Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Hardcover]

Israel Gutman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1994

One of the few survivors of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Holocaust scholar Gutman draws on dairies, personal letters, and underground press reports in this compelling, authoratative account of a landmark event in Jewish history. Here, too, is a portrait of the vibrant culture that shaped the young fightersm whose inspired defiance would have far reaching implications for the Jewish people and the State of Isreal, founded exactly fifty years ago.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, following Hitler's orders to annihilate the Jewish population of Poland's capital, pitted hundreds of poorly armed, starving Jews fighting to the death, in total isolation, against an overwhelming Nazi army. This superb, moving, richly informative history of the uprising, which was led by an underground resistance group, should erase the stereotype of the passive Jewish victim. Himself a survivor of the battle, Gutman ( The Jews of Warsaw ), a history professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, uses contemporaneous diaries, letters, underground press articles, survivors' accounts, poems and Nazi documents to create a vivid picture of daily life in the ghetto, and of temporary alliances forged among Jewish fighting factions torn by ideological rifts. He also illuminates contacts between Jewish partisans and the Polish underground and fills in the cultural background by delineating Warsaw's vibrant pre-war Jewish community. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Gutman, a survivor of the Holocaust and a scholar on the subject, here traces the events that led the peaceful Warsaw Jewry into active resistance against the Nazis. In the 1920s and 1930s, Warsaw had Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish community. After Warsaw fell to Hitler, the Jewish underground formed in order to preserve the humanity of the Jews. They ran a clandestine press, established an uneasy alliance with the Polish underground, and eventually armed themselves while plotting retaliatory strategies. Gutman explores commonly held beliefs, e.g., that the Jews waited too long to defend themselves and that many did not believe reports of a Final Solution. The facts of the book are supported by excerpts from diaries, letters, newspapers, rare documents, and photographs. Gutman presents a dramatic and memorable picture of the ghetto. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
Mary Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 277 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; First edition (April 19, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395601991
• ISBN-13: 978-0395601990
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise and important work on a major historical theme!, March 26, 2000

By 

Matthew Sarelson (James Madison University, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Paperback)

A to-the-point explanation of what happened and why. And more importantly, 'how' did a group of relatively unarmed, untrained captives lead a military revolt against the Nazi war machine?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting, February 8, 2006

By 

Inger Watts (Trondheim, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Paperback)

I find this to be one of the most interesting books that I have read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. I really liked the way Professor Gutman told us about the events, and at the same time explained why and gave us additional information. I made a lot of notes while reading this book.
And I have to disagree with another reviewer, because I don't find it boring at all.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Broad-Based but ZOB-Centered History of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, August 22, 2009

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Paperback)

This work [review based on 1994 edition] begins with Jewish life in prewar Poland, and with Warsaw Jewry being one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. It then proceeds to the German-Nazi conquest of Poland, followed by the early German occupation, the eventual shipments of Warsaw's Jews to the gas chambers of Treblinka, the growing decision of the remaining Jews to resist, the preparations, the January 1943 resistance, and then the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising itself. Maps and many photographs are included.

Gutman sees the Nazi extermination plan against Jews not as something that went back to the early days of Nazi ideology and power, but something that developed gradually, and wasn't decided on until about mid-1941. (p. 71). Simultaneously, Jewish thought evolved from seeing Nazism as just another persecution of Jews to belated realization of its unfolding exterminatory policies.

This book includes seldom-mentioned information. For instance, Gutman praises Polish smugglers for bringing food to the starving ghetto, notwithstanding the fact that most of them did it for money. (p. 92). He also discusses members of the Polish Underground, notably Iwanski (e. g., p. 169) and Wolinski (e. g., p. 171), and their involvement in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Despite its comprehensiveness and easy readability, the book has a number of shortcomings. For one, while it mentions the ZZW (Z.Z.W.), it overemphasizes the ZOB (Z.O.B.). Gutman acknowledges the fact that almost none of the ZOB fighters had any military training whatsoever. (p. 204). (In contrast, the ZZW offered stronger resistance, as it had experienced soldiers and several hundred firearms provided by the Polish Underground.)

Unfortunately, Gutman hints at the myth of the Polish Underground being well-armed. (p. 173). As a historian, he should know better. For proof of the shortage of arms, consider another bloody event at this time (Spring 1943). The Ukrainian fascist-separatist OUN-UPA was conducting genocide against the Poles of prewar eastern Poland, and only a handful of Polish villages had even a half-adequate supply of arms for defense.

Gutman repeats his rejection of the authenticity of early Jewish-Polish Underground contacts, as reported by Bor Komorowski, the Polish Underground leader. (pp. 171-172). In actuality, the events are compatible with the veracity of Bor Komorowski. (see the Peczkis review of Forgotten Holocaust).

The author is careful to avoid anti-Polish generalizations (e. g., p. 39. 174), but then he turns around and lays some whoppers. He rattles off a number of unsubstantiated assertions, such as the one about some Poles being more upset about the destruction of property than of the Jews during the Uprising. (p. 232). He discusses the Polish-Underground AK (A.K.) group of Captain Joseph Pszenny and its unsuccessful attempt to explode a hole in the Ghetto wall. (pp. 217-218). Without a shred of supporting evidence, he dismisses it as "improvised", a "symbolic gesture", and something done essentially for public relations. What a low blow!--especially recounting the fact that Poles died for Jews in this operation.