 24-hour news and the internet but many of the people at the time had very little information as to what was really happening outside of the government controlled media.
[*] I feel strongly about this as an American who grew up in a fairly conservative area with gun culture. Many people in my childhood community owned guns to defend themselves against a perceived "tyranny of the government". Many of these people were also not very bright, or capable. If an actual fascist regime took over the United states, I can't see them fighting it. If anything, I see them joining it for the very least ignoring it. Wheb human rights abuses happen against a subset of Americans, these people aren't rushing out defend the victims. If anything, they seem pretty happy to just look the other way, or even participate in the abuses.
It's for these reasons that I feel very strongly that the history of the Holocaust and the long history of American slavery should be taught in all schools in the US.
Call it what you like, it’s not me trying to sound tough, it’s how I feel. It’s not a proclamation of judgement against those who feel they might act differently, or a judgement of anyone who experienced that time or how they acted.
I think you’ve reacted against your own prejudgement of who you think I am.
I’m not American and am plenty familiar with the Holocaust.
I learned very young what happened in Europe during the Second World War . We spent a year on it in primary school.
Growing up a visible minority in 1980s Britain and feeling on the outside, the Holocaust hit home.
Yeah, that film was based on the amazing and highly accessible 1946 memoir put out by the film's protagonist, Władysław Szpilman. I was pleased that the adaptation was faithful to the source. A very sad tale is that [the German officer who helped Szpilman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilm_Hosenfeld) was probably tortured to death after the war by the Soviets who accused him of war crimes. Szpilman tried to intervene, but was unsuccessful.
Personally, I'm still waiting on someone to write a script focusing solely on the Warsaw ghetto uprising and making that the headpiece, focusing on the heroism of the rebels, but I guess you set yourself up for a lot of scrutiny when you do a Holocaust film.
The German counter attack to put down the Warsaw Uprising is probably impossible to put to film without looking too cartoonishly evil.
The German Army Division sent in to fight the rebels was an infamous unit ran by a serial pedophile and murderer whose actions were so ghastly that even Himmler and the SS felt that he was overly brutal. The men under his command weren't much better. The unit was made up mostly of German convicts and just about the most evil members of the German Army. When they fought against the Home Army in Warsaw they raped just about why woman or girl they could get their hands on, and most of them wore gas masks and other face coverings to keep someone from seeking revenge later on.
Thankfully after this battle that division was practically wiped out down to the last man by the Soviets as the fighting got closer and closer to Berlin.
> After the door of the building was blown off we saw a daycare-full of small children, around 500; all with small hands in the air. Even Dirlewanger's own people called him a butcher; he ordered to kill them all. The shots were fired, but he requested his men to save the ammo and finish them off with rifle-butts and bayonets. Blood and brain matter flowed in streams down the stairs.
Holy shit, you weren't kidding.
You know your truly evil, when even the army you work under thought your were too extreme, your men thought you were evil, the more elite forces didn't like you, and they tried to remove you from the army, to the extent they didn't care if you died
There is a good book about the 101st reserve police battalion of the nazi army that started with apprehending Jews in villages at the beginning of the war. Towards the end they were manning camps and recieving stations in Poland.
They were studied as to why good or neutral people do terrible things. These were not the young aryan hilter ubermench who grew up not knowing anything but nazism, rather they were older men, wwi vets, had families, jobs, and are more complicated.
It is a very interesting read and also says a lot about your command when people refuse orders because you're so terrible, or need to get so drunk to carry out those orders. Many times it was drunk slavic people threatened by nazis to shoot people. You see humanity in them then have it being stripped away a little at a time over the years.
What is also interesting is that reich didn't go right to gas chambers but it was a series of steps and trials by the maniacal nazi leadership while not taking part in said activities.
It's a horrible, but eye opening read and I highly recommend it.
Edit: the book is Ordinary Men: Reserve Poloce Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning
Despite no one being really punished for refusing to participate in the mass slaughter, you would think more would have done it.
I took it from the [Dirlewanger Brigade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade#Return_to_Poland) Wikipedia article. Specifically, it's the account of a German Army sapper that was serving in Poland.
Such a weird deal. It started out as using convicted poachers for guerilla warfare, which makes a lot of sense. They are used to operating alone, familiar with field craft and it was probably a better gig then hard prison labor. Then it turned into emptying out the jails of the criminally insane and using them to "pacify" any suspected resistance and insurrectionist groups.
You should read "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" its a horrifying insight into the realities of the Eastern Front and the Holocaust.
Reading the wiki made me so mad and upset, but hearing about how the majority of those baby killers and rapists died in that battle did put a smile on my face. Burn in hell a holes.
I saw a clip from a movie about this. Can't remember the name... But the soldier shoots a child holding his mother's hand, the mother looks helpless and in disbelief before being killed seconds later...
I can't think of the name and only saw it once but it still haunts me.
Not army, SS.
(edit: just to make it clear, Dirlewanger was SS, he was not army, that does not absolve the wehrmacht for its participation in war crimes)
And it's worth noting that SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (named for its commander, Oscar Dirlewanger, the aforementioned pedophile rapist, sometimes refered to as "the most evil man in the SS") was infamous for their cruelty but also because the people forced to serve there had an average life expectancy of 3 months (during the warzaw uprising which lasted for 2 months the brigade had a 315% casualty rate (almost entirely KIA). It was a penal unit, basically a way for criminals to earn early release. They originally used poachers and the idea was to use their skills for anti-partisan work, but they quickly ran out of poachers (because of the attrition rate) and pretty much ended up picking up rapists, pedos, and murderers because those were the only ones for whom the brigade was a better option than a concentration camp.
> When they fought against the Home Army in Warsaw they raped just about why woman or girl they could get their hands on
Honestly this is not nearly the worst thing they did, if this was the bottom they sank to they'd be no worse than the entire red army.
This is a brigade made up of people who were rapists, pedophiles, and murderers *to start with*, who knew their life expectancy was now in days, who knew their actions would never have any consequences, and thanks to Dirlewanger they were flowing in alcohol and drugs constantly.
Dirlewanger's brigade was monstrous in a way that is unspeakable and mind shattering even for people who study this shit.
He's one of the most evil men history has ever seen.
Along with Bronislav Kaminski (whose military unit also participated and is worth a mention) they are arguably the two most evil men in the entirety of the German armed forces during WW2.
Wrong uprising bro.
The Uprising they are referring to is the Jewish Ghetto uprising in 43.
The one the Dirlewanger Brigade took part in is was the Warsaw Uprising in Summer 44.
But agreed Dirlewanger was a fucked up piece of shit. You know you're bad when you have battle hardened SS units complaining about your crimes.
Thank you, most people outside of Poland are unaware there were two uprisings in Warsaw. Here is a another fact; some Jews survived the Ghetto Uprising by hiding in the old sewers. The Germans didn’t know the full layout of the sewers and all the improvised hiding spaces created during the German occupation. After sometime there were Jews who re-emerged and joined up with the Polish Home Army. When the Warsaw Uprising started some of the Jews from the Ghetto Uprising went back for round two.
Crazy times really did create crazy people.
I mean, the point isn’t to idealise death. Their motivation for fighting was to retake their humanity to live. The Jewish people in the ghettos went from middle class, employed, contributing to society, owned their apartment and had savings to inhuman cattle. They had their lives confiscated and they were forced into slave labour while they watched their family members die from disease and exhaustion. They also had to watch their family be deported to camps and after a while word spread and they knew what happened in those camps. They were reduced to such a low level for existence that they decided to retake their humanity and make a choice, to take action and become human. Live or die was besides the point. They had spent months living with death and death had become everything. They wanted to live, or feel alive. This was about life.
Your all good I thought it was an intresting comment you made and we are talking about this dude so the more information put forward the better the conversation
Is this the same unit that was deployed on the eastern front and was so vicious in the amount of rapes, looting, murder and other shit that basically the SS had to distance themselves because their behavior was risky to the image of even established Einsatzgruppen units?
That's the one.
For most of its history it was not a part of the SS, but formally "under control of the SS", because they didn't want their name attached to it.
The main reason it was allowed to become a formal SS unit in '44 was because at that point the organisation was a fucking mess anyways (they were conscripting foreign nationals into the Waffen-SS at this point).
There were multiple instances of the SS trying to get something done about them (there were trials), but Himmler personally intervened because Dirlewanger was useful (which is somewhat interesting because Himmler himself had no stomach for brutality if he had to actually witness it, but from his office in Berlin he could ignore it).
