Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans, on PBS

[Mike Kilo Niner]

Wow -- I just finished watching an absolutely amazing documentary on PBS. Through first-hand accounts, this documentary describes the activities of Jewish guerilla fighters on the Eastern Front during World War II. Absolutely astonishing -- grandfatherly gentlemen describing the hardships of soldiering behind enemy lines, with everyone against you. Sweet old ladies talking calmly about executing collaborators. Their strength of will and supreme courage leave me speechless. If you get the chance, check your local listings and try to set aside an hour for this documentary.

 

[DonP]

These people were tough

These are the same breed of people that manufactured their own sten guns in bombed out basements, stole ammunition and held off the whermacht (sp?) in the Warsaw ghetto. Even their own countries had sold most of them out to the Nazi's but they fought anyway to survive.

(In some ways it's not unlike the Tuskeegee Airman that were rejected by the US military establishment but fought anyway.)

The grandsons and daughters of some of those people are sitting in bunkers now on the West Bank with M-4 and M-16's in their hands and a whole new enemy that wants to make them extinct all over again. It seems that every thirty or forty years another group thinks they are pushovers and finds out the hard way how much spine they have when cornered.

Don P.

 

[Meowhead]

I'm just curious..how were the Polish people treated by this documentary? I didn't get a chance to watch it.

 

[Mike Kilo Niner]

Meowhead,

No real coverage of the Poles. One of the women described executing a Polish collaborator, and there was mention of open hostility toward the Jews from the Polish villagers. The documentary was about Jewish partisans, so any mention of Poles was incidental.