Did you know, that the Germans forced Jews into Ghettos? What is a ghetto? I always thought it was just a place were poor people lived. I had not ever thought of the ghetto as being a designed and orchestrated area to confine certain groups of people. I did not realize until viewing this film that the Germans put Jews into ghettos, ghettos that were closed off and were much smaller than the population of Jews who were forced to live there.
The perspective of this film gave me a better understanding of who the Jews were and are, with a fuller picture of the truth of the Holocaust. People often will say they should have resisted. “I would have resisted.” But what they don’t realize is that the Holocaust was a well thought out plan to eradicate Jews from this world. They were systematically starved and made weak so they could be humiliated, dehumanized, their spirits broken and brutally killed.
The Bible tells us that the Jewish people are a resilient people, God’s people. I believe that the Germans thought that, through splitting up families, disbanding schools, and forbidding their traditions, that they could weaken the Jewish people. We, however, see their true identity in how they resisted. I think for a lot of people “Resistance” means, fighting with guns, “kill or be killed.” Although that may be necessary, at times there are other forms of resistance.
This film does a great job of highlighting that the Jewish people did indeed resist. They resisted even though they were physically weakened, humiliated, not treated as even human, and during a time of great sorrow and immense loss. They found strength both physically and spiritually. I would argue that it was God who sustained them. He gave them strength and courage despite knowing how it would likely turnout. They continued being the people whom God created by caring for one another. They organizing orphanages, soup kitchens, hospitals, and schools. Their resistance was through caring for each other, thinking more highly of those around them, sharing their gifts, playing in an orchestra, teaching, and reading stories that helped children escape for even a moment into another world. A mother giving bread to her child, forfeiting eating herself so they could live. This was all in defiance towards the Germans because they were still living out their faith.
Youth took responsibility and helped so much. When the youth came to understand that the Germans wanted to eradicate them, they fought for themselves and their people. Before them lied a mighty German military with guns, tanks, and weapons. They had no weapons except what they could make, like molotov cocktails, and a few grenades smuggled in. We are told they were filled with a noble sense of duty, a powerful desire to carry on the fight for honor, for human dignity. These were magnificent heroic fighters, both Jewish men and women.
I can only imagine a small bit of what they went through but not completely. This film has made me get closer to their story.
