RESISTERS
TEACHING LESSON 7

Handout 7A: Gizella “Joins” the Resistance

Handout 7B :   Simone Helps Children

Vocabulary: ghetto, spiritual resistance, Resistance, Vichy government, Occupied France, internment camp

Read Overview 5 and summarize for students. One of the questions both teachers and students ask most frequently about the Holocaust is “Why didn’t the Jews fight back?” Before beginning this lesson, you may want to point out that such a question to some extent blames the victims of the Holocaust for the tragedy that befell them. The question implies that the Jews of Europe could have stopped the Nazi genocide if only they had acted differently. As Overview 5 indicates, both physical and spiritual resistance did take place. It is important for teachers to present an accurate picture of the daily acts of resistance by Jews in ghettos and concentration camps as well as to describe Jewish participation in resistance groups. Jews resisted by building hiding places in the ghettos and by jumping from the trains taking them to the death camps. For many Jews, the ultimate act of resistance was struggling to survive in a death camp or ghetto at a time when it would have been easier to die than to live under such horrifying conditions.

Because teenagers, in particular, often argue that they would have acted quite differently in this situation, you might use these questions to clarify their understanding of the obstacles which Jews faced in resisting.

• If you fled to escape capture, where would you go? Who would give you food and shelter? How would you pay for these necessities? What would be the penalties for Christians who helped you? (Remind students that violence against Jews was state-supported. Thus victims could not turn to the police or other law enforcement officials for protection. To the contrary, police and military soldiers were perpetrators of state-sanctioned violence. In addition, in almost all occupied countries, local populations collaborated with the Nazis. Resisters could not assume that their Christian neighbors or friends would hide them. Many people informed on their neighbors for personal gain, out of fear of reprisals if they did not do so, or out of personal anti-Semitism.)
• Assuming you could get out of your house, how could you escape from the town or city where you lived? (Point out that in Nazi-occupied countries, everyone was required to carry identification papers. It was not possible to travel by train from one place to another without such papers. People caught without their papers were immediately under suspicion.)
• How would you defend yourself? (Students often say they would get a gun, but where would they get one? Few farmers owned guns. Only police, foresters, and soldiers had them. There were no gun stores and obtaining guns or ammunition was a life-threatening act. Even Christian resistance groups were very reluctant to give guns or ammunition to Jewish partisans.)
• Would you be willing to risk the lives of your family, your friends, and possibly your entire community by an act of resistance? (The Nazis practiced a policy of collective responsibility. If one member of a family resisted, other family members were killed. Resistance put everyone in a family and sometimes in a village in extreme danger. Sometimes a resister was forced to watch as his or her family was tortured and killed before the resister himself was put to death.)
• Once trapped in a ghetto, malnourished and demoralized, would you be thinking about resistance or survival? What resources would you have to organize resistance?
• In a concentration camp, closely watched by guards with guns and vicious dogs, surrounded by electrified fences, skeleton-like in appearance and dressed in thin, clearly-marked clothing often in subzero temperatures, how would you fight back?

After reviewing the difficulties of resistance, tell students they will now examine the experiences of two Jewish women who did participate actively in resistance movements. Write the words “member of the underground” and “resistance” on the chalkboard. Ask students what associations these phrases bring to mind.   Where do students’ ideas about the work and life of such people come from? (war movies, television dramas, suspense novels) From the media and spy novels, students often think of such work as exciting, even glamorous.

Divide students into pairs and give each pair Handouts 7A and 7B. In these handouts students will examine and contrast the experiences of two North Carolina women who worked in the Resistance, one in Poland and one in France. Begin by noting the differences between France and Poland under the Nazis. Make sure students understand that after France surrendered to Germany, the country was divided into two parts. The northern part, Occupied France, was ruled directly by the Germans, while in Southern France, the Vichy Government, composed of pro-Nazi French politicians, governed in the Free Zone, or unoccupied France.  

Initially in the Free Zone, French Jews felt safe, although Jews living in either part of France who did not have French citizenship and Jewish refugees from eastern Europe were soon targeted for deportation by the Nazis. However, as the war progressed, the Nazis exerted greater control over all of France and all Jews risked deportation and death.

From the earliest days of occupation, the Nazis exerted strong direct control over Poland. Many Poles actively collaborated with the Nazis. Students may have read about some of Gizellas’s earlier experiences in Handout 4A. If not, review this handout with eh class. Explain that although Gizella was forced to live in the ghetto, her uncle, a doctor had more freedom of movement. Despite the fact that he was Jewish, he was allowed to leave the ghetto to treat his Christian patients. Gizella was sometimes permitted to go with him to carry his medical bag or supplies. Outside the ghetto, her blonde hair and gray-green eyes meant she was often mistaken for a German or a Pole. Her physical resemblance to the Polish Christians around her helped save her life.

Have students use the following questions to help them analyze and compare and contrast the experiences of Gizella and Simone:

• How did each of these young women become a resister?
• What were the goals for each young woman’s resistance work? Whom did their work help the most? What risks did each take? What obstacles did each face? Which resister had more help from the local population?
• What was each resister’s “cover”? Why were identity papers important to each of them? How were these papers obtained? How were they used?
• What skills and personality traits do you think helped make these young women effective resisters?
• Simone expresses the opinion that she and her friends in the resistance did nothing out of the ordinary? Do you agree?

After reading about the experiences of these two resisters, ask students if they would describe resistance work as “exciting” or “glamorous”. What words best describe it?

Connect to World History : Students may be assigned to research and report to the class on the many forms resistance took during World War II in both occupied and Allied countries. Fighting Back by Harold Werner and Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps by Hermann Langbein are useful resources for more advanced students.

The scariest thing is not the evil,

but more the people who sit by and let it happen.

Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/