Holzer 4

Steven Holzer Professor Katerina CapkovaModern Jewish History May 6, 2015Hiding and Resistance During the war when Jewish people were under the Nazi regime, millions were tragically killed. Those who survived were liberated from camps or somehow escaped the grasp of the aggressor. For the sake of this paper, I listened to three interviews from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who all mentioned surviving by hiding from the Nazis. Be it with the help of friends or strangers, or simply just living in the wilderness to avoid discovery, many people survived this way. What should be noted is that a great number of those interviews I watched in relation to hiding also mentioned activity in resistance groups. The implications of this correlation extend to the mindset and feelings of those who decided to try and hide. The first interview that I saw that contained elements of hiding and resistance is of Simon Feldman, who was born in 1933 in Boremel, a small town in Poland. He lived as a young boy with his grandparents and his parents in a household that wasnt orthodox, but still practicing Judaism. He had a Jewish education and was still quite young when the Nazi regime took hold. Boremel became a ghetto that was occupied by Soviet troops. When Soviet troops came into his town and liberated it, he saw Jewish soldiers for the first time. They arrested Ukrainian nationalists in his town. Because of the Soviet presence in his town, he was never sent to a concentration camp but he did go into hiding. Wolyn, Poland was a forested county that his family chose to go to. There he would meet an uncle that had fled their town earlier. He comments on the multitude of Jews that were hiding in the forest, I have no idea how we found the Jews, but there were so many of them it wasnt a surprise that we did (Feldman). He stayed in a house for a while and eventually was living with his family and another family in a hay barn. Later, after hiding and living under a false identity, in March of 1944, he was taken by the Russian military to a hospital because he was sustaining burns and inability to move from being in hiding. He was taken under the wing of a member of the Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia, a Polish and joined their assault party, living in a tank. One night when he was having stomach problems and was defecating, he saw Russian and German soldiers and was trapped hiding in a bush. When he later returned to the tank, he told the commander what happened and received a medal for his accidental reconnaissance. This is a case where Simon Feldman was a survivor who both went into hiding and contributed to resistance forces. He did not make the choice to join this group but did so out of need to survive. Unfortunately, he was the only one of his close family that survived hiding. The second interview is of Fanya Gonsky, another Polish Jew from Janow, Poland. She lived with her sister and her parents until their town became a ghetto. Her and her sister fled the ghetto in fall of 1942. They hid in the woods near a convent where the nuns took pity on them, being young and in the cold and allowed them to stay in the building each night. Later on she left and tried to survive in a larger forest. She met up with a larger group of resistance fighters. She lived with men who routinely bombed and destroyed railways that were used by the Germans. Here, her living conditions were much better than that of Simon Feldmen. Gonsky lived in a bunker and received food. She received good treatment from the group and resistance leaders. Though she wasnt a fighter herself, she did help around camp where the men in the resistance were based. We were cooking, we were making fire, we were cleaning ourselves, we had not too many clothes (Gonsky). She left the forest in 1944 when the resistance group noticed that the Germans had left their area. She eventually traveled to a liberated city and lived in a refugee camp. The drastic difference between Feldman and Gonskys stories is in how successful the hiding was. Feldman nearly died and was saved by the resistance group, though still in harsh conditions whereas Gonsky lived fairly comfortably with the resistance fighters and had a majority of rough conditions when she was wandering the woods earlier in her plight. Once with the fighters, she seemed happy to assist them in resisting because they were kind and taking care of her. The final interview is with Frank Blaichman from Lublin, Poland. Blaichman was a Hasidic Jew, though now he identifies as orthodox. He lived in the Kamoinka ghetto with his family before occupation forced his family to flee into the forests, like Gonsky and Feldman. When he came into contact with another underground Jewish resistance group in the forests of Kierzkwka, often hiding in farms, he was a young man and was able to participate in resistance fighting. He was part of a group that communicated with other resistance groups, including Soviet resistance groups. They procured weapons and actually came into contact with German armed forces. Blaichman received military training and was very much involved in military activities. After liberation, he was in a displaced persons camp and eventually made it to the United States, after spending the wartime in both Poland and Germany, fighting directly for his survival. Though Feldman and Gonsky are considered members of resistance groups, Blaichman is a strong example of a hiding person who really felt for resistance and whose actions reflected this desire to survive. This is a contrast to Feldman who went into hiding and had to struggle to survive. Blaichman was old enough to forge his own path in the war and was able to survive by fighting those who were trying to oppress him. All three interviews were surprising stories of Jews who were able to evade death camps and marches when so many Jews were unable. My expectations were shattered because I was unaware of the number of survivors who used hiding to escape an otherwise unchangeable fate. I didnt know how plentiful resistance groups were. There were groups organized by name and underground as well, hiding in bunkers, swamps, forests, and mountains. They sabotaged and truly fought their German oppressors. I learned that these hiding persons were able to use the physical nature of their location to conceal themselves and also strategically fight. These three people are three of many people who hid and also had contact with resistance groups, even if small in number. The biggest take away for me is that Jews of all different backgrounds and locations were able to band together and courageously survive through taking back their freedom from the Germans.

Works CitedFeldman, Simon. Interview 28387, Visual History Archive. USC Shoah Foundation. 2011. Web. 4 May. 2015.Gonsky, Fanya. Interview 41837. Visual History Archive. USC Shoah Foundation. 2011. Web. 4 May. 2015.Blaichman, Frank. Interview 21686, Visual History Archive. USC Shoah Foundation. 2011. Web. 4 May. 2015.