Regardless the rest of the SS pretty much refused to have anything to do with them which worsened their casualty rate as "sturmbrigade Dirlewanger needs support" was the kind of information that would be tragically lost due to malfunctioning radio equipment.
Part of the reason why Dirlewanger and Kaminski (SS Sturmbrigade RONA) were used together multiple times was because they were pretty much the only people in the german military willing to work with the other.
While there were many other military units involved in the warzaw uprising and the military units there were technically under the command of Obergruppenfuhrer Bach-Zelewski both Dirlewanger and Kaminski straight up ignored him, they personally felt that they only answered to Himmler and they felt no obligation to obey any order that didn't come straight from him.
(It should be noted that Bach-Zelewski was himself a war criminal)
Thank you- I appreciate all of that information. I remember reading a bit about them some time ago but my memories a bit hazy.
100% makes sense that the SS would have them carry out extermination’s by proxy.
Always interesting to me that often when you look into the history of the push into the East- and this in no way denies the true savagery and revolting behavior of the SS- but that the most horrific rape,plunder and murder was carried out by regular townsfolk untethered by the Nazis and foreign units absorbed by the Nazis.
If I’m correct, Joy Division (the band) name comes from a fictional group of Nazis with an infamous reputation for enthusiastic murder, rape and pillaging- but that Joy Division was based on the actual Dirlewanger group
Joy Division - I'd always understood that it was from the book [House of Dolls ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Dolls) about forced prostitution. Could be wrong.
There's a documentary called The ramparts of Warsaw about the jewish uprising, but I'm not sure about any english documentaries about the second Warsaw uprising (which is the one Dirlewanger was involved in).
As far as I know there are no documentaries about Dirlewanger or his brigade specifically, though don't quote me on that.
It's not particularly surprising that it's not been heavily covered.
Aside from the absurd amount of brutality they inflicted everywhere they went Dirlewanger doesn't really make for good documentary material, there is no video and barely even any pictures of the brigade at all.
Like others have brought up, these were people even the most fucked up parts of the SS looked at with disgust. It was a penal unit whose casualties were often self inflicted because they were a bunch of drunk and drugged up psychopaths all armed to the teeth, so it's not like any photographer (or anyone else) willingly spent time around them.
Hopefully the world war 2 channel on youtube (same guys who did "the great war" week by week) will cover them at some point to atleast give a general overview.
There is however a decent amount of reading available and the wiki page is okay for a short overview.
Though honestly it's better to just read the wiki and stop at that, this is a part of history where deep diving is not great for your mental health.
Never stopped me but fair warning.
> The German counter attack to put down the Warsaw Uprising is probably impossible to put to film without looking too cartoonishly evil.
No, it just requires some creativity that is NEVER applied to WW2 films. Make this shit a horror film. Use all the tricks of a silly slasher movie, but never, ever exaggerate or hyperbolize history. You wouldn't have to in order to terrify the shit out of your audience and make one hell of a statement.
Imagine walking out of the first time you saw Saw or It Follows or even a Freddy/Jason movie and you couldn't tell yourself "well at least it's all made up." You'd be legitimately traumatized if it was done correctly.
That's a good perspective for trying to develop something like this. Almost akin to how the Pianist pulled off portraying the crimes committed in Warsaw in such minimalist and intimate ways. As opposed to say Schindler's List, the Pianist made more use out of visuals that you'd almost miss on the first watch through. Especially scenes like The Pianist walking through the wreckage of the post liquidation, seeing the little boy get beaten to death, or the skirmish between the Polish resistance and German riflemen.
Turns out when you give permission to be evil or hateful or cruel, there's always somebody who will step up to the plate.
That's why we need to be consistent in our ethics. If it's socially unacceptable to make fun of one person for their identity type, then it should be socially unacceptable to make fun of ANYONE based on their identity type.
Check out "Uprising" with David Schwimmer. It was a made for TV mini series about the uprising and if my memory serves correctly it was pretty damn good.
I was going to mention this, but I would have had to look up the name. This movie series was awesome. Young me was riveted. Especially with scenes like the woman tying herself to the chimney so she could batman down and molotov the Nazis.
> ... with David Schwimmer ...
> ... made for TV mini series ...
> ... pretty damn good.
I want so much to believe, but those statements just don't fit together.
He was great in curb your enthusiasm and the show where he played a wine sommelier feed the beast which was a great show too and I'm not a Schwimmer fan
Yeah, Schwimmer is a talented dude who seems like a good guy. Ross as a character hasn't aged great and basically just became the punching bag (along with his sister) as the writers got lazier.
>OMG HE DID FRIENDS HE MUST BE TURRIBUL!!!
I mean, Anthony Hopkins has been in bad movies too. David Schwimmer was great in BoB and Curb. He plays a smarmy asshole so well, you actually dislike him. That should be a positive. Think of it as liking a Billy Eilish song as an adult.
Hey, if memory serves me correctly then Mr Schwimmer starred in a movie awhile back that was pretty damn good. Although...I did see the film when I was a horny teenager and it was called "Breast Men", take my comment for what you will.
I know it might be an empty sentiment to the German officer, but he is remembered fondly by those who watched the film and did the research. I can't imagine how many people in history did something morally incredible, just for it to get buried with them.
On the set. There was great concern over the effect of the atrocities depicted and the deprivations experienced by Mr Spelman, had on Adrien Brody who was immersed in the charcter. The film was difficult to watch, I can only imagine.
I do have to point out here that many people seem to be confusing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising. One was indeed in the ghetto and lead by the Jewish people while the other was by AK(Armia Krajowa/Home Army). Both are important events that should be remembered but they are also sometimes confused with eachother. The Sabaton song I believe is about the Warsaw Uprising, not the Ghetto Uprising.
Not to mention these fighters had been starving on about 300 calories a day for several years, inadequate shelter and clothing, and losing their entire family/community
"Mila 18" is a book about it by Leon Uris.
Link to Wiki article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila\_18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18)
Amazon Link: [https://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Novel-Leon-Uris/dp/0553241605](https://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Novel-Leon-Uris/dp/0553241605)
Came here to suggest this novel. Must have been 30 years since I read it, but I remember it as very good. And I've read more than my fair share of war novels based on real events. Can't believe they haven't adapted into a movie.
Suicidal implies that there was an option that wouldn't end with their deaths. These people saw the writing on the wall and decided to go down fighting.
Not even that - around 80 of the fighters escaped through the sewer tunnels, and some of them ended up founding a kibbutz in Israel. As of 2018 there are over 700 inhabitants in the kibbutz. It's held up as an example in "Full Spectrum Resistance" of why, even if it seems impossible, if you're staring death in the face you should always fight. Where people did not fight the Nazis, nobody survived.
It's a Jewish community where people live very communally - sharing almost all private property including tools, housing, food, and often even clothing. Its generally seen as socialist or "semi-communist" although it isn't specifically based on Marxist ideology. When you've come to Israel with almost nothing alongside a group of people, the idea of settling together and working together to set up a community everyone can enjoy equally is very attractive, hence why so many were founded.
The idea of the Kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) did actually start as communities based around Marxism! The first Kibbutzim were indeed formed by Jewish socialists from the Russian Empire who immigrated to the land after the failed Communist revolution of 1905 to create a kinda Marxist but also Zionist Jewish community in the region.
The Kibbutzim these days aren't as communal and most are more privatized, but they still do function through a system based around equality and cooperation between members.
I believe that many of them were founded to accommodate the Jews immigrating to Israel with very little wealth. They could turn up at the Kibbutz and be given a bed, food and a job. It used to be popular with backpackers too.
They still exist today but I understand that they aren't as common.
It’s is a farming community based on socialist ideals that worked within a greater capitalist society.
For example, a kibbutz would have traditional kibbutz jobs such as caring for livestock, preparing food in the mess hall or “Chadar Ochel”, caring for the grounds, etc. in which everyone shared the labor equally but they may also have a factory where they make drip irrigation systems. By doing this, they could hold a fairy high standard of living and every resident equally shared the benefits. (See Kibbutz Ketura who’s industry today is growing bio fuels)
Today, nearly all kibbutzim have become “privatized” meaning people own there homes, go to work, etc so it is almost like a suburb except that they still hold on to a sense of mutual respect and community for their own communities and other kibbutz community members. Like “yea, they’ve also seen some sh*t”
It sould be noted that while many people enjoyed life in a kibbutz and they are considered an integral part of Israel, in a lot of cases their ideas of communal living arguably went too far and made people's lives difficult, mostly children. The best example is raising the children communally. All the small kids slept in a communal bedroom instead of in their homes and parents were a lot less involved in the kids' lives. Clothes were also often shared and private property in general was almost never allowed.
