Exhibition highlights Jewish resistance during the Holocaust

Display also looks at individual acts, from the secret diaries written by Ruth Wiener and Anne Frank, to the clandestine religious worship practiced in ghetto

By Francine Wolfisz
  • Francine Wolfisz is the Features Editor for Jewish News.
7 August 2020, 11:50 am
Jewish Lithuanian partisans’ group ‘The Avengers’ on their return to Vilna at the time of the liberation of the city by the Red Army, July 1944. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections

In Nazi-occupied Poland, Tosia Altman risked her life by organising armed revolt within the ghettos, while at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jewish prisoners colluded to secretly smuggle evidence out of the death camp. Meanwhile, deep in the forests of Belorussia, the Bielski brothers headed up partisan groups that ultimately rescued 1,200 men, women and children.

These are just some of the fascinating stories revealed in a new exhibition, Jewish Resistance To The Holocaust, which opens Thursday at The Wiener Library and draws on the museum’s unique archival collections of documents and eyewitness accounts.

The exhibition also explores individual acts of resistance, from the secret diaries written by Ruth Wiener in Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen and Anne Frank in hiding in Amsterdam, to the clandestine religious worship practiced in ghettos, as well as testimonies buried in Auschwitz by those imprisoned there.

Jewish Resistance To The Holocaust runs at The Wiener Holocaust Library until 30 November. Exhibition open Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11am to 3pm, to visitors with pre-booked slots only, www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

 

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