Hope and Honor: Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

A powerful account of Jewish resistence in Nazi-occupied Europe and why such resistance was so remarkable.

Most popular accounts of the Holocaust typically cast Jewish victims as meek and ask, "Why didn't Jews resist?" But we know now that Jews did resist, staging armed uprisings in ghettos and camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. In Hope and Honor, Rachel L. Einwohner illustrates the dangers in attempting resistance under unimaginable conditions and shows how remarkable such resistance was. She draws on oral testimonies, published and unpublished diaries and memoirs, and other written materials produced both by survivors and those who perished to show how Jews living under Nazi occupation in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and LÃ3dz reached decisions about resistance. Using methods of comparative-historical sociology, Einwohner shows that decisions about resistance rested on Jews' assessments of the threats facing them, and somewhat ironically, armed resistance took place only once activists reached the critical conclusion that they had no hope for survival. Rather than ask the typical question of why Jews generally didn't resist, this powerful account of Jewish resistance seeks to explain why they resisted at all when there was no hope for success, and they faced almost certain death.

Author: Rachel L. Einwohner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 01/24/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9780190079444
ISBN10: 0190079444
BISAC Categories:
- History | Wars & Conflicts | World War II | General
- Social Science | Sociology | General
- History | Modern | 20th Century | Holocaust

About the Author

Rachel L. Einwohner is Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Political Science at Purdue University, where she is also a faculty affiliate in Jewish Studies. Her research focuses on the dynamics of protest and resistance. Her work asks questions related to protest emergence and effectiveness, the role of gender and other identities in protest dynamics, protesters' sense of efficacy, and the creation of solidarity in diverse movements. She has explored these topics with studies of a wide variety of cases, including the U.S. animal rights movement, the 2017 Women's March, and Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. She is also part of an interdisciplinary research team that is using Twitter data to examine diversity and inclusion in contemporary social movements. She has also co-edited two volumes: The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women's Social Movement Activism and Identity Work in Social Movements.