Although there wasn’t a very large one there was a few Jewish resistance’s, there was 20 revolts in the ghettos and 5 in the concentration camps. There was resistance movements, which included groups which attacked German soldiers, destroyed German military stores and communications. In Poland there was at least 28 groups of Jewish fighters. Although the groups main aim was survival they were also trying to get the Germans to come to some sought of stop to this mistreatment but there attempted came to no avail and didn’t really threaten the Nazis in any way involving the Holocaust. Probably the most controversial movement was the White Rose movement which was formed by some students from Munich university what they did was produce leaflets telling people of what was happening and how German people were doing nothing about it there final leaflet was distributed on February 18, 1943 the Gestapo were waiting for them and were arrested all of them were tried for treason and were executed. Although this last point was an act against the Nazi’s which was slightly effective it didn’t really do any permanent damage to the attempt of the killing of the Jews.
Another man involved with the Nazis that had something to do with the treatment of the Jews was a man called Oscar Schindler, this man profited from the Jews by using them as workforce and as you can imagine it wouldn’t be very expensive labour, but this man also helped the Jews by giving them more calories than a factory would and by also saving hundreds of them by saying that he was going to build a factory to produce armaments or the Nazis and that the Jews on a list which he had drawn up would work for him, his excuse for taking these workers was that they were already trained and didn’t want to start from scratch with a new workforce. There was other people who helped saved the Jews such as Cardinal Angelo Roncalli who successfully stopped the Bulgarian King not to be allowed Bulgarian Jews to be transported But even with men like this on there side the Jews still couldn’t stop the killing as the Nazis were too powerful.
The Warsaw Uprising is probably the most famous Jewish resistance, what happened was in April 1943, 2,000 armed SS troops entered the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, but there was a surprise awaiting the SS as 700 of the ZOB movement fought back with tanks, grenades and guns. This was the first act of organized resistance and inspired other groups to do so. From this point onwards resistance’s became more and more of an occurring thing as there was revolts in Mir ghetto, Tuchin ghetto, Lvov ghetto and 4 concentration camps. There was quite a few reasons though why a lot of Jews didn’t resist these were originally when the Jews were put in ghettos they didn’t know what was going to happen to them, when they were taken to concentration camps a lot of the Jews were glad to get out of the place where they were which would smell and be very overcrowded, the Nazis also tricked them by telling them that they were going to be resettled, when the Jews did finally relise what was going on it was to late to resist as most of the Jews were in ghettos and finally Hungarian Jews believed that if the rumours of the death camps were true then the Jewish councils would have known about them and would have told them. This is why the Jews didn’t resist and it was made easier for the Nazis to attempt genocide.
So the reason behind why Nazis were able to attempt genocide on the Jewish people is that the Jews didn’t really know what was going until it was too late to resist and the German people were mostly convinced that what was happening to the Jews was alright, this point was also backed up by that what Hitler was doing for the country was good and the Germans were blinded by this.
The rights for Jews has improved greatly in many countries since World War Two but not in all for instance the Iron Curtain. The creation of the state of Israel plays a big factor in the improvement of rights since World War Two.
In November 1947 the fifty seven countries of the United Nations were asked to vote on whether or not they supported a division of Palestine into two states which would be a Jewish and a Arab state. This happened and straight after there was fighting and there was an invasion on the new Jewish state but the Israelis won the war on January 6 1949.Since 1948 four more Arab - Israeli wars have been fought. Since the end of the war the German state has paid compensation to the Jewish survivors for their suffering and there is about 40,000 Jews living in Germany now. Anti-Semitism continued after the war though but in 1990 the East German government made an apology to the Jewish people. Unfortunately there is still racial attacks for instance in 1991 there were 2,074 racial attacks in Germany alone.
After the war the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union didn’t get much better as after the the Jewish state of Israel was formed many Jews wanted to emigrate there but were not allowed by the communist government and a lot of Jews were locked up for protesting against this but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a large number of Jews have emigrated to Israel.
In conclusion to this the rights for Jews did get better after the war but not to the extent in what you would of first expected as the treatment of them in Germany and the Soviet Union carried on from the war and although not to the extent of what it was, it was still bad enough to be classed as discrimination against the Jews.
