ABSTRACT
The underground’s activities from its formation and until the revolt’s armed uprising and escape, mainly involved preparations towards that point obtaining weapons, expanding its ranks, seeking contacts with the partisans, work with youth and sometimes educational work and underground schools. In other ghettos the Jews bought weapons from the peasants and sometimes from the Bielorussian policemen. The underground had opponents, and in more than a few ghettos this included many of the Judenrate. The underground’s opponents argued that its activities endangered the ghetto’s inhabitants; that the prospects of the underground saving Jews were very small or even nil. The underground’s opponents argued that its activities endangered the ghetto’s inhabitants; that the prospects of the underground saving Jews were very small or even nil. Sometimes the dispute was bitter as death, because its subject was life itself. The Jews had already gone through one aktzia or even two, and knew about the murder and annihilation of Jews in the close vicinity.