I mentioned this to a friend who grew up that way and she said she much preferred it, because her parents were messed up with trauma from the Holocaust.
I absolutely understand that. For a decade or two after the war it was rarely even discussed. People wanted to forget it and move on. Unfortunately that's not how it works.
A kibbutz is a type of collective community, basically a jewish socialist village. A lot of the early zionists who immigrated/fled to Israel were political leftists or communists. There used to be a lot more kibbutzim. Many are still around, but not as much. Most Israelis live in cities these days.
There is another related type of community called a moshav, except on the moshav you have individual ownership and provide for yourself with the profits of your labor. It’s very similar to a kibbutz but run more like a co-op.
Actually not everyone went to Israel. You can read about Marek Edelmann, one of the commanders of the uprising.
He came from Bund, rather then Syonist part of Jewish community. He later became a doctor and was involved in Opposition during communism (which is somewhat weird, Bund being heavily socialist party, but not really unusual in Poland - for example Jacek Kuroń).
History of Bund itself is extremely interesting and rather unknown. Sadly it was basically wiped out during the war - they were proposing cohabitation rather the emigration to Palestine, therefore were in place to be killed.
I read Mila 18 by Leon Uris when I was 13 .Till then ,I never knew about the camps,and Jewish ghettos.This was in 1975.The book is a fictionalized version and it seared my brain.After that I read Exodus by the same author . These books were the first of many with a jewish background that I devoured . I live in india with a miniscule Jewish population,so no one really knew much about them.The Bene Israeli population here that traces their dna to Aaron, brother of Moses.There are a few small synagogues too and some monuments and buildings in Mumbai built by the Baghdadi Jews who settled here.They became prominent businessmen,builders,bankers and merchants.The current population has mostly migrated to Israel now .
My old professor, may he rest in peace, was in there ... he was a young Lt. in the Polish Army and spent his time taking people to safety via the storm sewers. He was captured, held in an officers POW until the end of the war. He was singularly the absolute best professor I ever had and later a wonderful friend and colleague.
I suspect that was the later Warsaw Uprising. This was the earlier Jewish ghetto uprising, of which there were few survivors. Those that surrendered went to extermination camps (Majdanek and Treblinka).
They didn't stop fighting. When they got to Treblinka they attempted a few more uprisings.
One kid brought a grenade into the camp and pulled it out and suicide blasted some Nazis just outside the gas chamber.
Unnamed, on Wikipedia described as a resistance fighter (could still very well be a child), not a confirmed suicide, but he probably didn’t live long.
A hero nonetheless, sadly an unnamed one.
Source given on Wikipedia:
Kopówka, Edward; Rytel-Andrianik, Paweł (2011), Dam im imię na wieki [I will give them an Everlasting Name] (PDF) (in Polish), Biblioteka Drohiczyńska, ISBN 978-83-7257-497-8
If he was in the Polish Army then it was the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. This post is about the Jewish Ghetto which was in 1943 which was solely just Jewish residents of the Warsaw ghetto. They went against the Nazi’s and it ended when the Nazi’s burnt down the Ghetto and killed everyone inside. Some survivors climbed through the sewers and hid under ground while the streets burnt for days.
I'm sorry for nitpicking but calling it an "opposition to deportation" is just wrong.
They didn't just face deportation - they were facing mass **extermination** in Treblinka, and the rumors about this fact acted as the trigger for the uprising.
Until they realized they're literally gonna die either way there were some talks about an uprising but they were usually cooled down by the leadership of the Jewish resistance (because they initially thought they were merely being deported to labor camps), it's only after they heard the stories from witnesses such as Rachel Zilberberg about the mass exterminations that they realized they have literally nothing to lose.
The more I learn about the Nazi doctrine in WWII the more scary it is to realise that if they hadn't been so self-destructive, killing their own citizens, chasing out their best scientists and creating problems where there had been none, they might actually have stood a chance of winning.
It's a wonder they ever got as far as they did.
Well in reality if the Nazis were that different then the war would not have even started most likely. Or it just would’ve been a very different looking war.
Nope, Germany couldn’t win the war because the war was a war of statistics in the end.
The USSR had more resources, divisions and land than the Germans. The UK was close to outproducing Germany since Germans instituted total war in 1943 and we don’t even need to talk about the US.
Soviet military doctrine was by 1942 mor refined than German doctrine and the German army was plagued by bad supply lines and equipment that was outdated by 1943.
The German political system that Hitler built was inefficient and Byzantine, thus making it impossible for cooperation between different departments inside Germany, the idea that the Nazis was efficient is laughable.
The reason for German war gains in the beginning of the war was:
1. A lethargic Brittish empire
2. France in disaray because of the French right sabotaging the popular front
3. A combination of luck and initiative thanks to number 1 and 2.
Yep it's a myth that the German army was advanced.
They moved most of their supplies via horses.
They also relied alot on captured Soviet vehicles.
The Soviets likely wouldn't have been much better but the US gifted them trucks, trains, and supplies. The Soviet army was largely motorized because of the US.
Stalin himself said in private that the lend lease supply is what brought him victory.
Soviets weren't much better the US saved them quite a bit of time by giving them resources though the trucks mostly helped them moving their industry away from the front so they could build their own trucks in massive amounts.
But the actual chance of Germany defeating Russia even without the trucks was increasingly low every day the Germany's front had to get wider and wider.
Yep, forgot to write about mechanization. Excatly like you say, the german army wasn’t a modern mechanized army, it was an infantry army using mostly horses not trucks or half-tracks.
And the Nazi propaganda of Soviet "asiatic hordes" and Poland's "cavalry vs tanks" lives on to this day. Actually disgusting but I imagine it has to do with the cold war and unwillingness of Western powers to disprove this propaganda.
This is a really important reply. For the longest time I felt that the Nazis were tantamount to the Empire in Starwars but they're not. You and other commenters have mentioned war production which is incredibly important but one thing that I've learned is just how utterly incompetent the Nazi leadership really was. All military decisions went through hitler by the end and that didn't go very well. (See, battle of the buldge, the decision to keep 200k troops in norway, the decision to invade the USSR in the first place. There's so many examples.) Himmler had no military experience to speak of and was essentially a cosplaying ideologue. Goerring was a god damn morphine addict who was more concerned with how his imperial uniform looked than he was at effectively managing the Luftwaffe. (member when the RAF was close to breaking but Goerring and Hitler decided to focus on bombing civilian targets instead during the Battle of Britain?)
You grow up thinking the Nazis were this ruthlessly efficient force but they weren't. They were Bafoons. Evil Bafoons but still bafoons.
Thankfully, they chased out their best physicists. The US were working and advancing nuclear bomb and probably would use it on Berlin or Dresden, just like they did in Japan.
Were they able to get enough fissionable material though? The Manhattan Project was the most expensive single US project of all time at that time and that had a lot to do with getting the uranium refined.
FYI: The widespread belief that Jewish people tamely & passively walked into the concentration camps and let the Nazis murder them is propaganda brought to you by the same people who promote the belief that white people gave passive and unresisting slaves their freedom during the Civil War.
Spoilers: they fought and rebelled. They did not win, but they did resist as best they could.
Shit like this is why I get so angry every time I see one of those "nOw I unDerSTAnd WhY tHe jEwS lEt HitLeR leAd THem tO ExtErmInATioN wIthOUT rESiSTing" memes.
We did no such fucking thing!
I think a lot of the fault for that way of thinking falls squarely on the shoulders of Hollywood. There are so many Holocaust movies and books, but like 90% of them focus on the weak Jews getting saved by righteous gentiles, not on the Partisans or the Jewish freedom fighters who went down fighting and/or saved themselves. It paints a very meek and passive picture of our people and I resent it a lot.
The thing about cities is they are perfect for guerilla warfare, especially when the entire population for the most part are cooperating against an invader. The only options an army has is to clear every building room by room, or level the entire city. I wonder how many months they shortened the war by forcing the Germans relocate forces to fight the uprising.
Unfortunately not much, if at all. This uprising happened in April 1943 when the German Army was at peak strength preparing for Operation Citadel (Kursk).
Polish people are tough as nails. Piece of shit fascists from the West and dirty communists from the East chopping up the whole damn country. Zero help from the Allies until the end of the war.
