The Holocaust and Sobibor

Paper Summary:

The European Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust over 6 million Jews from all over Europe were annihilated by the Nazi death machine. The paper questions why European Jews allowed themselves to be led to their death, despite their innocence of wrongdoing and why they not resist. The paper examines two responses to this question. One response includes psychological, historical, religious and tactical reasons. A second response is that in fact there were instances of resistance and the paper uses the uprising in Sobibor death camp as an example of Jewish resistance.

From the Paper:

"The inmates interred in the camps as workers were almost totally focused on simply surviving; chronic starvation robbed concentration camp inmates of their physical strength. There were uprisings in the camps, but they were rarely successful. Those attempting to resist faced almost impossible odds. It was much more difficult for resistance fighters to organize themselves and engage in armed resistance activities because they were completely exposed to the camp administration, the guards, and unofficial collaborators among the concentration camp inmates. The Nazis also used the principle of collective responsibility against the concentration camp inmates, punishing groups of inmates for the acts of one or a few individuals in a group."

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