Essay Sample about Resistance During The Holocaust

Six million bodies. Six million bodies of innocent Jews were murdered during the holocaust in Europe. During the Holocaust, multiple people tried to resist it, and very few succeeded. Underground associations created without the Nazis knowing were formed in more than 100 different ghettos. Many Jews in the ghettos were constantly preparing to oppose any surprise attacks by the Germans (Saman 2021). Especially in the Warsaw ghetto. During World War II, numerous people attempted to resist the Nazis, including Irena Sendler, Sugihara Chiune, and members of the White Rose.

First and Foremost, Irena Sendler was one of the most hard-working, determined, but still empathetic people we have seen in a long time. At the age of twenty-nine, Irena Sendler was a social worker. At the age of twenty-nine in Warsaw during World War II (Yad Vashem 2022). Sendler was born in 1910 and passed away in 2008. Irena was born in a  town fifteen miles southeast of Warsaw Otwock. Since Irenas Father was a doctor whose patients were mostly poor Jews, She was greatly influenced from a young age by this. In 1939 Sendler saw the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence, and terror; as conditions became much worse, Irena was so revolted that she ended up joining Zegota, a council aid for Jews. (JVL 2022). “With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures and successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities”(JVL 2022). Irena Sendler was arrested for her acts of resistance in October of 1943. She was sent to the Pawiak prison and sentenced to death but was thankfully bribed out by underground activists. (Yad Vashem 2022). Now out of prison, Irena assumed a different identity and continued helping the Jews with Zegota. Irena was very good at what she did, she freed many jews and even when she was sentenced to death she never stopped trying to help others

Subsequently is a pretty well-known group called the White Rose., The White Rose was a remarkably beneficial group for the resistance movements. The White Rose consisted of six students including the founders Hans and Sophi Scholl, Willi Graf, and Alexander Schmorell. All of them were med students at The University of Munich. They kept seeing innocent Jews were murdered, so they decided to join with other people, along with Hans’s Sister Sophie Scholl (Ray 2019).  Sophie was a very brave member, born in May of 1921, who helped with delivering more than 1000 people their pamphlets. (Malloryk 2020). As stated earlier, The members were concerned and appalled by seeing so many Jews murdered. To resist, they went into an atrium with a suitcase full of leaflets containing a passionate appeal to Germans to engage in "passive resistance.” They spread these out all over the atrium for many people to see. Hand and Sophie decided to throw the phew remaining pamphlets in the air, landing near a nazi. (Ray 2019). The Nazi that Sophie and Hans threw that pamphlet at was Jakob Schmidt. Jakob saw them with the booklets, and a few minutes later, the police were called by Jakob. 4 days later, they went on trial with Christopher Probst and were executed later that day. Even with Sophie and Hans dead, their brave actions are still praised for being very helpful for the resistance movement.

Lastly, let us talk about Sugihara Chiune. Sugihara Chiune was a bold and fearless man willing to disregard direct orders to help the Jews. Sugihara Chiune was born on new years day of 1900. He was born in Yaotsu, Japan. The military recruited him to learn Russian. Chiune became very skillful at Russian affairs. In 1940, Sugihara saw a large crowd in the consulate while closing the legations. These were Jews trying to get into Japan by begging for visas. Sugihara felt that he would be disobeying God if he did not go against his orders to close the visa. he proceeded to give these Jews thousands of visas. (USHMM 2022). Sugihara was able to save many Jew’s lives by letting them into Japan. A very successful resistance cut a massive step in saving Jews’ lives. when Sugihara moved back to Japan, he was forced to resign because he ignored orders. (Yad Vashem 2022). Many Jews were able to get Visa into Japan even when a lot of people were against them, all because of Sugihara 

Unquestionably, all of these people were truly brave and decidedly helped to stop the horrible persecutions of the innocent jews. Everyone from young, like the members of the White Rose, to older, Like Irena Sendler in her later years were very crucial to the resistance movement. This is always so important to learn because many of these people risked their lives to save the Jews against Hitler’s abominable actions.