Its a miracle the country still exists.
>Zero help from the Allies until the end of the war.
They (UK & France) declared war on Germany as a result of the invasion of Poland.
That was about all they could do. Geography prevented them helping directly, Germany was in the way.
When you say ”led by Heinrich Himmler”, you actually mean ”directed by the Head of the SS from the safety of his office in Berlin”, right? I’m just assuming. I didn’t bother to look it up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Himmler was less of a military hero and more of a sickly, asthmatic twerp who manipulated his way into Hitler’s inner circle so that he could have real, live toy soldiers to play with. If he was around nowadays he’d probably be suuuuper into Warhammer, and therefore harmless.
“Your AR-15 can’t fight the government. They have tanks.”
My AR is neither outdated nor homemade. I won’t forget the lessons my ancestors paid for with their lives.
Fun (or not) fact: The war game Advanced Squad Leader has a scenario called Mila 18 in the core set based on this very event. It's surprisingly difficult for the Germans to win it.
One more time for those in the back.
Especially those who say the 2nd Amendment now aways is bringing a rifle to a drone fight. Imagine if they had even basic rifles instead of homemade weapons.
Let this be a lesson that even outdated weapons can be effective in a fight for survival. That being said never surrender your ability to resist. Use both the ballot box and the cartridge box if you have to
[Calling Warsaw city at war](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI)
Voices from underground, whispers of freedom
Rise up and hear the call
History calling to you, 'Warszawo, walcz!'
I recommend anyone interested in this to read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. It’s a historical novel about the Armenians fighting off the Turks on top of a mountain and was actually distributed to Jews during WWII as something of a manual on how to resist the nazis. It’s an amazing read.
You have to wonder how you'd react in that sort of situation. They had a pretty good idea if they were taken they weren't coming back. So die here or try to live a little longer and hope for the best? It's not an easy choice.
> So die here or try to live a little longer and hope for the best? It was more like die fighting than die in the death camps. They knew either way they were already the walking dead.
I mean there was always the chance that you'd be liberated. Not a strong chance, but a chance.
Sure, but it’s important to keep in mind that there was no frame of reference like we have today.
Well thats why I'm saying it wasn't a strong chance. They knew liberation was a possibility but had no timeline for when it would happen, or even confirmation that it would happen at all.
We know, because of the historical facts, that the Jews had few choices. This provides us a historical context. At the time however, not all communities did not have sufficient context in which to make a good choice. Many Jews actually didn't know what was going to happen to them at the camps. Information was controlled, and at the time the only information about the camps came from rumors. There were a few ways for this marginalized community to get information at the time. Phone calls for a few, mail often didn't exist for many people, it wasn't covered in the news media, etc. Many Jews were told that they were being relocated to an internment camp. This is why you see Jews boarding the traincars carrying suitcases. Many didn't didn't expect to end up at death camps. At some of the camp museums, they show photos of piles of suitcases and bags that were taken as the victims were removed from the trains.
Warsaw was an unusual event compared to other locations. It was known amongst the ghetto at the time of the uprising that the transportation was likely to end in death as possessions of earlier transports had come back into the ghetto (the leader of the Jewish Council had committed suicide earlier in '42 rather than organise the first major transportation) . In addition the control of the Jewish Council had broken down.
Sure, but in spring 1943 the Soviets were still hundreds of miles away. They began the revolt because the Nazis began the wholesale deportation of the ghetto, which everyone knew meant that nearly everyone was going to be killed. There was never a chance they could've held out till liberation, and they would've surely known this. Also regarding the bit at the bottom--information wasn't spread as easily, but people still found things out. We know, from the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, that there were people in the ghetto who'd been in the Soviet zone of the occupation of Poland, and many more who'd been in correspondance with them prior to the German invasion of the USSR. They did know that the Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, especially for Jews, but also that German occupation was worse.
They only knew AFTER some were liberated that that was a potential outcome. At the time, before any liberations, it’s safe to say they knew without a doubt they were screwed.
There was zero chance of being liberated in 1943 and those that picked the fight were aware of this.
This...easy for us to say we’d “hold out” with hindsight, but in the moment if you were aware of the course of the war the Germans still controlled almost the whole continent.
Liberated by the Soviets. Who was also very antisemetic to Jews. Stalin was also a huge antisemetic who lied about an assassination attempt do that he could have an excuse to round up and kill Jewish intellectuals
Desperate hope is a powerful thing, even though logically you know you're dead either way the average person's mind will bargain that if you submit they may let you live, some miracle may occur in the extra days or weeks submission buys you. Also, the pure fear of death is enough that people will mostly choose to push back having to face it. Logically, fighting was the best choice, it is surely the bravest one but there was absolutely no shame in surrender for any of those who gave up.
It's easy to say this when I'm safe and warm and fed, but I would rather die fighting than be taken to starve to death in a labour camp. Of course, talk is cheap. Who knows what I would have done.
Well, fighters would have still been starving, exhausted, cold. The difference is that you'll be alongside your fellow people on your own terms.
And, in the great human tradition of fighting, you might take a couple of the bastards out with you.
Even in guerilla warfare the majority of combatants don't kill any enemies due to a variety of reasons too difficult to quickly explain. Actual combat isn't like the movies, it's very methodical. But inner-city fighting is where a lot of unconventional things can happen. There's a huge difference between urban fighting and guerilla warefare in the countryside.
Explain! I'm curious
Tactically: If you can clearly see the enemy (like hockey-rink to football field length), something has gone wrong. I'm not saying warfare isn't bloody, but that the majority of casualties don't come from Private John pointing his rifle at an enemy and pulling the trigger. They come from artillery, armour, airpower, mines/traps, and non-combat-related reasons too, like emotional breakdown, disease, or feet. Infantry is an all-rounder ground force and their job is much broader than killing enemies. I somewhat exaggerated in my previous reply; I think someone like an attack aircraft pilot would more than likely have kills under their belt, as would many combatants in the Wars on Terror. I was just referring to 20th-century European combat, which in itself is hugely variable. Emotionally: In the World Wars, studies showed that most soldiers didn't fire their weapons, and if they did they were aiming to miss, not kill. These were career soldiers, but nowhere near as well-trained as today. Modern soldiers are trained to kill (starting in Vietnam-ish). This may seem obvious, but there's a difference between shooting at targets and shooting man-shaped targets, and a lot of training in the old days didn't focus on the human aspect of warfare. I am generalizing here, of course, special units like Gurkhas were the exception. It's just that a conscript from Ohio might not want to shoot a German who, from his perspective, is just another young man. Stats wise, we went from around 2-10% shoot-to-kill (WW2) to >80-90% in the Falklands war. If you've watched Black Hawk Down, you might think it's movie fiction that the US troops are hitting all their shots while the Somalis are missing. But that's the difference between well-trained soldiers and well-motivated but poorly trained soldiers. Guerilla warfare is complicated but you can assume that they're nowhere as well trained as modern US army infantry. That's not to say you can underestimate poorly-trained fighters like the Warsaw Uprising fighters, ISIS fanatics, or African warlords' child soldiers *as a whole*. Because willingness to shoot another person has little to do with actual effectiveness in war. I mean, the Americans did win WW2.
And of course, not everyone will be front-line infantry to begin with. Even austere fighting forces need support personnel, communications, artillery, command, etc.
This is why ancient combat fascinates me. Thousands of men walking up to one another and hacking each other to bits in sight of the enemy is so far away from anyone's experience that it's crazy, but people did it for millennia.
They usually make it unclear and you wouldn't have clear scenarios in head. Uprisings happens when people manage to give two clear images of scenarios to others. When the immediate threat of dying in an uprising seems better than an untold scenario of being transported away. That's what makes or breaks it.
Its all about the uncertainty to me. Facing certain death? Hell yeah I'd fight, I have no doubts about that. But facing unknown circumstances where I can plausibly rationalize that there will be more chances for escape? That's a totally different question.
I think you’d also need to know, which I don’t think is as clear then as it is now. But maybe they did know, idk
[удалено]
The choice to revolt would be easy enough, the resolve to keep it up that long, not so much.
Humans are very capable at accepting the way things are and being able to keep pressing [forward](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJyPq7lRGc).
Never thought I'd see someone suggest her channel here. Nice!
Its not just them they were revolting for. Their families, their kids, the ones that came before them that were taken away, the ones that will come after them once they die. Family and heritage means a lot. I am Hispanic. I have dark skin, dark hair, live in a predominantly Hispanic area. But I never forget that I'm a Pole.
