Day 42
Surviving the Holocaust with the Jewish Partisans
Dedicated by the author to his family who perished in the Holocaust and to the 80 escapees from the camp that did not make it.
Dedicated by the author to his family who perished in the Holocaust and to the 80 escapees from the camp that did not make it.
According to Otto Ohlendorfat his trial, “the Einsatzgruppen had the mission to protect the rear of the troops by killing the Jews, Gypsies, Communist functionaries, active Communists, and all persons who would endanger the security.”
In practice, their victims were nearly all defenseless Jewish civilians (not a single Einsatzgruppe member was killed in action during these operations). By December 1941, four Einsatzgruppen, had killed a total of 300,000 people—mainly by shooting or with hand grenades at mass killing sites outside the major towns.
During World War II, 20,000-30,000 Jewish resistance fighters — known otherwise as partisans — escaped ghettos and fought against the Germans and their collaborators. Much of the surviving footage of the Jewish partisans was taken by Soviet fighters, who frequently fought alongside the Jews against their common foe, the Germans.