This essay on the Holocaust, or Shoah, goes back several years ago—possibly the early-to-mid 2010s. I wrote it for a Coursera course called “The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry”, which Professors Murray Baumgarten (https://literature.ucsc.edu/faculty/emeriti-faculty.php?uid=dickens) and Peter Kenez (https://humanities.ucsc.edu/academics/faculty/emeriti.php?uid=kenez; https://news.ucsc.edu/2016/04/kenez-emeriti-award.html) co-teach. Professors Baumgarten and Kenez, respectively specializing in literature and history, are affiliated with the University of California, Santa Cruz. I’m putting it up to demonstrate writing ability as well as an interest in historical topics. Stephen Cheng June 20, 2020

1. This essay on the Holocaust, or Shoah, goes back several years ago—possibly the early-
to-mid 2010s. I wrote it for a Coursera course called “The Holocaust: The Destruction of
European Jewry”, which Professors Murray Baumgarten
(https://literature.ucsc.edu/faculty/emeriti-faculty.php?uid=dickens) and Peter Kenez
(https://humanities.ucsc.edu/academics/faculty/emeriti.php?uid=kenez;
https://news.ucsc.edu/2016/04/kenez-emeriti-award.html) co-teach.
Professors Baumgarten and Kenez, respectively specializing in literature and history, are
affiliated with the University of California, Santa Cruz.
I’m putting it up to demonstrate writing ability as well as an interest in historical topics.
Stephen Cheng
June 20, 2020
Please write a brief response (500-850 words) on the issue of "resistance." You
can use the framework that Professor Kenez and Professor Baumgarten setup to
discuss resistance, or you can pose your own questions and problematics.
What can “resistance” mean under totalitarian conditions? One would think,
understandably, that with the political and military dominance of Nazi Germany, any idea
of “resistance,” especially by the victims of the German government’s anti-Semitic
policies, amounted to a pipe dream, a fantasy. Yet resistance occurred; the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising (1943) is an obvious, straightforward example. But what about other
examples of resistance that do not involve armed struggle? Or indeed, overt forms of
opposition in general? Before answering questions, let us consider what the Nazi regime
meant for its victims.
As we know, the German government under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party became
vehemently and murderously anti-Semitic. In order to make an act of genocide such as
the Holocaust possible, the dehumanization of the alleged Jewish “enemy,” or Jewish
“cabal,” was first necessary. The very notion of a conspiracy by a seemingly supernatural
cabal of Jewish bankers was a form of dehumanization – it was a way of demonizing the
Jewish population so as to make supposed acts of “resistance” (e.g., the burning of shops
and houses of worship as was the case in Kristallnacht, pogroms, mass murder such as
the Holocaust) justifiable. As Prof. Baumgarten points out near the end of module section
5.4, the Germans saw themselves as victims of the Jewish conspiracy and thus saw,
indeed felt, the need to combat that conspiracy through any means conceivable. Those
means did not just include violence which culminated in the Holocaust, but also
legislation that barred Jewish people from economic life and heavily regulated (an
understatement, I admit) their personal lives as well. I can also add that people of Jewish
heritage were forced to wear badges of the yellow Star of David, thus exposing their
Jewish identities.
These legal measures (which Prof. Kenez speaks about throughout section 5.4, titled
“Nazi and Anti-Jewish Laws, 1933-1939.”) amounted to making the Jews into outcasts,

2. of separating them from “mainstream” society. In this way, they were a form of de-
humanization that interlocked with the aim and the logic of the Nazi policies against the
Jews. If the Nazis had planned on genocide from the beginning (the “intentionalist”
school’s argument), then the legal forms of anti-Semitic discrimination made up a first
step, a “light” or “soft” dehumanization, of a process which ended in the ultimate form of
dehumanization: the deprivation of life (in light of the context, massive deprivation). If
the Nazis had decided to commit genocide as part of the war effort, late into the Second
World War, (the “functionalist” school’s argument, although I may be wrong. If I made a
mistake here, please call me out.), then the legalized discrimination was a convenient
foundation upon which to see through the murder of a convenient scapegoat that was
already cast out from the eyes of the public. One way or the other, by intention or
function, the Holocaust/Shoah occurred and thus the genocidal implications of Nazi-era
anti-Semitism became real. Dehumanization was the cornerstone of Nazi Germany’s
attitude towards the Jews.
How, then, did the Jews (and the Nazis’ other victims) resist the dehumanization and thus
the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime? What can resistance mean and entail? Given that
the Nazis planned on taking the lives of the Jews, the Jews had to resist by staying alive.
Holding on to life was the essence of Jewish resistance to the Nazi agenda. In the prompt
for this assignment, Hugh Lynch provides a key and truly profound insight, illustrated
with many excellent examples: “Clearly, resistance had many forms, and it is necessary
to establish its definition as used in this text.” I will only add, and thus reply (I am also
repeating myself here), to Lynch’s remark that survival itself was also an act of
resistance. Indeed, it was the act of resistance. Elie Wiesel recounts from his memoir
Night the words of a fellow concentration camp prisoner, “I’ve got more faith in Hitler
than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the
Jewish people.” (p. 77 in Elie Wiesel, Night, Bantam Books edition, 1982, paperback) I
cannot speak for that one prisoner or any other Holocaust victim but, nevertheless, I
would think that that faith was reason enough to keep surviving, living, and thus commit
the ultimate act of resistance.