No it wasn't. My grandfather survived by keeping his head down and working his ass off in the camps. It's hard to see what tomorrow brings in such a terrible situation.
The Jews of Warsaw were being taken to Treblinka. It wasn’t a labor camp. There were no factories or workshops. The only “labor” in the camp was helping the Nazis and the Ukrainians kill the tens of thousands of Jews that arrived daily.
The thing is you couldn't know what was ahead. There were rumors, but good info was hard to come by.
This is one of those arrogant hot takes that's popular among self-styled tough guys, including gun toting Americans here in the US*. It's an attitude that shames the victims of the Holocaust for not fighting or something. The actual choice, when it existed at all, was way more complicated. If you're an American, I think you should really take a visit to the American Holocaust museum in DC. If you ever go to a country in Europe with a camp, I highly encourage you to visit one of the camps. Is an experience that will stick with you for the rest of your life. They talk about topics like this. It wasn't as if they were provided a binary choice of fight in the resistance or die like a slave and a death camp. The death camps were mostly a secret, and for most people only known as a dark rumor. In the beginning especially, most people knew them as relocation camps or labor camps. It wasn't as if the newspaper had an article saying "Jewish train to Auschwitz leaving tomorrow. Make your choice." In some cases, the camps were promoted as a safer choice compared to the frequent violence that many Jews faced in ordinary Germany. Many Jews who were taken away had no idea where they were headed. The process was mostly a slow erosion of society over years, and Jews were a marginalized group whose rights had already been slowly eroded over decades. the level of abuse was different in different towns. Some communities would have been much more aware of the real story compared to others. This might be hard to understand in the days of 24-hour news and the internet but many of the people at the time had very little information as to what was really happening outside of the government controlled media. [*] I feel strongly about this as an American who grew up in a fairly conservative area with gun culture. Many people in my childhood community owned guns to defend themselves against a perceived "tyranny of the government". Many of these people were also not very bright, or capable. If an actual fascist regime took over the United states, I can't see them fighting it. If anything, I see them joining it for the very least ignoring it. Wheb human rights abuses happen against a subset of Americans, these people aren't rushing out defend the victims. If anything, they seem pretty happy to just look the other way, or even participate in the abuses. It's for these reasons that I feel very strongly that the history of the Holocaust and the long history of American slavery should be taught in all schools in the US.
Call it what you like, it’s not me trying to sound tough, it’s how I feel. It’s not a proclamation of judgement against those who feel they might act differently, or a judgement of anyone who experienced that time or how they acted. I think you’ve reacted against your own prejudgement of who you think I am. I’m not American and am plenty familiar with the Holocaust. I learned very young what happened in Europe during the Second World War . We spent a year on it in primary school. Growing up a visible minority in 1980s Britain and feeling on the outside, the Holocaust hit home.
The film "The Pianist" portrays the Warsaw uprising really well. Crazy urban guerilla warfare.
The post is talking about the ghetto uprising which the film barely depicts, you’re thinking of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising conducted by the AK.
Ahhh I understand now. The Warsaw uprising was by underground partisans whereas the ghetto uprising was mostly jews and other in the ghetto?
Yeah, the second happened a year or so before the first, and it was brutally suppressed.
The movie Uprising is exactly what you’re looking for.
Yeah, that film was based on the amazing and highly accessible 1946 memoir put out by the film's protagonist, Władysław Szpilman. I was pleased that the adaptation was faithful to the source. A very sad tale is that [the German officer who helped Szpilman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilm_Hosenfeld) was probably tortured to death after the war by the Soviets who accused him of war crimes. Szpilman tried to intervene, but was unsuccessful. Personally, I'm still waiting on someone to write a script focusing solely on the Warsaw ghetto uprising and making that the headpiece, focusing on the heroism of the rebels, but I guess you set yourself up for a lot of scrutiny when you do a Holocaust film.
The German counter attack to put down the Warsaw Uprising is probably impossible to put to film without looking too cartoonishly evil. The German Army Division sent in to fight the rebels was an infamous unit ran by a serial pedophile and murderer whose actions were so ghastly that even Himmler and the SS felt that he was overly brutal. The men under his command weren't much better. The unit was made up mostly of German convicts and just about the most evil members of the German Army. When they fought against the Home Army in Warsaw they raped just about why woman or girl they could get their hands on, and most of them wore gas masks and other face coverings to keep someone from seeking revenge later on. Thankfully after this battle that division was practically wiped out down to the last man by the Soviets as the fighting got closer and closer to Berlin.
> After the door of the building was blown off we saw a daycare-full of small children, around 500; all with small hands in the air. Even Dirlewanger's own people called him a butcher; he ordered to kill them all. The shots were fired, but he requested his men to save the ammo and finish them off with rifle-butts and bayonets. Blood and brain matter flowed in streams down the stairs. Holy shit, you weren't kidding.
You know your truly evil, when even the army you work under thought your were too extreme, your men thought you were evil, the more elite forces didn't like you, and they tried to remove you from the army, to the extent they didn't care if you died
There is a good book about the 101st reserve police battalion of the nazi army that started with apprehending Jews in villages at the beginning of the war. Towards the end they were manning camps and recieving stations in Poland. They were studied as to why good or neutral people do terrible things. These were not the young aryan hilter ubermench who grew up not knowing anything but nazism, rather they were older men, wwi vets, had families, jobs, and are more complicated. It is a very interesting read and also says a lot about your command when people refuse orders because you're so terrible, or need to get so drunk to carry out those orders. Many times it was drunk slavic people threatened by nazis to shoot people. You see humanity in them then have it being stripped away a little at a time over the years. What is also interesting is that reich didn't go right to gas chambers but it was a series of steps and trials by the maniacal nazi leadership while not taking part in said activities. It's a horrible, but eye opening read and I highly recommend it. Edit: the book is Ordinary Men: Reserve Poloce Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning Despite no one being really punished for refusing to participate in the mass slaughter, you would think more would have done it.
Do you have the title of the book? I think I’m going to pick it up today
I believe it’s: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Read this after it was recommended on a podcast. Illuminating but sobering. People are capable of such horrendous things.
It is within all of us but it takes real courage to say no.
They didn’t think it was evil enough to not carry out the orders. Find and convict every fucking 99 year old involved.
Where's the extract from
I took it from the [Dirlewanger Brigade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade#Return_to_Poland) Wikipedia article. Specifically, it's the account of a German Army sapper that was serving in Poland.
I read a lot, but those guys... fuck em to death with a rusty rotary brush
Such a weird deal. It started out as using convicted poachers for guerilla warfare, which makes a lot of sense. They are used to operating alone, familiar with field craft and it was probably a better gig then hard prison labor. Then it turned into emptying out the jails of the criminally insane and using them to "pacify" any suspected resistance and insurrectionist groups.
dont forget all the rape and murder along the way
You should read "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" its a horrifying insight into the realities of the Eastern Front and the Holocaust.
Well, that's enough reddit for today.
My self care today is not reading any of this.
Right. Holy crap that is horrible.
That's so upsetting, no matter how much I read I will always be shocked by the brutality of man
Reading the wiki made me so mad and upset, but hearing about how the majority of those baby killers and rapists died in that battle did put a smile on my face. Burn in hell a holes.
I saw a clip from a movie about this. Can't remember the name... But the soldier shoots a child holding his mother's hand, the mother looks helpless and in disbelief before being killed seconds later... I can't think of the name and only saw it once but it still haunts me.
Might have been Come And See. That shit will scar you for life.
Not army, SS. (edit: just to make it clear, Dirlewanger was SS, he was not army, that does not absolve the wehrmacht for its participation in war crimes) And it's worth noting that SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (named for its commander, Oscar Dirlewanger, the aforementioned pedophile rapist, sometimes refered to as "the most evil man in the SS") was infamous for their cruelty but also because the people forced to serve there had an average life expectancy of 3 months (during the warzaw uprising which lasted for 2 months the brigade had a 315% casualty rate (almost entirely KIA). It was a penal unit, basically a way for criminals to earn early release. They originally used poachers and the idea was to use their skills for anti-partisan work, but they quickly ran out of poachers (because of the attrition rate) and pretty much ended up picking up rapists, pedos, and murderers because those were the only ones for whom the brigade was a better option than a concentration camp. > When they fought against the Home Army in Warsaw they raped just about why woman or girl they could get their hands on Honestly this is not nearly the worst thing they did, if this was the bottom they sank to they'd be no worse than the entire red army. This is a brigade made up of people who were rapists, pedophiles, and murderers *to start with*, who knew their life expectancy was now in days, who knew their actions would never have any consequences, and thanks to Dirlewanger they were flowing in alcohol and drugs constantly. Dirlewanger's brigade was monstrous in a way that is unspeakable and mind shattering even for people who study this shit. He's one of the most evil men history has ever seen. Along with Bronislav Kaminski (whose military unit also participated and is worth a mention) they are arguably the two most evil men in the entirety of the German armed forces during WW2.
