Defying the Holocaust didn’t just mean uprising and revolt: Remembering Jews’ everyday resistance

Richard Glazar insisted that no one survived the Holocaust without help. To this Prague-born Jewish survivor, who endured Nazi imprisonment at Treblinka and <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresienstadt" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Theresienstadt</a>, plus years in hiding, it was impossible to persevere without others’ support. Glazar conceded that some of his fellow Treblinka survivors were “loners,” but <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/164058/into-that-darkness-by-gitta-sereny/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">he nevertheless believed</a> that they “survived because they were carried by someone, someone who cared for them as much, or almost as much as for themselves.” Carrying someone else took many forms. For fellow Treblinka prisoner <a href="https://karentreiger.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Samuel Goldberg</a>, a Polish Jew born in a small town called Bagatelle, it was the moment the women of his work detail stood up to a guard to save Goldberg’s life. For <a href="https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810111691/trap-with-a-green-fence/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">those around Glazar</a>, it was the times he brought them more to eat because his position as a fence builder gave him chances to buy food outside the camp. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/744548519" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Still more prisoners</a> benefited from a friend willing to literally hold them up during roll call so no guard would notice they were sick — a near-certain death sentence. <a href="https://medium.com/the-conversation/defying-the-holocaust-didnt-just-mean-uprising-and-revolt-remembering-jews-everyday-resistance-c34b97ce1f83">Read More</a>