What is Resistance?

     One of the more fascinating issues in the multifaceted composition of the Holocaust narrative is the resistance movement in Nazi Germany.  Popular tropes of resistance against the Nazis are commonly depicted in Hollywood movies such as Defiance and Inglorious Bastards, the latter in which beautiful movie theater owners conspire with brave Americans to eliminate the entire Nazi leadership.  While these imaginations of the resistance sometimes exaggerate, they still help bring our attention to the true models of resistance such as the White Rose and Sophie Scholl.  What makes it so fascinating is the challenge to answer the question of, “what is resistance????”

    Digging deeper into the meaning of this word in the context of the Holocaust, the true meaning of resistance is much murkier.  For example, what is the difference between resistance, and opposition?  It is really resistance if one harbored resentment against the Nazis and nothing more?  Is that on the same level as an organized movement such as the ghetto uprising in Warsaw or in the death camps at Treblinka and Sobibor, where conditions were so bad that the “immediacy and current threats (the costs of inaction) [were] perceived as greater than repressive threats (the costs of action) and thus armed resistance occurred” (Maher 255)? These are the questions we must ask ourselves in an evaluation of resistance and opposition, and historians have agreed that there is a sliding scale between the two.  For our purposes, we will use the definition laid out for us by Matthew Stibbe, to create a “distinction between ‘resistance’—defined as politically organized action aimed that the overthrow of the National Socialist system and  ‘opposition’—defined as any type of behavior that was intentional non-conformist or that showed contempt for the Nazi regime and its policies” (Stibbe 132). One can quickly begin to understand the complexity of this lexical dilemma but if we understand the difference between the two, a more complete picture of the anti-Nazi movement will emerge.

            To add an even deeper level of understanding and controversy to this topic is the consideration of the resistance from a gendered perspective.  This may seem inconsequential to some but women actually have a rich history within the resistance movement that stretched from the very beginning of the Nazi Regime in 1933 to the end in 1945.  In this narrative, the same questions regarding resistance and opposition emerge from the larger narrative of the resistance movement.  Are the actions of opposition such as a man giving Ruth Kluger an orange in her book Still Alive, or Frau Haferkamp from Alison Owing’s interview’s giving food to Jewish POW the same as Sophie Scholl's proliferation of anti-Nazi propaganda? What is the difference between true resistance or requisite actions to feel better about not doing more to help?   In this presentation, we will show many different facets of the women’s resistance movement as a  part of the larger resistance against the Nazi regime. It is impossible to come up with a grand, unifying narrative for the resistance.  Thus we will provide a categorical understanding of opposition and resistance in their many forms.  We will provide information in several sections: organized movements such as the White Rose and Red Orchestra, opposition in everyday life and in the household, and resistance in concentration and death camps.