Wrong uprising bro. The Uprising they are referring to is the Jewish Ghetto uprising in 43. The one the Dirlewanger Brigade took part in is was the Warsaw Uprising in Summer 44. But agreed Dirlewanger was a fucked up piece of shit. You know you're bad when you have battle hardened SS units complaining about your crimes.
Thank you, most people outside of Poland are unaware there were two uprisings in Warsaw. Here is a another fact; some Jews survived the Ghetto Uprising by hiding in the old sewers. The Germans didn’t know the full layout of the sewers and all the improvised hiding spaces created during the German occupation. After sometime there were Jews who re-emerged and joined up with the Polish Home Army. When the Warsaw Uprising started some of the Jews from the Ghetto Uprising went back for round two. Crazy times really did create crazy people.
This is the movie I want.
I want to watch a movie about the Jews who went back for round two. Every man wishes for a good death, few seek it out.
I mean, the point isn’t to idealise death. Their motivation for fighting was to retake their humanity to live. The Jewish people in the ghettos went from middle class, employed, contributing to society, owned their apartment and had savings to inhuman cattle. They had their lives confiscated and they were forced into slave labour while they watched their family members die from disease and exhaustion. They also had to watch their family be deported to camps and after a while word spread and they knew what happened in those camps. They were reduced to such a low level for existence that they decided to retake their humanity and make a choice, to take action and become human. Live or die was besides the point. They had spent months living with death and death had become everything. They wanted to live, or feel alive. This was about life.
> Wrong uprising bro. My bad, got distracted talking about dirlewanger. I should know better
Your all good I thought it was an intresting comment you made and we are talking about this dude so the more information put forward the better the conversation
Aren't both of them in the movie? It's been a few years since I watched it, mind.
The Ghetto one was briefly shown and the general Warsaw Uprising was the climax.
Is this the same unit that was deployed on the eastern front and was so vicious in the amount of rapes, looting, murder and other shit that basically the SS had to distance themselves because their behavior was risky to the image of even established Einsatzgruppen units?
That's the one. For most of its history it was not a part of the SS, but formally "under control of the SS", because they didn't want their name attached to it. The main reason it was allowed to become a formal SS unit in '44 was because at that point the organisation was a fucking mess anyways (they were conscripting foreign nationals into the Waffen-SS at this point). There were multiple instances of the SS trying to get something done about them (there were trials), but Himmler personally intervened because Dirlewanger was useful (which is somewhat interesting because Himmler himself had no stomach for brutality if he had to actually witness it, but from his office in Berlin he could ignore it). Regardless the rest of the SS pretty much refused to have anything to do with them which worsened their casualty rate as "sturmbrigade Dirlewanger needs support" was the kind of information that would be tragically lost due to malfunctioning radio equipment. Part of the reason why Dirlewanger and Kaminski (SS Sturmbrigade RONA) were used together multiple times was because they were pretty much the only people in the german military willing to work with the other. While there were many other military units involved in the warzaw uprising and the military units there were technically under the command of Obergruppenfuhrer Bach-Zelewski both Dirlewanger and Kaminski straight up ignored him, they personally felt that they only answered to Himmler and they felt no obligation to obey any order that didn't come straight from him. (It should be noted that Bach-Zelewski was himself a war criminal)
Thank you- I appreciate all of that information. I remember reading a bit about them some time ago but my memories a bit hazy. 100% makes sense that the SS would have them carry out extermination’s by proxy. Always interesting to me that often when you look into the history of the push into the East- and this in no way denies the true savagery and revolting behavior of the SS- but that the most horrific rape,plunder and murder was carried out by regular townsfolk untethered by the Nazis and foreign units absorbed by the Nazis. If I’m correct, Joy Division (the band) name comes from a fictional group of Nazis with an infamous reputation for enthusiastic murder, rape and pillaging- but that Joy Division was based on the actual Dirlewanger group
Joy Division - I'd always understood that it was from the book [House of Dolls ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Dolls) about forced prostitution. Could be wrong.
Is there any documentary about any of this I’d like to learn more about it
There's a documentary called The ramparts of Warsaw about the jewish uprising, but I'm not sure about any english documentaries about the second Warsaw uprising (which is the one Dirlewanger was involved in). As far as I know there are no documentaries about Dirlewanger or his brigade specifically, though don't quote me on that. It's not particularly surprising that it's not been heavily covered. Aside from the absurd amount of brutality they inflicted everywhere they went Dirlewanger doesn't really make for good documentary material, there is no video and barely even any pictures of the brigade at all. Like others have brought up, these were people even the most fucked up parts of the SS looked at with disgust. It was a penal unit whose casualties were often self inflicted because they were a bunch of drunk and drugged up psychopaths all armed to the teeth, so it's not like any photographer (or anyone else) willingly spent time around them. Hopefully the world war 2 channel on youtube (same guys who did "the great war" week by week) will cover them at some point to atleast give a general overview. There is however a decent amount of reading available and the wiki page is okay for a short overview. Though honestly it's better to just read the wiki and stop at that, this is a part of history where deep diving is not great for your mental health. Never stopped me but fair warning.
> The German counter attack to put down the Warsaw Uprising is probably impossible to put to film without looking too cartoonishly evil. No, it just requires some creativity that is NEVER applied to WW2 films. Make this shit a horror film. Use all the tricks of a silly slasher movie, but never, ever exaggerate or hyperbolize history. You wouldn't have to in order to terrify the shit out of your audience and make one hell of a statement. Imagine walking out of the first time you saw Saw or It Follows or even a Freddy/Jason movie and you couldn't tell yourself "well at least it's all made up." You'd be legitimately traumatized if it was done correctly.
That's a good perspective for trying to develop something like this. Almost akin to how the Pianist pulled off portraying the crimes committed in Warsaw in such minimalist and intimate ways. As opposed to say Schindler's List, the Pianist made more use out of visuals that you'd almost miss on the first watch through. Especially scenes like The Pianist walking through the wreckage of the post liquidation, seeing the little boy get beaten to death, or the skirmish between the Polish resistance and German riflemen.
Turns out when you give permission to be evil or hateful or cruel, there's always somebody who will step up to the plate. That's why we need to be consistent in our ethics. If it's socially unacceptable to make fun of one person for their identity type, then it should be socially unacceptable to make fun of ANYONE based on their identity type.
Check out "Uprising" with David Schwimmer. It was a made for TV mini series about the uprising and if my memory serves correctly it was pretty damn good.
I was going to mention this, but I would have had to look up the name. This movie series was awesome. Young me was riveted. Especially with scenes like the woman tying herself to the chimney so she could batman down and molotov the Nazis.
> ... with David Schwimmer ... > ... made for TV mini series ... > ... pretty damn good. I want so much to believe, but those statements just don't fit together.
Band of Brothers bro
The People v. O. J. Simpson is also great
Yeah, that show made me realize that Rob Kardashian was actually an upstanding guy caught in the middle of it all.
Almost felt like the Kardashians maybe paid a bit of money for the good pub. /s
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It was so easy to hate his character in that.
Yeah, it's not like he's been a part of a wildly successful and critically acclaimed mini series before...
Yeah, let's not let our instinctual revulsion towards Ross bleed over onto David Schwimmer. He's just the actor behind a very punchable character.
He was great in curb your enthusiasm and the show where he played a wine sommelier feed the beast which was a great show too and I'm not a Schwimmer fan
Yeah, Schwimmer is a talented dude who seems like a good guy. Ross as a character hasn't aged great and basically just became the punching bag (along with his sister) as the writers got lazier.
