To Live with Hope, to Die with Dignity: Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos and Camps

Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust has been amply documented, debunking the stereotypical view of the Jews as passive victims of Hitler and the Nazis. The stories of the revolts in a number of ghettos and camps have been told and retold. Jewish participation in partisan activities has been fully recorded. There is another form of resistance, spiritual in nature, which has yet to be fully documented. Spiritual resistance was expressed on an organized communal level, maintained to thwart the Nazi intention of dehumanizing their Jewish victims. The victims responded by initiating religious, educational, and cultural activities in an organized manner. These activities were both open and clandestine. In addition, many individuals expressed themselves through their writings. To Live with Hope, To Die with Dignity, based principally on materials created and activities conducted in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, Kovno, during the Holocaust, concerns itself with this particular aspect of the Holocaust tragedy.

About the Author

Dr. Joseph Rudavsky was the founder-director of the Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at New Jersey’s Ramapo College from 1979 until his retirement in 1996. He served as a Reform Rabbi and currently teaches a Holocaust-oriented course at the Hebrew College—Jewish Institute of Religion.