After the Warsaw and other ghetto revolts, some of the ghetto fighters escaped to the forests to join partisan groups. Previously ‘free’ Jews from France, Yugoslavia and Greece were also active as partisans or members of other underground resistance groups. Many of the Soviet Jews who became partisans brought with them valuable skills that they had acquired as soldiers in the Red Army.

Jewish Partisans from Vilna, July 1944

Jewish partisans both male and female made a very significant contribution to the Europe-wide armed stuggle against the Nazis. Some Jews fought as part of other national partisan groups, but many formed specifically Jewish units, because of widespread antisemitism. Poles, Ukranians and White Russians, for example, were all used to killing Jews themselves and therefore quite unwilling to have them join their fight, even against the common Nazi enemy. In fact, the Home Army stated categorically that Jews would not be accepted into their organisation. They and the Polish underground actually directed a campaign against Jewish partisans, whom they described as “criminal and subversive elements in the military”. Polish police and peasants (as well as those in many other Eastern European countries) were encouraged to kill or hand over to the Germans many Jews who had fled to the forests.

The Jewish partisan units had names such as “Struggle”, “Death to Fascism”, “Avengers” and “For Victory”. Their philosophy was encapsulated in their stated objective of “revenge and rescue”. Some of the activities the Jewish partisan groups undertook were: attacking and harrassing German troops directly, cutting railway lines, establishing links between partisan groups throughout Europe and setting up underground networks to rescue Jews and transport them out of occupied Europe. The motivation of Jewish partisans was incredibly strong and understandably personal. As Yitzchak Zukerman, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, explained: “ It was very difficult…If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.”

One of the most famous Jewish partisans was 23-year-old Hannah Szenesh. Hannah had been born in Budapest, Hungary but as a Zionist had emigrated to Palestine before the war. She was one of many Palestinian Jews who returned to Europe to fight the Nazis and organise rescue operations for the Jews still stranded there.

In March 1944 Hannah was parachuted into Yugoslavia along with 30 men and one other young woman. For two months she fought with a band of Yugoslavian partisans, until she reached the Hungarian border on June 7. By then 289 000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz, but her mission was to help organise rescue for those remaining. Hannah knew this was a suicide mission, and before she set out, wrote a now-famous poem which begins “Blessed is the match…” The next day she was indeed captured, then imprisoned and tortured to reveal her mission. She never broke, nor requested any mercy or a pardon. Tried and convicted of treason to Hungary, Hannah Szenesh was executed on November 7 1944.