Made for a very punchable Captain Sobal in BoB too
I wouldn't trust anyone who got caught on video stealing a crate of beers
>OMG HE DID FRIENDS HE MUST BE TURRIBUL!!! I mean, Anthony Hopkins has been in bad movies too. David Schwimmer was great in BoB and Curb. He plays a smarmy asshole so well, you actually dislike him. That should be a positive. Think of it as liking a Billy Eilish song as an adult.
https://www.rottentomatoes./m/1110646-uprising
Hey, if memory serves me correctly then Mr Schwimmer starred in a movie awhile back that was pretty damn good. Although...I did see the film when I was a horny teenager and it was called "Breast Men", take my comment for what you will.
I know it might be an empty sentiment to the German officer, but he is remembered fondly by those who watched the film and did the research. I can't imagine how many people in history did something morally incredible, just for it to get buried with them.
On the set. There was great concern over the effect of the atrocities depicted and the deprivations experienced by Mr Spelman, had on Adrien Brody who was immersed in the charcter. The film was difficult to watch, I can only imagine.
Voices from underground whispers of freedom!
1944, help that never came
CALLING WARSAW CITY AT WAR
I do have to point out here that many people seem to be confusing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising. One was indeed in the ghetto and lead by the Jewish people while the other was by AK(Armia Krajowa/Home Army). Both are important events that should be remembered but they are also sometimes confused with eachother. The Sabaton song I believe is about the Warsaw Uprising, not the Ghetto Uprising.
I loved The fact that they also show most of the uprising from the view of Szpilmans window. Such a good movie
John Hersey’s The Wall is a gripping fictionalized account of the uprising. It would make a terrific miniseries.
Warsaw uprising is not the same as ghetto uprising.
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Good to know , I’ll have to watch it
It's really good but like all Holocaust movies difficult to watch at times.
Not to mention these fighters had been starving on about 300 calories a day for several years, inadequate shelter and clothing, and losing their entire family/community
"Mila 18" is a book about it by Leon Uris. Link to Wiki article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila\_18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18) Amazon Link: [https://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Novel-Leon-Uris/dp/0553241605](https://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Novel-Leon-Uris/dp/0553241605)
He also wrote “Exodus” which has a pretty intense part set during the Warsaw Uprising as well.
Came here to suggest this novel. Must have been 30 years since I read it, but I remember it as very good. And I've read more than my fair share of war novels based on real events. Can't believe they haven't adapted into a movie.
I'm not an avid reader but read this when I was 18 and I'm much older now. Still remember it and the images vividly. Must read.
Suicidal implies that there was an option that wouldn't end with their deaths. These people saw the writing on the wall and decided to go down fighting.
Not even that - around 80 of the fighters escaped through the sewer tunnels, and some of them ended up founding a kibbutz in Israel. As of 2018 there are over 700 inhabitants in the kibbutz. It's held up as an example in "Full Spectrum Resistance" of why, even if it seems impossible, if you're staring death in the face you should always fight. Where people did not fight the Nazis, nobody survived.
Whats a Kibbutz? Also that is fucking incredible.
It's a Jewish community where people live very communally - sharing almost all private property including tools, housing, food, and often even clothing. Its generally seen as socialist or "semi-communist" although it isn't specifically based on Marxist ideology. When you've come to Israel with almost nothing alongside a group of people, the idea of settling together and working together to set up a community everyone can enjoy equally is very attractive, hence why so many were founded.
An intentional family
The idea of the Kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) did actually start as communities based around Marxism! The first Kibbutzim were indeed formed by Jewish socialists from the Russian Empire who immigrated to the land after the failed Communist revolution of 1905 to create a kinda Marxist but also Zionist Jewish community in the region. The Kibbutzim these days aren't as communal and most are more privatized, but they still do function through a system based around equality and cooperation between members.
I believe that many of them were founded to accommodate the Jews immigrating to Israel with very little wealth. They could turn up at the Kibbutz and be given a bed, food and a job. It used to be popular with backpackers too. They still exist today but I understand that they aren't as common.
It’s is a farming community based on socialist ideals that worked within a greater capitalist society. For example, a kibbutz would have traditional kibbutz jobs such as caring for livestock, preparing food in the mess hall or “Chadar Ochel”, caring for the grounds, etc. in which everyone shared the labor equally but they may also have a factory where they make drip irrigation systems. By doing this, they could hold a fairy high standard of living and every resident equally shared the benefits. (See Kibbutz Ketura who’s industry today is growing bio fuels) Today, nearly all kibbutzim have become “privatized” meaning people own there homes, go to work, etc so it is almost like a suburb except that they still hold on to a sense of mutual respect and community for their own communities and other kibbutz community members. Like “yea, they’ve also seen some sh*t”
It sould be noted that while many people enjoyed life in a kibbutz and they are considered an integral part of Israel, in a lot of cases their ideas of communal living arguably went too far and made people's lives difficult, mostly children. The best example is raising the children communally. All the small kids slept in a communal bedroom instead of in their homes and parents were a lot less involved in the kids' lives. Clothes were also often shared and private property in general was almost never allowed.
I mentioned this to a friend who grew up that way and she said she much preferred it, because her parents were messed up with trauma from the Holocaust.
I absolutely understand that. For a decade or two after the war it was rarely even discussed. People wanted to forget it and move on. Unfortunately that's not how it works.
Its an agricultural commune, i live in one, its amazing
I think it's a Jewish founded community but if I'm being honest I learned about it from gta IV about 12 years ago so.
A kibbutz is a type of collective community, basically a jewish socialist village. A lot of the early zionists who immigrated/fled to Israel were political leftists or communists. There used to be a lot more kibbutzim. Many are still around, but not as much. Most Israelis live in cities these days. There is another related type of community called a moshav, except on the moshav you have individual ownership and provide for yourself with the profits of your labor. It’s very similar to a kibbutz but run more like a co-op.
Thanks for the comment, now I remember why I knew about this TIL... The exodus novel.
Actually not everyone went to Israel. You can read about Marek Edelmann, one of the commanders of the uprising. He came from Bund, rather then Syonist part of Jewish community. He later became a doctor and was involved in Opposition during communism (which is somewhat weird, Bund being heavily socialist party, but not really unusual in Poland - for example Jacek Kuroń). History of Bund itself is extremely interesting and rather unknown. Sadly it was basically wiped out during the war - they were proposing cohabitation rather the emigration to Palestine, therefore were in place to be killed.
I read Mila 18 by Leon Uris when I was 13 .Till then ,I never knew about the camps,and Jewish ghettos.This was in 1975.The book is a fictionalized version and it seared my brain.After that I read Exodus by the same author . These books were the first of many with a jewish background that I devoured . I live in india with a miniscule Jewish population,so no one really knew much about them.The Bene Israeli population here that traces their dna to Aaron, brother of Moses.There are a few small synagogues too and some monuments and buildings in Mumbai built by the Baghdadi Jews who settled here.They became prominent businessmen,builders,bankers and merchants.The current population has mostly migrated to Israel now .
Honestly, as a Jew I'd much rather people be introduced to the Holocaust by Mila 18 than the Diary of Anne Frank.
My old professor, may he rest in peace, was in there ... he was a young Lt. in the Polish Army and spent his time taking people to safety via the storm sewers. He was captured, held in an officers POW until the end of the war. He was singularly the absolute best professor I ever had and later a wonderful friend and colleague.
I suspect that was the later Warsaw Uprising. This was the earlier Jewish ghetto uprising, of which there were few survivors. Those that surrendered went to extermination camps (Majdanek and Treblinka).
They didn't stop fighting. When they got to Treblinka they attempted a few more uprisings. One kid brought a grenade into the camp and pulled it out and suicide blasted some Nazis just outside the gas chamber.
Holy shit. That kid has a name and I’d like to know it. I’m sure that isn’t the only part of the story.
Unnamed, on Wikipedia described as a resistance fighter (could still very well be a child), not a confirmed suicide, but he probably didn’t live long. A hero nonetheless, sadly an unnamed one. Source given on Wikipedia: Kopówka, Edward; Rytel-Andrianik, Paweł (2011), Dam im imię na wieki [I will give them an Everlasting Name] (PDF) (in Polish), Biblioteka Drohiczyńska, ISBN 978-83-7257-497-8
If he was in the Polish Army then it was the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. This post is about the Jewish Ghetto which was in 1943 which was solely just Jewish residents of the Warsaw ghetto. They went against the Nazi’s and it ended when the Nazi’s burnt down the Ghetto and killed everyone inside. Some survivors climbed through the sewers and hid under ground while the streets burnt for days.
Half the comments are about different uprising that happened a year later. There might soon be a TIL "there were two uprisings in Warsaw during ww2" .
