Mr. Anonymous:
By the time most Jews were actually shipped to the camps they'd already been confined to city ghetto's for a considerable number of weeks and months - years, in some cases. Starved, beaten, sick. Denied basic human rights, recognition of citizenship, the option to leave, adequate food and medical supplies for the duration. The only way either in or out of the Ghettos was via armed checkpoint - barb wire and barricades defined the Ghettos.
All the more reason to fight back. It ought to have been known that the only way out was death at this point. What is life then worth?
If a Jew refused to obey an order five or ten were summarily either hung or shot by firing squad in front of the rest - have you any idea the number of men, women and children who died that way there in the streets of what were basically their own homes?
Again: Tis "better to fight on our feet than live on our knees".
Kill your own women and children if need be. Better that they die by your hand than be left to the Nazis.
Before the Ghetto's went up the Germans had basically robbed them of but the very basic of things they could readily hide - after they came, they came en mass and with guns which they used - there were resistors. They were shot.
I respect every Jew who was shot in combat with the Nazis.
However, you've never in your life been put in a situation where your daughter could be hung or shot for your act of rebellion right in front of your eyes.
I would kill her myself if need be.
Do you honestly think a single one of these people accepted their eventual fate either blindly, willingly or in anyway easily - of course, a bullet would have been so much quicker and kinder in comparison to what fate awaited them - but they weren't privy to what became, subsequently, History.
A person who has no foresight as to see the obvious? What did they think when they were boarding trains?
You honestly think a single one of the men there took so much as the first rifle butt in the face and the kicking that came afterwards because they liked it - that they were in anyway, at least in the early stages of Ghetto's, incapable of striking back? People did. It got their wives and their children murdered.
Was it not the Jew's greatest king, Solomon, who said: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to die...a time to kill?
There are times when pain must be accepted. So be it.
Thousands died through sickness and starvation there in the Ghetto's, left to rot. Thousands more never survived the fright cars - packed side by side, indeed treated worse than animals - malnutrition had already worked its magic - most were too weak even to stand.
The result of endemic cowardice. This is what happens when you don't fight back. They could have died as heroes and martyrs. Instead, they chose to die worse than the pigs they refuse to eat.
If there is a Hell, it is filled with every Jew who didn't fight against what they knew to be monsterous evil committed against them.
Spidergoat:
The armed resistances you mentioned are very inspiring. Those were some damn heroic Jews.