Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

by Israel Gutman

Overview

One of the few survivors of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Holocaust scholar Gutman draws on diaries, personal letters, and underground press reports in this compelling, authoritative account of a landmark event in Jewish history. Here, too, is a portrait of the vibrant culture that shaped the young fighters, whose inspired defiance would have far-reaching implications for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780395901304
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/23/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Israel Gutman teaches modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University and directs research at Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial. He lives in Jerusalem.

Editorial Reviews

"Superb, moving, richly informative history." Publishers Weekly —

From the Publisher

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, following Hitler's orders to annihilate the Jewish population of Poland's capital, pitted hundreds of poorly armed, starving Jews fighting to the death, in total isolation, against an overwhelming Nazi army. This superb, moving, richly informative history of the uprising, which was led by an underground resistance group, should erase the stereotype of the passive Jewish victim. Himself a survivor of the battle, Gutman ( The Jews of Warsaw ), a history professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, uses contemporaneous diaries, letters, underground press articles, survivors' accounts, poems and Nazi documents to create a vivid picture of daily life in the ghetto, and of temporary alliances forged among Jewish fighting factions torn by ideological rifts. He also illuminates contacts between Jewish partisans and the Polish underground and fills in the cultural background by delineating Warsaw's vibrant pre-war Jewish community. Photos. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gutman, a survivor of the Holocaust and a scholar on the subject, here traces the events that led the peaceful Warsaw Jewry into active resistance against the Nazis. In the 1920s and 1930s, Warsaw had Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish community. After Warsaw fell to Hitler, the Jewish underground formed in order to preserve the humanity of the Jews. They ran a clandestine press, established an uneasy alliance with the Polish underground, and eventually armed themselves while plotting retaliatory strategies. Gutman explores commonly held beliefs, e.g., that the Jews waited too long to defend themselves and that many did not believe reports of a Final Solution. The facts of the book are supported by excerpts from diaries, letters, newspapers, rare documents, and photographs. Gutman presents a dramatic and memorable picture of the ghetto. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Mary Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling

Library Journal