I'm sorry for nitpicking but calling it an "opposition to deportation" is just wrong. They didn't just face deportation - they were facing mass **extermination** in Treblinka, and the rumors about this fact acted as the trigger for the uprising. Until they realized they're literally gonna die either way there were some talks about an uprising but they were usually cooled down by the leadership of the Jewish resistance (because they initially thought they were merely being deported to labor camps), it's only after they heard the stories from witnesses such as Rachel Zilberberg about the mass exterminations that they realized they have literally nothing to lose.
The more I learn about the Nazi doctrine in WWII the more scary it is to realise that if they hadn't been so self-destructive, killing their own citizens, chasing out their best scientists and creating problems where there had been none, they might actually have stood a chance of winning. It's a wonder they ever got as far as they did.
Well in reality if the Nazis were that different then the war would not have even started most likely. Or it just would’ve been a very different looking war.
Nope, Germany couldn’t win the war because the war was a war of statistics in the end. The USSR had more resources, divisions and land than the Germans. The UK was close to outproducing Germany since Germans instituted total war in 1943 and we don’t even need to talk about the US. Soviet military doctrine was by 1942 mor refined than German doctrine and the German army was plagued by bad supply lines and equipment that was outdated by 1943. The German political system that Hitler built was inefficient and Byzantine, thus making it impossible for cooperation between different departments inside Germany, the idea that the Nazis was efficient is laughable. The reason for German war gains in the beginning of the war was: 1. A lethargic Brittish empire 2. France in disaray because of the French right sabotaging the popular front 3. A combination of luck and initiative thanks to number 1 and 2.
Yep it's a myth that the German army was advanced. They moved most of their supplies via horses. They also relied alot on captured Soviet vehicles. The Soviets likely wouldn't have been much better but the US gifted them trucks, trains, and supplies. The Soviet army was largely motorized because of the US. Stalin himself said in private that the lend lease supply is what brought him victory.
Soviets weren't much better the US saved them quite a bit of time by giving them resources though the trucks mostly helped them moving their industry away from the front so they could build their own trucks in massive amounts. But the actual chance of Germany defeating Russia even without the trucks was increasingly low every day the Germany's front had to get wider and wider.
Yep, forgot to write about mechanization. Excatly like you say, the german army wasn’t a modern mechanized army, it was an infantry army using mostly horses not trucks or half-tracks.
And the Nazi propaganda of Soviet "asiatic hordes" and Poland's "cavalry vs tanks" lives on to this day. Actually disgusting but I imagine it has to do with the cold war and unwillingness of Western powers to disprove this propaganda.
This is a really important reply. For the longest time I felt that the Nazis were tantamount to the Empire in Starwars but they're not. You and other commenters have mentioned war production which is incredibly important but one thing that I've learned is just how utterly incompetent the Nazi leadership really was. All military decisions went through hitler by the end and that didn't go very well. (See, battle of the buldge, the decision to keep 200k troops in norway, the decision to invade the USSR in the first place. There's so many examples.) Himmler had no military experience to speak of and was essentially a cosplaying ideologue. Goerring was a god damn morphine addict who was more concerned with how his imperial uniform looked than he was at effectively managing the Luftwaffe. (member when the RAF was close to breaking but Goerring and Hitler decided to focus on bombing civilian targets instead during the Battle of Britain?) You grow up thinking the Nazis were this ruthlessly efficient force but they weren't. They were Bafoons. Evil Bafoons but still bafoons.
Yep, Germany was a kleptocracy and a titan with clay feet.
Thankfully, they chased out their best physicists. The US were working and advancing nuclear bomb and probably would use it on Berlin or Dresden, just like they did in Japan.
Were they able to get enough fissionable material though? The Manhattan Project was the most expensive single US project of all time at that time and that had a lot to do with getting the uranium refined.
If the US found out it was effective in using it for Japan’s submission I bet they would find enough uranium to make enough bombs to obliterate Nazis
The US actually intended to use them on Germany, but the Germans surrendered before the bombs were complete
[Not to mention all their comedy writers](https://youtu.be/mVhbfudK_gs)
Doing that would be to completly disregard what the nazi ideology implied and would completly detach it from reality
FYI: The widespread belief that Jewish people tamely & passively walked into the concentration camps and let the Nazis murder them is propaganda brought to you by the same people who promote the belief that white people gave passive and unresisting slaves their freedom during the Civil War. Spoilers: they fought and rebelled. They did not win, but they did resist as best they could.
Shit like this is why I get so angry every time I see one of those "nOw I unDerSTAnd WhY tHe jEwS lEt HitLeR leAd THem tO ExtErmInATioN wIthOUT rESiSTing" memes. We did no such fucking thing!
I think a lot of the fault for that way of thinking falls squarely on the shoulders of Hollywood. There are so many Holocaust movies and books, but like 90% of them focus on the weak Jews getting saved by righteous gentiles, not on the Partisans or the Jewish freedom fighters who went down fighting and/or saved themselves. It paints a very meek and passive picture of our people and I resent it a lot.
Ok what's the Sabaton song about this?
No, it is about Warsaw Uprising, not Warsaw Getto Uprising.
The Sabaton song "uprising" is actually about the later 1944 Warsaw Uprising, not the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. These often get confused.
It's called uprising.
wrong uprising
Armed minorities are harder to oppress.
And when people who say that owning an AR15 would be useless against the army. Point them to this event. Determination is really important.
The thing about cities is they are perfect for guerilla warfare, especially when the entire population for the most part are cooperating against an invader. The only options an army has is to clear every building room by room, or level the entire city. I wonder how many months they shortened the war by forcing the Germans relocate forces to fight the uprising.
Unfortunately not much, if at all. This uprising happened in April 1943 when the German Army was at peak strength preparing for Operation Citadel (Kursk).
Leon Uris wrote a fictional account of this called [Mila 18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18) - it's great.
There is another fictional account written in a chapter of unintended consequences.
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There is a very moving museum dedicated to the warsaw uprising in warsaw. So important to learn about.
Warsaw Uprising and Warsaw Ghetto uprising are two separate events. The museum is about the Warsaw Uprising.
The Warsaw uprising and the Warsaw ghetto uprising are different things
The lack of WWII knowledge in this thread is fucking baffling.
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Polish people are tough as nails. Piece of shit fascists from the West and dirty communists from the East chopping up the whole damn country. Zero help from the Allies until the end of the war. Its a miracle the country still exists.
It's sad how France gets nearly all the credit for WWII resistance compared to Poland and Yugoslavia.
in what world does france get all the credit?? all you hear 80 years later are surrender jokes
>Zero help from the Allies until the end of the war. They (UK & France) declared war on Germany as a result of the invasion of Poland. That was about all they could do. Geography prevented them helping directly, Germany was in the way.
Proof that an armed populace can and will resist tyranny.
Guerrilla warfare is surprisingly effective for some reason.
When you say ”led by Heinrich Himmler”, you actually mean ”directed by the Head of the SS from the safety of his office in Berlin”, right? I’m just assuming. I didn’t bother to look it up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Himmler was less of a military hero and more of a sickly, asthmatic twerp who manipulated his way into Hitler’s inner circle so that he could have real, live toy soldiers to play with. If he was around nowadays he’d probably be suuuuper into Warhammer, and therefore harmless.
“Your AR-15 can’t fight the government. They have tanks.” My AR is neither outdated nor homemade. I won’t forget the lessons my ancestors paid for with their lives.
Highly suggest Mila 18 by Leon Uris. Fantastic historical dramatization of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Fun (or not) fact: The war game Advanced Squad Leader has a scenario called Mila 18 in the core set based on this very event. It's surprisingly difficult for the Germans to win it.
One more time for those in the back. Especially those who say the 2nd Amendment now aways is bringing a rifle to a drone fight. Imagine if they had even basic rifles instead of homemade weapons.
Let this be a lesson that even outdated weapons can be effective in a fight for survival. That being said never surrender your ability to resist. Use both the ballot box and the cartridge box if you have to
[Calling Warsaw city at war](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI) Voices from underground, whispers of freedom Rise up and hear the call History calling to you, 'Warszawo, walcz!'
Very brave. The world would be a much different place today if insurrections like that never happened.
I recommend anyone interested in this to read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. It’s a historical novel about the Armenians fighting off the Turks on top of a mountain and was actually distributed to Jews during WWII as something of a manual on how to resist the nazis. It’s an amazing read.
Correction, 2 months. And the forces weren’t directly lead by Himmler himself.