35. If Jews scheduled for execution knew the fate in store for
them, why did they go to their death without fight or protest?
Many did not know. However, some did, and revolted. The biggest
revolt was in the Warsaw Ghetto, and it took the Germans a lot of
fighting to subdue the rebellion; the whole Ghetto had to be destroyed
in order to force the Jewish partisans out. There were also rebellions
in
Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Treblinka,
and
Sobibor
(the last one was dramatized in a movie), but they were not terribly
successful, except at Treblinka, where the camp was shut down partly
due to the rebellion.
Holocaust-deniers often mock survivors by quoting one who says that
the extermination process was a well-kept secret, and another who says
that many people knew about it. There is no contradiction here, of
course. At different times, and different places, different people knew
different things.
To claim that if one Jew knew something, then every other Jew
automatically knew it as well, is just an extension of the old
antisemitic propaganda of Jews as world-conspirators.
The line "simply interned and forced to work" -- deleted in
the revised version -- is eerily reminiscent of Hitler's quotation,
"the Jews should be grateful that all I want from them is a little
hard work."