The Underground Movements During the Holocaust

Front page

• Title: Underground movements.
• The research question:

What kind of underground movements were in the Ghetto?

• Teacher's Name: Nellie Deutsch.
• School Name: Ort Gutman.
• Names: Shir Wurman and Dorin Dery.
• Class: יא'5
• Date: 2009

Table of contents

Introduction

We chose this subject because we learn about the underground movements in History class and we found it an interesting subject for the Holocaust project. We chose this topic because it's interesting to know how people managed in the ghetto in order to live normal lives. In the Ghetto, there were underground movements. There were different kinds of movements in different areas.

Research Question

Our research question is: How the people in the Ghetto managed to survive by underground movements? Following the reaserch question, appears more questions about the underground movements in the Holocaust. Questions that we will deal with in the project are:

• What kinds of underground movements were in the Ghetto?
• Who managed the movements in the Ghetto?
• Why did people in the Ghetto build the underground movements?

Our Findings

During the Holocaust, the jews faced the difficultys of the life in the Ghetto. They had creative ways of dealing with difficultys. The ways were in differents areas:

• religious area
• cultured and spiritual area
• economic area
• social area

The people that managed the underground movements were the jew leaders of the Ghetto, the Judenrats, and the youth movement.

Religious Persecution

The Nazis forbid the Jews from observing commandments and preserving the Jewish tradition. The abuse expressed by desecrating synagogues, setting the holy Bibles on fire, and executions conducted on Jewish holidays. As a result, the jews people encounter in underground movements and continued to pray, preserve traditions and celebrate holidays despite the difficultys. The actions were made from faith of the jews to stick the tradition.

Cultural and Spiritual Persecution

In some of the Ghttos, the Nazi authorization didn't allow Jewish school and Jewish cultural activities. In the Ghetto forum, the people established orchestras, theaters, exhibitions of art, poet meetings etc. Those activities were conducted in hidden basements and apartments. In the Ghetto Warsaw, there were established an underground archive which documented the daily life in the Ghetto.

Economic Persecution

During the existence of the Ghetto the Nazis tried to prevent smuggling of food into the Ghetto, but the hard hunger caused it anyway. The smuggling were conducted in two ways:

• In an organized way
• By individuals

Most of the smuggling was executed by kids, who were able to sneak through the narrow passages.

Another activity was the illegal industry which developed mostly in individual houses and little workshops. In this industry were mostly manufactured textile, woodwork products and brushes. The invitations for those products were especially from the Poles.

Social Persecution

Before the war began, there were several youth movements in east Europe. In the begining of the war most of the leaders of the youth movements escaped to the russian tarritory, but some of them returned to the nazis territory, and became the leaders of the rebellions in the Ghetto. The activities of the youth movements in the Ghetto:

• educational and cultural- They arranged hidden educational activities, like running a public library, study groups and underground newspapers.

They also arranged hidden cultural activities

Bibliography

- History notebook -