Part III

Armed resistance did not represent nihilism or a total despair for the future of the Jewish people. On the contrary, the young fighters aimed to transcend the reality of destruction and provide a legacy and symbol for future generations. The armed revolt was the culmination of a long process; if it had. not come to fruition the members of the resistance movement would have considered it a great failure.

In the mind of Anielewicz, men and women had an equal role in the fighting. Next to him in the leadership of the rebellion was Zivia Lubetkin, who was fighting with him in the bunker and who managed to escape with the last fighters through the sewers of Warsaw to the Aryan side after the Nazis exploded the bunker. However, in order to reach this final phase many preparations had to be taken, in which women played a major role.

Playing down the preparatory steps before an armed resistance occurred. was the reaction of the public in the European countries occupied by the Nazis. They were desperately looking for their anti-nazi resistance movements. For them the superior act in the fight for freedom was to take part in military operations to drive the Nazis out of their countries. This was not the situation of the Jews.

I mentioned before the importance of the communication lines between the Jewish ghettos. The role of women as couriers was crucial in the operation of this system of communication. Women capitalized on the fact that, unlike men, they were not 'instantly recognizable as Jews. Many women looked "Aryan," or they dyed their hair, and were able to "pass" on the Aryan side. Thus, they had greater freedom of movement and were able to establish contacts with other underground forces. They were able to transmit money, arms and ammunition, and information to the ghettos.

However, the crucial question to be asked is, how could these women establish contacts and build relationships that would allow them to become so involved, for example, in trades they knew nothing about, and with people with whom they had had no previous contact.

The question becomes even more puzzling if we think of the traditional role of young Jewish girls in their families and social environment before the war. They were not mature enough to have established working or professional relationships with many non-Jews. They were unfamiliar with the social manners of the classes with whom they had to make contacts, and they did not necessarily have an extrovert temperament needed to approach an unknown society. How did. such women have the hutzpah and daring to pretend to be what they were not?

Lisa Chapnik, who headed the anti-fascist committee in Bialystock, was 19 years old in 1941 when the Nazis invaded her home town of Grodno. She had, just graduated from high school and was thinking of the nice summer coming up. She was short and very skinny and looked younger of her age. Without any experience in handling perilous situations, she took advantage of her childish looks, and acting like a stubborn insatiable little girl, she managed to rescue her brother from a German prisoners' camp in the first weeks of the occupation. Chapnik was ready to utilize any and all. means to gain information and a better understanding of German intentions and their Jewish policy. Thus, she used her sweet mannerisms and played as a cute little girl in order to get the support of a Russian woman to lead her to the nearby city of Slonim in order to find out what had happened to the Jews there. She got in touch with a friend of her brother who could help her make contacts and obtain information, and was ready to return to Grodno. She quickly learned Christian prayers and curses, so that her journeys to Slonim and back to Grodno would be less risky.

Her expedition had taught her how cruel was the fate of the Jews. She saw the empty Jewish quarter and was told about the massacre of the Jews in Slonim. She thought to pass the information to her fellow Jews in Grodno and to conceive some schemes of rescue.

I told my friends, relatives, and neighbors in Grodno about the Slonim massacre and everything I had heard and seen. People didn't believe me. Each person hoped that the tragedy wouldn't touch him or her personally. But I wrote down what had happened in Slonim, and my brother prepared some leaflets 'in order to expose the truth about what the nazis had done." (Women in the Holocaust, 112).

What can we learn from these events? Chapnik had the advantage of being a girl, but her character and. courage were of critical importance. The daring and courage first expressed in the rescue of a family member was perhaps and instinctive reaction. However, Chapnik demonstrated a quick learning process and an ability to project from one situation to another. Thus, she was structuring a strategy of behavior for life outside the ghetto and with non-Jews. Devotion and alliances were extremely important, and the next step that Chapnik took was to create a team with her brother and a few other friends. Cooperation with others was crucial for success, along with the realization that soon they would all have to escape the coming deportations by producing false papers giving them non-Jewish identities so that they could leave the ghetto for the Aryan side.

Their preparations not only served to save them, but were a means of establishing anti-Nazi organizations. The deportations from Grodno in the fall of 1942 left few choices to Chapnik and her friends, and they escaped to the Aryan side.

Chapnik with a group of other young women from Grodno and Bialystock - Chasia Bielcka, Bronia Vinicka, Ania Rud, Chajka Grossman - then began their careers as couriers on the Aryan side. They all moved to Bialystok and played, a dominant role in organizing the underground and assisting in the partisans' warfare. Chapnik tells us in her account:

During the day we couriers carried rifles in pipes, parts of machine guns and explosives. We passed members of the Gestapo, SS, and police. I should say that each step of the Jewish women on the Aryan side was extremely risky and dangerous. We seem to have lived on the verge of disaster - to have walked on the edge of a blade. We all assumed that none of us would survive, but it was our moral duty to fight the Nazis, to avenge our parents and our people. (Women in the Holocaust, 118)

When we follow their stories and the accounts of their work with a gender perspective, we learn that on the one hand these young girls (aged 17-20) felt no shortcomings in comparison to their male partners, and considered themselves completely equal to the male members of the resistance. Neither they nor their friends thought that their work was less important in preparing the assault on the Nazis. They thought of their advantages as women, being able to stay more confidentially and to hide their Jewishness on the Aryan side and being able to capitalize on the "gentlemanly" feelings of men towards the "beautiful and weak race." They did not hesitate to use flattering feminine mannerisms in order to avoid searches, and in gaining the protection of a high-ranking Nazi in order to transfer ammunition to the city and then to the ghetto. They never thought that using these such "female wiles" was wrong, although they also realized the risk of sexual harassment. Let's hear Chapnik again:

Until August 1943, when the Bialystok ghetto was liquidated, we were 'in close contact with the ghetto and

carried the messages of its organizations. Between the destruction of the ghetto and April 1944, we

supported the Jewish detachment Forojs We provided them with medicines, compasses, maps, data, and

some weapons. Forojs and the other Jewish partisan detachments took in all the people we managed to bring

them-those who escaped from the ghetto transports. (Women in the Holocaust, 117.)

We can imagine these young women in their activities. Working with the constant risk that their true identity might be revealed. Spending long lonely hours on the trains traveling from towns and villages and finding them without Jews. Longing for their families who had perished, and constantly worrying about their friends 'in the ghetto. They were pretending all the time to be what they were not, and were constantly hearing the slanders heaped on the murdered Jews along with joyous comments on their disappearance, and they were forced to smile quietly or join the laughter with a broken heart.

In conclusion, from the cases I presented, the definition of resistance given at the beginning of my talk cannot stand. Both individual and collective acts of resistance were often a matter of continuation rather then two different levels of action. We can understand why contemporaries viewed the armed revolt as the culmination of resistance. However, as historians, we read their version critically. We understand that in the overall representation of resistance, the preliminary steps were as essential as the final action of revolt, and that in any event neither could change the fate of the Jews as conceived by the Nazi Final Solution.