ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the Jewish response to the Holocaust: how they accommodated themselves to and attempts to resist the Final Solution, how they perished and how they survived. It begins with some general observations about the phenomenon of survival and considers the dilemmas of both Jewish accommodations, as in the case of the Jewish councils, and of resistance to the Nazi death machine. In the case of the Jewish councils, their task was to convince their local Jewish communities that the circumstances called for compromise and accommodation to Nazi policies. To a large extent, Jews' historical adaptation to persecution had imbued Jewish culture with the notion that accommodation, rather than resistance, was the most effective strategy of survival. To be sure, every saved life mattered, and Jews fought valiantly within both Jewish and non-Jewish partisan units throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, defying the stereotype of Jewish passivity.
